Nick Corcodilos, author of Ask The Headhunter, sent this in response to the inquiry by "Endangered species": Engineers and technical people naturally have difficulty with the idea of "selling". It's very foreign to their day-to-day work, and you can blame that on engineers themselves, or on their employers for not instilling more "sales" into engineering jobs. But I'm not commenting on this issue just to point Nick Corcodilos, author of Ask The Headhunter, sent this in response to the inquiry by “Endangered species”: Engineers and technical people naturally have difficulty with the idea of “selling”. It’s very foreign to their day-to-day work, and you can blame that on engineers themselves, or on their employers for not instilling more “sales” into engineering jobs. But I’m not commenting on this issue just to point out the obvious. I’d like to point out the hidden problem. And it is this: Engineers think in terms of skills and problem-solving rather than in terms of identifying opportunities and selling solutions. Any engineer can close one eye and tie one hand behind his or her back and bridge the seeming gap — it’s simple.Forget about skills and learning curves. This person is right: you can’t sell the ability to make things happen by listing your skills. But, you CAN sell the business plan you use to do your job. My advice: create two or three brief “case studies” of challenges you’ve faced and describe how you tackled and solved them. Provide two levels of description. First, enough detail to make each example concrete and interesting. Second, a top-level view that reveals “generalizable” skills and the strategic approach you employ with all challenges. Tie it all up by showing the connections between your generalizable strategy and the cases in point. That’s your sales piece. That’s your marketing approach. If you really want to go whole-hog, assess a specific challenge being faced by the manager you want to work for. Create a brief plan for that scenario, using the same approach I outlined above. That’s the rock-’em-sock-’em closing to your pitch. Any good engineer can put this together, because engineers are good at problem-solving. Marketing and sales are problems that can be characterized using the same general terms as any other problem. There’s an input, a black box, and an output. What seems daunting to many engineers is the characterization of the black box, but it need not be. You take your abilities and the problem the employer needs solved (the in-zes), formulate a process that’s based on the specific problem an employer needs handled and which you justify by applying your generalized skills (the black box), and a business plan for the job you want to be hired for (the out-zes). If you don’t like the term “business plan”, think of it as a “project plan”. Hand it to the employer. You’re done — until the employer starts asking you for more details. Best,Nick Corcodilos Ask The Headhunter Newsletter found at asktheheadhunter.com ——– Technology Industry