My friends often ask me for creative ideas and introspective support about life and relationships. So, I thought maybe it’d help more people if I made a post sharing advice on creating an ideal employer and how it shifted my perspective on connecting with the right employers.
There were three reasons why I wrote this:
- I wanted to be seen by the leaders looking for someone like me. Simply submitting an electronic resume hid the essence of who I was, which later inspired a video resume. This is a grand slam.
- I wanted to work in spaces where I could thrive. I wanted to learn and be valued as a contributor, not just because I’m “talented,” or “Wicked smart.”
- I wanted to connect with the human, not the title.
Creating a persona helped me land roles where leadership prioritized me as a person. Creating a persona is all about having clarity and connection. And after months of trial and error, I began to see a shift in obtaining projects and meeting phenomenal people. My aim is to help you think outside the box when looking to align with suitable managers and avoid those who aren’t. I’m aware that my experiences may relate more to freelancers and contractors than physical labor experience. Still, I believe this post can add value to anyone if you’re open to thinking outside the box ;)
Key Takeaways
- People don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad leaders. Big facts. When pursuing new opportunities, use your persona as a vision board for matching with your ideal leader. You can literally stop reading right here because this is metaphorically it.
- Think of people you admire and respect and combine their attributes, accolades, and accomplishments into your ideal leader.
- Merge your values into your ideal leader persona. Try using this persona the next time you write a cover letter, social media posts, or email your network groups. The key is that your language should speak directly to the psychographics of your target leader.
- Your ideal employer isn’t meant to be perfect, but there should be shared harmonization between values, vision, and mission.
- Having a deep level of clarity has a higher potential of connecting you to the leaders who’re looking for you. This clarity also helps avoid leaders who don’t harmonize with your goals, needs, or nonnegotiable.
- Consider creating a small, quick, scrappy video resume that shows your personality and experience. Then, you can use platforms like Loom.com to record yourself chatting about your resume simultaneously.
What is an Ideal Employer Persona?
An ideal employer is exactly what it sounds like, with the ideal being the most suitable, desirable, with intentions of becoming a reality (primarily if worked toward). An employer is a person or organization that employs people. This book is to help you create a suitable fictional employer to help you define and discover the actual leader you want to work with.
This diagram is a visual flow of leveraging your ideal employer persona. First, you want to define your values and needs. Then, you bake those values and needs into your ideal employer persona. Because when you’re applying to jobs, interviewing, and networking, there’s a more aligned connection between you and your targeted employer.
Build the basics
Demographics & Psychographics
According to the Oxford dictionary, demographics are the statistical data relating to the population and particular groups within it. So think age, gender, ethnicity, income, education, marital status, and employment. Psychographics is the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research.
I found it beneficial to merge my values into my ideal employer persona; I wanted to be specific and clear. So when I’d communicate through my cover letter, social posts, and network groups, my language would speak directly to my ideal leader. Remember a persona is an ideal, a “would be nice” if my leader had these particular attitudes, aspirations, etc.
What to do:
- Take a few moments to reflect on the many ways in which you naturally nourish others as a human being (don’t worry about the professional environment).
- Try identifying your top three most important values and merge them in the psychographic section.
For example:
“I value holding a safe space for other people to share their heart and experiences with me.” “I love being in a creative space where collaboration is prioritized.” And “I value working with leaders who embody diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
In the demographics section, I wanted my ideal employer to reflect a combination of inspirational attributes, accolades, and accomplishments from people I admire and respect.
What to do:
- Take a moment (or even a few days) to reflect on a few people you admire, their accomplishments, or the impact they’ve left on your life.
Don’t devalue your own experience or the people in your immediate circles, as they have had unique experiences too.
Be imaginative with a healthy dose of reasoning.
For example:
Ask yourself, do the demographics harmonize with my ideal employer’s psychographics?
Behavior
When I think of the behavior section, my thoughts aligned with how I’d hope my ideal leader would carry themselves. For me, this isn’t about them being perfect or being spot on but being relatable and somewhat familiar (because, after all, my ideal employer is a reflection of my inner leader).
What to do:
- Consider creating a quick and dirty video resume showing your personality. Of course, later on, you’ll be able to polish it, but the goal is to be you! My reasoning behind creating a video resume was after pondering why people watch certain YouTubers. A significant reason is that YouTubers show their personality, share information quickly, and are relatable. For you, this will be your work experience and your quirks.
Bring it all together
When you get all of your most important information down you can then pull them into one functioning document to frequently refer back to.
Final Thoughts
It’s about relationship-building and shining your light as you continue to grow, and the right people will draw to you. Keeping this top of mind has helped me experience more success on my journey. It’s given me access to some of tech’s most innovative human-centered leaders I now have the honor of calling colleagues and friends.
I strongly recommend that you consider joining or following Facebook groups, email network groups, Slack channels, and authors on Medium. (See online resources toward the end of this read). As you define and refine your persona, remember that you may not always get an immediate response when you join groups, virtual communities, or email groups, and that’s okay! Everything has its time.
And lastly, I wish I could thank you with a warm hug. But, instead, I’m smiling, hoping you were able to resonate with something in this post! The content you read is from my experiences, spontaneous conversations, and late-night ideas since way back in 2018. My aim was to help others think outside of the box, so please take my advice solely as “maybes,” “how might we,” or simply advice. I hope it was brief, to the point, and hopefully clear.
Visit jeremysbox.com to learn more about me and I hope you’ll consider joining my email list to stay up to date on my next creative venture.
Thank yous
Thank you to everyone who made themselves available to look through my terrible misspellings and random text messages asking for feedback. A big thank you to Chris Pearson, Annie Bosco, Briana Marrero, Jaxson Twine, Meechy Breion, Aizya McGee, and Jill Christ. And to everyone else who’s helped shape my experience thus far.
Online resources
The Futur — thefutur.com
IDEO — ideo.com
Seth Godin — sethgodin.com
Medium — medium.com
Diverse Creatives — diversecreatives.com
Fuse — fusemcr.com
UpWork — upwork.com
B Corporation — bcorporation.net
Diversify Tech — diversifytech.co
Creative Mornings — creativemornings.com
UX Jobs Board — uxjobsboard.com
UX Hires — uxhires.com
AngelList — angel.co
Guru — guru.com
Payscale (salary website) — payscale.com
Authentic Jobs — authenticjobs.com
User Interviews (Paid Research) — userinterviews.com
Lets Eat Grandma — letseatgrandma.com
The Muse — themuse.com
The Balance Careers — thebalancecareers.com
