You're A Perfect Fit 🦄

A unicorn is someone who's a perfect fit for a particular job. What job are you a unicorn for?

Welcome to my presentation of “Unicorn Theory” — my approach to coaching job seekers on how to think about finding a job that’s the perfect fit for them. This approach turns traditional career advice upside down, and helps you focus on finding roles for which you have a great chance of being interviewed and hired.

(“Unicorn” has, sadly, taken on some unfortunate connotations. To paraphrase Fame, it used to be such a happy word! Today’s meanings are various, and not all are safe for work. Nothing is worse than the meaning “a company with a billion dollar valuation.”🤮)

That term doesn’t do justice to these sleek, powerful, mythical creatures who turn up frequently in parables, mythology, and vivid metaphors spun by lazy writers. My intention today is for it to evoke “a perfect match, made against overwhelming odds.”

Try this:

Deidre is such a unicorn for Molly, I’m so happy she founds someone who shares her love of both Motörhead and knitting.

Isn’t it great when things work out just right, like they did for Deidre and Molly? That’s how it’s going to turn out for you and your job search.

The Unicorn Theory

Here’s how I sum up my Unicorn Theory of job search:

Nobody wants to select a candidate who is anything less than a perfect fit for the role.

Practicing unicorn theory begins by adopting radical empathy for recruiters and hiring managers, and the recognition that they rarely have a reason to hire or even consider a candidate who does not appear on paper to be a mythically-perfect fit for their needs.

Sounds like a lot of pressure, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be. When you embrace the idea that you’re most likely to be successful looking for a job when you focus on the most relevant opportunities, the work actually becomes much easier and more likely to be successful.

Here are three simple habits to mame the “unicornerstone” of your search:

1. Apply to fewer jobs

2. Craft each application carefully

3. Re-think what you say about yourself

Let’s again consider the perspective of your future employer. Every last one of them wants to hire the person who’s ideally suited to their role — a chimeric construction of chemistry, capabilities, and culture — composed by the heavens with improbable perfection.

For us job seekers, that can feel like a staggering challenge. It’s not enough have a one-page résumé in a designer font, free of typos, with carefully-selected action verbs and quantifiable impact statements. You want to appear to be as close as you possibly can to the Platonic ideal — the Panglossian best of all possible candidates.

Imagine a candidate who the recruiter can introduce to the hiring manager, causing her to respond “Oh, hell yes, Gertrude! Where did you find this amazing creature?!”¹ Now imagine that there are several dozen people like that already in the recruiters inbox. They’re lined up in perfect unicornrows. You might even say there’s a veritable unicornucopia.

Turning the Unicorner

Once again, let’s consider the mindset of recruiters when screening résumés. I say this with love, but in order to perform under the extraordinary pressures that they do, their understanding of what makes a “perfect” fit may be somewhat unsubtle. They are likely to be working with a few key concepts about the position scribbled on a Post-It note, pressed against the edge of the monitor, against which they will quickly and silently compare each candidate.

Does this mean that prospective employers have unreasonable expectations and impossible standards to which you can never match up? No, but it’s very normal to feel that way. The good news is that after a long career of hiring and getting hired, I can assure you that every company is filled with people who were able to meet those standards on their own terms.

Unicorning is about how you present yourself. It’s recognizing that the hiring process is designed like many other things at scale — with some very rough edges — and figuring out how to fit yourself into the shape of the opportunity that’s appeared. Think about it this way: if the recruiter is going to write just a few words on the top of your profile in sharpie marker, what will those words be? Will those words match the few on the PostIt Note from the job description?

How to Unicorn

Photo by Andrea Tummons on Unsplash

Here are some ideas for how to unicorn your way into the job you’re going after:

First, select a role that you are really and truly well-suited for. You should believe that you’re are a serious, credible candidate — from the perspective of the hiring manager, not your mother. This should reduce the number of jobs you apply to by quite a lot. That’s good! In fact, it’s exactly the point.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply for jobs that you feel are a stretch or a long-shot. You absolutely should, you fine, beautiful creature, because the way of the unicorn is to make each of those applications look like hiring you for that position is a startlingly obvious idea.

Listen, lots of people get hired for jobs they have some doubt about their qualifications for. But every one of them got selected for a reason. You must put that reason on the page, or else the chance of getting it was always extremely remote.

Applying for longshot jobs without a strategy for how to show you’re better than 99% of the competition is just not productive. If you’ve found yourself getting ignored after dozens or hundreds of applications, this is why. Imagine only 1% of applicants are selected for an interview: does the way you present yourself make you seem like a more obvious fit than 99% of the other candidates?

Start by identifying a job posting for a particular position at a specific company. From the posting, identify these key facts:

1. Note the job title associated with the role.

2. Select 3 to 5 key verbs from the job description that describe the work. For example “oversee,

3. Select 3 to 5 key nouns from the job description.

4. Identify one key phrase describing the company’s culture.

5. Identify the location requirements associated with the role.

Now, take those facts, and unicorn yourself! Do that by looking at each section of your résumé/profile and figuring out how to improve it so that you’re an obvious match:

1. Change your most recent job title to match as closely as possible the job title you’re applying for — ideally, they should be exactly the same. It doesn’t matter what your actual job title was. There is no law against applying a little “spin” on your résumé (I checked.) You’re just writing a little group of adjectives that describe what you do or did. Trust me on this: as long as you have no intent to deceive, it is perfectly acceptable to get creative.

2. Use the same verbs (“manage, optimize, research, recruit, plan”) and nouns (names of platforms, technologies, vendors, partners, etc.) from the job description in your description of your most recent role. This is going to help a recruiter check the appropriate boxes, and it will help your résumé get noticed in the Applicant Tracking System.

3. Incorporate words from the company’s description of their culture to your one-sentence objective at the top of your résumé. For example, if the company’s culture statement talks about “transparency” you can say: I’m a senior marketing professional looking for a leadership role in an environment that prizes transparency and accountability. Try to make it sound natural, not like a copy & paste.

4. Set your location at the top of your profile so that it matches exactly the location requirement of the job. If the job says “Washington, DC” and you live in Bethesda, MD, put “Washington, DC Area.” If the job is remote, but you’re close to a city where the company has an office, put that city. You can sort out the nuances of their location requirement after you get selected for a screening interview.

Now reread the job posting, and re-read your résumé. Do you sound like an obvious, no-brainer, slam-dunk fit for the position? If not yet, repeat the process.

If you’ve been contacted by a recruiter looking to talk to you about a specific role, chances are you are already a unicorn for that particular job. If you were approached for a role you didn’t want, you’ve learned something important about what kind of unicorn the recruiters think you are. Use this as you consider how to alter your presentation to attract attention from the jobs you want to get.

That’s all for today. I hope you’ll share this post as well as your comments. Thanks for reading and for putting up with my puns, some of which were really unicorny.

1. This is how we end up with ridiculously specific and detailed job descriptions, requiring 5 years of experience with things that have only existed for 2 years, and long lists of “must-haves” followed by “ideal-to-have”, “nice-to-have”, and “bonus points” requirements for the job.