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Career CatalystBy Timothy Ring
Training and Development Assistant
Translating Your Skills into Professional Value: How to be FAB
In the thirty years Melissa Reitkopp has spent as a recruiter, she has noticed many students are concerned with their lack of professional experience or skills as they look for employment. She came to the Georgetown Graduate Career Symposium to put these worries to rest, and share how students have already developed the critical skills companies look for in new hires.
She firmly believes the key to success lies in translation—presenting the knowledge and skills you have obtained throughout experiences in classes, research, extracurriculars, internships, etc. as assets that may be used to benefit an employer. To do this, Reitkopp proposes showing off how FABulous you are in interviews. This is a clever acronym that stands for Features, Accomplishments, and Benefits (F.A.B.). When these three aspects are used in tandem, they can create a complete picture of who you are as a candidate and help you establish value with potential employers.
In order to understand this mechanism, it should first be broken down:
Here are two examples of how current graduate students articulated their FAB statements:
Tying all these points together, these students were able to construct a complete picture of each of their skills, their experience using them, and the positive value they bring to a company.
This technique works in all fields and can be applied to whatever skill or career you feel most strongly about. The structure is used to help you best pitch yourself and appeal to employers, how you choose to use it is up to you. Reitkopp suggests developing 3-4 FAB pitches about yourself centered on different skills or different employers/industries. That way when the right moment comes, you’ll be ready to show just how FABulous you are!
Learn from faculty, staff, postdocs, students and alumni through our Career Catalyst blog.
Career Catalyst