Do you Know How to Self-Market?

In the following post, Lewis Daidone discusses how accountants can improve their career prospects with effective marketing strategies. Lewis Daidone is a Certified Public Accountant and a consultant to tech companies and financial services firms.

In general, the qualities that make for a fantastic accountant don’t necessarily apply in the marketing sphere (except when determining marketing budgets). Accountants value the application of logic, while successful marketing is entirely dependent upon the ability to appeal to the often illogical habits of the consumer.

Because accountants don’t typically have the kind of fanciful disposition that can easily create appealing marketing campaigns, they aren’t very successful at marketing themselves to prospective employers and clients. If you have solid accounting credentials, it may seem like a tidy resume and social media page should be enough to broadcast your strengths to your potential targets. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough. Here are a few tips that might help you effectively demonstrate your value.

• Don’t sell your job title—sell solutions. Your knowledge of GAAP isn’t as attractive to potential clients and employers as your history of successfully facing challenges and providing effective solutions. Describe exactly how your ideas and innovations have added organizational value and benefitted previous clients.
• Make your passion for your career evident. Even if you became an accountant because you’re good with numbers and it’s a solid career track, those perfectly reasonable motives won’t sell your ability as much as your excitement about your job and your future will.  

• Emphasize your stellar interpersonal skills. Accountants have an unfortunate reputation for being introverted numbers-crunchers who are happier sitting alone at a desk than giving a presentation in front of an audience. Networking and relationship-building are hugely important professional skills. If you have fantastic customer relationship skills and possess the ability to influence people, you will be an extremely valuable acquisition for any organization.

It seems counter-intuitive to try to make your accounting skills sexy, but if you want to compete, you’ll have to make yourself and your brand irresistible. 

Lewis Daidone, a certified public accountant, works as an investment management consultant with BlackRock.  Learn more about him by visiting this blog.