3 Tips To Make You Stand Out As An Analysts
I have written before about becoming a freelance performance analyst and setting your prices, but I wanted to expand on that here and give some more tips that will help if you are a freelance analyst or even applying for a job, to stand out from the crowd.
Remember you are applying for a job or hoping to work in a digital industry. It’s so important that you show a potential client or employer that you are comfortable in the digital world. Everyone puts the same blurb on their CV but those that get the job convince people that they can actually back those words up with action.
Tip 1
An email address – I don’t mean an address like ‘johnnybigpockets1985@yahoo.com’ – this looks really unprofessional. If you are a freelance analyst you should definitely have a company style email like ‘firstname@mycompany.com’. Even if you are applying for a job this can be a help.
This doesn’t have to cost much at all, any website hosting company will offer this solution. With Go Daddy you can get a personal email address for €0.85 per month.
Tip 2
A blog/website – Now I know this puts a lot of people off but there really are some simple steps you can take to show off a bit and it doesn’t have to take to much time.
- About.me: Possibly the easiest is to have an about.me profile, it’s free and takes about 5 minutes to set up. If you have accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc… you can store all your contact details here.
- Hosted Blog: The next best is to have a blog from a site like wordpress.com. This is a site that is hosted by wordpress, its completely free and you can customize the design to your liking. And if you are up to the task you could develop a full site (it’s easier than it sounds, wordpress.org is a good place to start). You don’t have to constantly up-date the site, it can be a holding place for your online profile, perhaps a place to put your CV, your college dissertation or other articles you have written on analysis.
- Self-hosted Blog – Remember a CV is only words on a page you will significantly improve your chances of getting that job if you can show examples of your work. In fact I have seen a trend with analysis jobs where they get you to complete an analysis task as part of the interview process. Your website is a good place to out this content but even writing for other sites (like this one) can help you greatly. Your website doesn’t have to be updated every week. Think of it more like an interactive CV.
Tip 3
Business Cards: For this I would use Moo.com – they have a fantastic site that allow you get really creative with your business cards, print in small numbers and get loads of different cards printed. I used these guys to get some cards made up for thevideoanalyst.com. You can choose up to 50 different images and then the back is the same. Here is what I did for this site.
Prices for these start at £10.99 for 50 cards.
Final Thoughts
None of these steps have to cost you much money or a huge amount of time. The jobs market especially in high performance sport is very competitive, you need to do everything you can to stand out from the crowd. Put future employers mind at ease by showing that you are comfortable with technology and can deliver on the promises of your CV.
