What is Your Competitive Edge & Why is it Important for Your Job Search?

So, you’ve blasted out your resume to dozens of jobs on the mega job boards, but you haven’t landed a single response! Your bills are piling up and your dissatisfaction with your current job has you wanting to bang your head on your desk. You are tired and frustrated that your job search is going nowhere fast. What on earth is the problem?

1. Well, here are some possibilities:
2. Your resume looks like everyone else’s resume applying for the same job.
3. You don’t know how to promote yourself and feel bashful writing and talking about your accomplishments.
4. You have no idea what your areas of subject matter expertise are, nor do you have any clear idea of what your target job is.
5. You are boring on paper.
6. You do not know how to identify and communicate your competitive edge in the job marketplace.​

Bingo! One through five are all possibilities, but you hit the nail on the head with number five! Without knowing who you are, what YOU have to offer, and how you surpass other applicants is the recipe for failure on your job search campaign. So, how to you avoid failure? Research, contemplate, identify, and promote your competitive edge and what makes you shine above thousands of other applicants!

Only 20% of applicants land an interview. Here at Elevated Resumes, we want to be sure you make the cut!

Our powerhouse writers know to not just write about responsibilities, but to focus more on your quantifiable achievements. We love to highlight your home runs in revenue growth, cost savings, operational efficiencies, client satisfaction, and other value-added contributions.

The truth is, hiring managers are looking for superstars who have a strong record of catalyzing territory growth, market expansion, and record-breaking revenues.

So, let’s explore the process of how to find your competitive edge:

1. Sit down and take an in-depth inventory of your most awesome career achievements.
2. If you have them handy, quantify your accomplishments with dollar figures or percentages.
3. Where do you have vast experience and/or encyclopedic knowledge? That will lead to finding out your superpower, or what resume writers call your subject matter expertise!
4. Write down recurring themes that show up throughout your career. Are you consistently enabling operations to be seamless and efficient? Do you identify areas of deficiency and introduce process improvements? Are you recruited to steer start-ups to significant growth? Are you asked to design and deliver training curricula that improves the performance of employees? Do you always get a ton of promotions?

Now, do you have a better idea of what you are all about and the areas where you have been a rockstar?

Or not yet? How about this: here are some examples of competitive edge statements:

1. As a brand champion and award-winning leader in pharmaceutical sales, I crush competition and achieve million-dollar revenue growth, often up to 210% of quota. With a consultative approach and hunter-like mentality, I always land a top 10 ranking. I am confident that my strong record of elevating annual revenue will ensure rapid growth of your enterprise.
2. As a respected CTO, I excel in enhancing usability and increasing productivity with my expertise in ERP systems on Lawson financials. Offering a proven record of business process re-engineering, I am strong in directing mission-critical initiatives with strategic vision to ensure bottom line success.
3. As a Registered Nurse, I’ve worked in many areas, including medical/surgical, cardiology, and telemetry. I’m proud of boosting hospital ratings due to my compassionate approach, knowledge of evidence-based medicine, and ensuring an outstanding patient experiences. I also step out of the norm and suggest process improvements to make our department run more efficiently.

Why should you care about all of this? Take it from us, as career campaign specialists, you’ve got to do this. Your competitive edge is your secret weapon and vital to job search success! 
Your competitive edge also proves vital to getting your resume noticed by hiring managers out of thousands of other applicants. One resume client jokingly said, “I want my resume to jump up off the hiring manager’s desk and slap him on the face!!” Hell yes! And in doing so, you want to give them the motivation to sit down and actually read your resume.

Where else does your competitive edge prove vital? Job interviews, of course!!
Your competitive edge gives you the perfect response to when a hiring manager pushes her glasses down on her nose, gives you a penetrating stare, and asks, “Why should we hire you?”
The best possible answer in this scenario is to tell them all about your unique value, and don’t be afraid to toot your own horn!

As an innovative resume writing and design company, we encourage you to visit our Get Started page to discover how we can catapult you into great success with your job search!
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For many of our clients, including c-level executives, finding and articulating their competitive edge is a huge challenge, especially when you career background has been very diverse. If you need strategic counseling on the task, we highly recommend scheduling career coaching sessions with one of our in-house career coaches.​​