The expression “value proposition” is thrown around a lot; it’s a buzzword, popular among senior-level candidates who interview for jobs like Chief Business Officer, or Director of New Product Development. I hear it many times a day, to the point that it sometimes loses meaning. But it is an important concept for every employee — and especially if you are considering looking for a new job!

The value proposition is a basic promise you make to your customer — your employer — of value you intend to deliver: “Here’s what I promise to offer, and why it would be a good idea to hire me.” Or in the case of someone already employed, “Here’s the promise I make to you of the value I provide to the organization as I do my job.”

While you will never actually say that to someone — not in those words — that’s the core of the message you’ll take to employers. It is your unique value proposition. Once you start thinking that way, your words and deeds will fall naturally into line with this problem-solver approach, and that will get you hired (or promoted).

Companies Hire Problem Solvers
It’s important to remember that you are much more than a person with a list of skills and techniques — some people even talk about classes taken, years later. Companies don’t care about that. What you really have to offer is reflected in the accomplishments you’ve got under your belt and the approaches you took to solve those problems. Even more than that, it’s that promise of the value you can deliver in the future.

I’ve found that the best candidates consider all the problems that the company might have (and they’ve usually pumped me for as much information as they can get). They have developed an approach much like a marketing campaign — they know how they could potentially fit into that organization, and how their skills might help the company with those challenges.

Just like any product-driven company, you’ve got something to offer. You need to find the right niche for it, and you need to package it just right. The difference between a person who finds a job right out of the chute and another who is watching Everybody Loves Raymond at two in the afternoon is positioning — packaging and marketing. Performance and ability are necessary — but they’re not sufficient.

In order to develop your own unique value proposition, you have to know where your value lies — that is, precisely what you offer an employer. The best way to do that is to analyze what you’ve already achieved.

Develop Your C-A-R
The best way to get a handle on how well you might be able to solve future problems is to look at the list of those you’ve already pushed through the same process . . . And to analyze that, you need to do a “Challenge-Approach-Results,” or “C-A-R” exercise.
Get a pad of paper — legal-sized works best — and put in three columns running down the page. The left column should be headed “Challenge,” the middle column “Approach,” and the right column “Results.” That’s C-A-R, a mnemonic that’s easy to remember.

Start by going back to the first problem you were asked to solve. It may be from your college days, or your first job, and probably it will be a piece of a larger problem that a more senior person asked you to work on. Describe that problem in the left-hand column; this was your first challenge.

Write succinctly, three or four sentences at most. (That’s tough writing. You’re used to descriptions of scientific challenges that go on for many paragraphs; here you need to rein that in. Writing meaningful information in short chunks is an acquired skill and absolutely necessary for a job search.)

Across from that, in the center column, write a few lines about the approach you decided to take to solve the problem listed at left. This section describes your creative thinking ability — the process you came up with to solve the problem.

Finally, write down the result that was achieved because of your involvement. When asked about examples of their  accomplishments in an interview, many people go directly to this column. They reply “I increased the yield of a process by 20%.” But now, after doing this exercise, you’ll see that the other two pieces are important as well — a proper description of the problem (challenge) and the approach you took to solve it.

Move on down the page, listing the next problem you solved, and so on. If you carry this through to the present day, you will end up building a complete problem-solving inventory, which is easily mined to produce a list of specific problem-solving skills. No, you are not going to give this report to anyone, but you’ll want to refer back to it often. These tidbits of succinct writing are the stuff from which effective cover letters and interview responses are made.

Here’s an example of a C-A-R statement:
Challenge
E. coli fermentation being run in 5.0 liter fermenter on a process we developed had been producing X amount of the desired product, a secondary metabolite. Suddenly, the yield dropped by more than 20%, unexpectedly and without apparent cause.

Approach
I took the fermentation back to shake flasks and performed analytical testing on the bacterial growth. I discovered that one media component was unstable. Reformulated the media to accommodate a longer run time and put the process back in the fermenter.

Result
Restarted the process and found that the new media formulation was superior. The end result was a consistent X + 7% for our secondary metabolite end product.

Back to the Basics
Over the next several columns, we will revisit some of those topics, tips and techniques related to gearing up your job search. If your search is just getting started, dig in. If you’re already an old hand, you can still check in to make sure you’re not missing anything new.

Get comfortable with that list of accomplishments you just worked up, because next we’re going to use them next to write an effective cover letter. A great cover letter is really a statement about what it is that you can offer an employer — it incorporates some of the succinct writing that you developed in the C-A-R and it is, in essence, your own unique value proposition.