Superlative: what are you really good at?

Instead of a superlative world, we live in a world of mass appeal: movies that everyone likes, cars that everyone wants, and even smartphones that everyone must simply have (yesterday).  Our magazines and pundits worship at the altar of bigness and volume. A car in every garage. The song that everyone is singing.

And yet…many of us seek out experts. The best. The definitive. In other words, the superlative.

You know what? The Wal-Marts of the world rarely deliver the best of anything. The most popular movie of the year is almost always NOT the best. Instead, it is the specialty store and the indie movie that end up with moniker of ‘best. Why?

Focus and expertise. These businesses, experts, and artists are willing to focus on one particular thing in such a single-minded way that they end up being the best. They are willing to walk away from a big part of the market in order to focus. In order to become expert. In order to be the best.

Because as we all know, you simply can’t be the best at everything. Most of us are lucky if we can be the best at one thing, for a little while.

So how does this tie into job boards? You need to know what your service is best at – what you honestly do better than anything else out there.  For most job boards, this will end up being about providing access to a certain group of candidates. Perhaps they are vetted by you, or you have massive amounts of detail about them. Perhaps they have a high degree of specialization in their industry, or a particular set of credentials that is not only uncommon, but rare. In some form or fashion, your candidates are highly valuable to employers.

In essence, employers turn to you because you are the expert in these types of candidates. The best. The definitive source.

But two pieces of advice: a) You need to know what you’re best at first; and b) It needs to be true – not marketing b.s.

So go ahead – walk away from useless generalities and get specific. Figure out your own superlative.  You’ll be glad you did.

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