Have you ever had a brain freeze or second guessed yourself when writing an application letter or a CV / resume? Perhaps when talking to an interviewer? “Is that the best you got?” you might have heard the voices in your head ask. I used to experience the same till I discovered FAB. This might be the best-kept recruitment secret no one told you about.

FAB

Last time I shared an elegant 3 step formula to writing a winning application letter. But how do you score more points on presentation?

Think about your favourite app. What features do you like most about it? What have those features helped you do since you started using the app? Based on your answers to those two, how can someone who wants to start using your favourite app benefit from it?

Did you honestly think through those 3 questions? If yes, congrats – you just used FAB.

Use your Features, Accomplishments and Benefits (FAB) to market yourself

I love it because it helps you honestly think about your super powers and how they can be used for good.

Features

Features are what you have to offer.

They’re hard and soft objective facts about work experience.

Here are some examples from my work experience:

• 3 months experience as an IT support guru for a health services and research organisation.
• 3 years web development experience using Ruby on Rails, PHP, Javascript, CSS and HTML.
• Growth-oriented, quick learner

What do you have to offer from your experience (work, school or social)?

Short gigs count for something. Look what I did with my first example as an IT intern.

Accomplishments

What evidence of stated features can you show? The proof in the pudding.

Short data points to demonstrate examples of a feature support your case better.

It helps if you refer to a relatable, tangible, quantifiable business or commercial achievement e.g. improved sales by 10% by bringing in 20 clients. That’s a language any recruiter or potential employer can relate to.

Here are example accomplishments from the features above:

• Helped resolve over 100 user, hardware, software and network support requests satisfactorily.
• Led development of 10+ web apps and 5+ websites, most of which are live today, using Ruby on Rails, PHP, MySQL and Javascript.
• Completed a Masters degree, 4 personal development courses and 1 internet marketing MBA course in 2015 while doing a lot of independent studying – books, articles, podcasts and videos.

What evidence from your experience can you use to illustrate ownership of your stated features?

Benefits

What value do you present to a potential new employer? (related to features)

From my software development background, I’ve come to realise that people don’t care much about the features, they care about the benefits. The same is true about other areas in life. Recruitment is no exception.

Here are example benefits a potential employer would get from the features mentioned in this post:

• Can help improve the company’s productivity by solving problems and helping colleagues do the same.
• Can develop web apps and websites for the company using Rails, PHP and Javascript without much training.
• Will continue to invest in himself and be an asset to our organisation.

What benefits do you have to offer? Are they valuable to your potential new employer?

Conclusion

Create a FAB sheet for yourself using a spreadsheet app or word processor.

Besides helping you reflect on your experience, it will give you lots of ammunition to use on your CV/resume, cover letter or interviews. You can check out my example sheet.

Next time you prepare your CV or go for an interview and they ask about your experience doing X, you’ll be prepped to answer that you’ve done X for Y duration and managed to accomplish Z (in tangible, relatable, quantifyable speak).

You can also hint at the value that presents them (benefit). Sometimes, it helps to paint a clear picture. 😉

What are your thoughts on using FAB or your experience with it? Tweet me! I’d love to hear from you.

Till next time, #GrowTheGood in your life and the lives around you and have a FABulous time.

– Evans “Doing FAB” Musomi