Creating a Winning Job Proposal to Advance Your Way to a New Position

If you want to get hired by a specific company, regardless of whether or not they are recruiting, then it’s important to go the extra mile. This doesn’t just mean the application process, but also your approach to your current job. Word of mouth and recommendations are extremely powerful tools, so if you are regarded as a dedicated worker within your current company, this automatically improves your prospects.

A job proposal is a letter in which you write to a company, explaining how your skills, experience, etc. could help the company, and asking them to give you a job. Send a job proposal with your resume, suggesting how you would improve company operations.

The job proposal is a very bold method. It takes confidence but, most importantly, ample preparation time. There are five very important steps to preparing a job proposal.

1. Gather Information: Prepare to conduct some research. First, analyze the company’s current operations and choose to focus on one area. Determine why the current business operations are set this way. In other words, what is the employer’s goal in this area? Talk to others in the same industry and find out what common challenges these organizations are facing.
2. Identify Your Strengths: After identifying the challenges and/or weaknesses a particular organization is facing, ask yourself what your personal strengths are that may be relatable to the prospective employer. Provide evidence of each skill/strength you have identified (for example, a project that you have worked on).
3. Match Strengths With Needs: Align your strengths with the prospective employer’s challenges and goals – in other words, their needs. Think about how your personal strengths can help the employer meet their challenges and achieve their business goals.
4. Prove You’re Worth It: Gather evidence of your success. This could include statistical graphs, projects, reports, references, and recommendations. Whatever they are, these will boost your case significantly.
5. Determine Expectations: What would you be willing/unwilling to do in this position? Draft a job description with duties you are comfortable with. Additionally, consider the role and compensation – are you seeking a part time or full time job? A continuing or temporary/seasonal position? You may also want to think about how much you’d like to be compensated, but waiting for a job offer from the employer before negotiating compensation is wise.

A one-page job proposal sums up why the employer should hire you. You need to find out a company’s pain points and determine how you can solve them. In the proposal, make reference to your skills, qualifications, education and past accomplishments—and tell them how having these on board will benefit the organization. Your proposal should be highly targeted, well researched and compelling.

If you do not have the necessary education or experience, make a compelling argument by highlighting your credentials, advanced training, and any volunteer experience that make you uniquely qualified for the role.

Applying for jobs can be difficult at the best of times, more so when there are no actual vacancies. But if you can demonstrate your commitment to working for a particular company, you might just get that dream job.