Don't be the safe choice. Be the best choice.

Those of us looking for our next job understand that employers are looking for the "best" candidate.  This usually means someone who has the exact experience in the exact industry. The safe choice.  It often doesn't mean the one that is going to give the best effort, have the best ideas but the one that is the safest. They have experience doing things the way they have always been done and get safe results.

The challenge for job hunters is that we have to choose to either be the safe choice or the right choice. This can be hard when changing industries or roles and are up against safer choices. The comfortable thing to do is try to be what they want, not what they need.  Given the option most companies will take the comfortable way out. This means lower risk but also typically lowers the reward as well. 

The thing is if you are changing jobs or positions you won't win head to head with someone who has been in the industry or done the same role. Right now there is typically at least one safe choice interviewing for every job. You have to be different to stand out and to help yourself become not the safe choice but the right choice and there is a wide difference in the two.

The good thing is that as a free agent you have the time and perspective to come up with new and different ideas of how to do things.  You are not constrained by the status quo.  You have the opportunity to see things from a different perspective and translate them in to new ways of doing things. These ideas can come from webinars, different industries,  cultures or just your own creativity. Now I am not saying you need to suggest something crazy that will get you laughed out of the interview.  I am saying you have the chance to be anything you want.  You have the opportunity to show how a little risk now can deliver bigger results by doing things in a new way. 

Yes it takes a lot of work and some skill to take over an interview show your ideas. A few things you have to do. Use your unique experience and ideas to show that you have the right ideas for the position you are interviewing with.  This will require some research and a lot of preparation.  You have to show that you know how things are done now, then formulate a plan that is different than what they are doing today that can add value to their business and make them successful.  If you can make some one be more successful than the other guy you have just become the right choice.  That doesn't mean that you will always get the job.  Some people are just too comfortable to risk the right choice over the safe choice but if you do it right you will end up with a better company doing something unique and likely be more successful than being the safe choice.