How to Stand Out as A PhD Candidate When Applying for Trade Association Roles?

Many professional trade bodies and associated organizations are currently experiencing problems when recruiting talented higher-level educated professionals for specialist or niche roles. The current recruitment landscape in the trade association sector in the EU and beyond illustrates the competitive nature of recruitment.

In this landscape, a job-seeking candidate, has the ability to pick and choose roles. However, there are key steps Ph.D.-level educated candidates can do to help stand out further to trade association bodies who are recruiting for specialist roles.

How to Match Your Personal Brand with Potential Employer Branding?

As organizations invest more time, effort and money in nurturing and developing an “employer” branding policy. According to the CIPD, an employer branding is defined as “a set of attributes and qualities, often intangible, that makes an organization distinctive, promises a particular kind of employment experience, and appeals to those people who will thrive an perform best in its culture.”

As a job-seeker, you can find common ground, between a prospective employer’s unique branding and culture with your own “personal” branding. According to Everyone Social, personal branding has rapidly become a “must-have” and “essential” quality any would-be candidate needs to help stand-out in a competitive landscape.

Personal branding is about leveraging how you “represent and promote yourself to others,” with your expertise, skills and experiences to help promote an ethos and culture that is linked to how you influence people – remember a personal branding isn’t about having loads of followers or being viral. It is about nurturing a personal branding based on organic growth that nurtures long-term personal growth.

Remember Your Transferable “Soft-Skills” Matter Just as Much as Your Hard Skills?

According to Forbes, Ph.D. Candidates can sometimes fixate on their “hard” skills – based on their higher-level education and postdoc work experience. Whilst this is seminally important to the job in question, forgetting to ‘up-sell’ your “soft skills” can prove to be disastrous in terms of getting past the recruitment screening process.

Identifying how skills like empathy, patience, problem-solving, time management, or communications skills can transfer across to a prospective new role can help you stand out as the right candidate. A deep dive undertaken by LinkedIn found that soft skills promote increased employee productivity – thanks to the ability of people who utilize soft skills to better understand people and communication management skills to help manage pressure, emotions, and more crucially, solve problems.

All of this is especially relevant for trade associations whereby the need to balance soft and hard skills is pertinent in terms of successfully delivering on the key objectives of a job role.

How to Leverage “Soft-Skills” and Personal Branding to Help Find The Perfect Trade Association Job?

By understanding how your “branding” impacts your candidacy whilst concurrently realizing the relevancy of your “soft skills”, you can stand out as a top tier postdoctoral candidate. Trade Associations are facing a global skill shortage and by understanding the importance of the culture and qualities of these organizations – and their goals – and leveraging the “personal branding” and “soft skills” necessary to succeed.

Disclaimer

The information in this guide is based on the personal opinions of the authors, and is presented in good faith. EuroJobsites do not accept any liability for errors, omissions or inaccuracies in this guide.

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