Elevator Pitches: Tell Me A Little About Yourself

You Need an Elevator Pitch

When prospecting for jobs, I used to have two panic situations.

• You meet somebody, you ask them some questions to establish a bit of a relationship and to choose whether to put more time into the conversation. You learn that this person could be a lead to a job. Suddenly, you realize that it’s your turn to introduce yourself. What do you say?
  
  
• A hiring manager invites you to take a seat and begins the interview. “So, tell me a little about yourself.” What do you say?

As you can see, you need more than a good resume and a good cover letter.

The Elevator Pitch is the introduction you would give during an elevator ride. At the end of the ride, either you will watch the doors close as the listener walks away, or you will walk away with the listener because he or she wants to hear more.

You’ve got 30 seconds, and what you say will not only show whether you can solve the manager’s problem, it will also tell the manager whether, in your current occupation (Job Hunter), you are a diligent worker. The pressure is on!

Create Your Elevator Pitch

The Web has thousands of formulas for elevator pitches. I’ll give you the best formula I’ve seen, to get you started.

1. (Introduce yourself. By this point, you should already have introduced yourself. If you haven’t, do so now. Optionally, you can add something about yourself that sets up the next part.)
   
   Example: My name is Remy Therat (and some day, I’m going to own my own restaurant).
   
   
2. Get their attention. Not your attention. Theirs. What do they care about? What challenges do they face? Stories get a person’s attention. A story about me -- or about the problems I face -- gets my attention.
   
   Example:  The last place I ate, the server’s expression made me feel guilty for having to ask for a fork three times, and the cooks couldn’t even bother with centering the burger on the bun.
   
   
3. Tell them how you solve their problem. Remember, this is about their challenges, not about what you want. When you become the hiring manager, you can talk all you want about what you want. But for now, the hiring manager and his or her problems are the center of your universe.
   
   Example:  As an assistant manager, I always started the day with a huddle to get the staff to think about how we can make diners feel comfortable and important.
   
   
4. Call to action! You want them to help you, but you don’t want to put them on the spot. Asking directly for a job puts them on the spot, so be indirect. “Who* do you know that...” asks them to think of a specific answer that moves you closer to finding an employer, and if you’ve already found the right person, he or she will answer, “Me!”
   
   Example:  Who do you know who could use a caring, ambitious worker on their staff to increase customer loyalty and staff retention?
   Notice that the question reinforced the message of how Remy would be a great employee and how he would be good for the business.
   
   * The correct word is whom. In my line of work, I have to be a bit of a grammar cop, so I would use whom. However, if it would make you sound stuffy and unnatural in your line of work, who will do just fine. 

Let’s see how that flows:

• My name is Remy Therat (and someday, I’m going to own my own restaurant). The last place I ate, the server’s expression made me feel guilty for having to ask for a fork three times, and the cooks couldn’t even bother with centering the burger on the bun. As an assistant manager, I always started the day with a huddle to get the staff to think about how we could make diners feel comfortable and important. Who do you know who could use a caring, ambitious worker on their staff to increase customer loyalty and staff retention?  

Prepare Your Pitch, but Be Spontaneous

Here’s the catch: You want this to come from within. You don’t want to sound like you’re reading off a 3x5 card. Besides, no Elevator Pitch will fit every situation.

If somebody asks about the weather forecast, do you repeat what KCRA’s meteorologist said, word-for-word? Of course not.

You now know the three main parts of your Elevator Pitch:

1. What are their challenges?
   
2. How can you solve their challenges?
   
3. “Who do you know that could use (description of yourself) to (how you’d be good for the business)?”

You know your skills, your knowledge, your behaviors, your history. You are the expert on You, so you can be flexible.

Write out several possible answers for each of the pieces above. Think of how you would word the pieces for different types of jobs.

Then rehearse them. (Boring repetition and breaking things into pieces are the keys to memorizing.)

Imagine that you meet the hiring manager for one job and decide what the best pitch would be for her. Then imagine that you meet a manager for another job you could do, and decide what the best pitch would be for him.

A mechanic doesn’t use one tool for every job, he carries a whole toolkit. Be prepared, and you'll be able to be flexible and natural.


Copyright 2016, Rich Wheeler

Gaming HR's Job Site Limits

Multi-talented people who qualify for multiple positions within large companies have a new reason to bypass HR and use networking to reach hiring managers. Large companies with online application systems create this situation by limiting the number of cover letter and resume versions applicants can use. This severely limits the number of positions to which one can apply.

For example, I applied for an Industrial Engineer (IE) position with a major Defense contractor. Their system stores only one version of an applicant's resume. When I applied for a Systems Engineer position, the system could only use the resume and cover letter I had crafted for the IE position.

• Sidebar: That's Systems Engineer, as in multi-disciplined, end-to-end technical managers of projects. IT Systems Engineers and specialists in other disciplines are generally not Systems Engineers, even though many companies give them the title.
  

This practice allegedly limits the ability of resume-spammers to apply for jobs for which they do not qualify. Counter-productively, it also limits companies' access to high value, multi-talented people. An applicant could apply for multiple jobs under the old mail-in paper filing system, but poorly implemented technology places a governor on the flow of applications.

When HR looks at my application for the Systems Engineering job in two weeks, they'll see the cover letter and resume for the IE job and say I'm unqualified. In fact, they'll ask, "Why's this IE applying for a Systems Engineering position?"

Had I replaced the IE version with my Systems Engineering version, the same thing will happen. In fact, when the IE hiring manager goes to retrieve the IE versions of my cover letter and resume, they will no longer exist in the database.

Even worse, if I applied for all the positions I have the skills for, HR might consider me a job-spammer and ban me from the whole system.

Using a generic version does not solve the problem. For many reasons, generic resumes do not compete with tailored, targeted versions.

The systems severely limit how often you can apply for jobs, even if you're fully qualified for each one.

I may have found a way around this limitation for some job sites. Some offer a way to upload supporting documents such as certificates, transcripts, copies of licenses, etc. One can upload a file containing a tailored cover letter and resume. My hypothesis: If the primary resume in the database gets past HR's screeners, the hiring manager will see your "supporting documentation."

Game HR's web application system if you must. Better yet, bypass HR through networking.

The New Resume: For Experienced Workers

Long-term worker, expect resume-shock.

If you haven't explored the job market in five or ten years, you probably need a whole new resume. What works best has not changed, but what's commonly recommended has. Throw out all your old materials about resumes.

• Older materials explain the Functional style. Recruiters and hiring managers reflexively ask, "what is the applicant hiding?" and give functional resumes a quick toss.
  
  
• Many older samples used paragraphs; but paragraphs have given way to concise bullet points.
  
  
• Your descriptions of achievements, employment history, and objectives may need a radial re-write..

It's not about me.

Your Achievements and Employment History sections used to describe what you did. Now, every description must state how well you did it or how it will benefit the reader.

The same applies to the Objectives statement. Replace it. First, the application or cover letter should make it obvious which job you want. Second, emphasize what you bring to the pot luck, not what you hope others will bring. Your resume is a marketing device, not a Request for Proposal.

That's tough for long-term cogs of giant machines where managers rarely communicate the significance of the work. Restating my duties as accomplishments with numbers and results, and figuring out my work's significance from 10, 15, or 20+ years ago required a lot of research. But it has to be done.

Value propositions are in.

Look at the job description and at the company's mission and objectives statements. Figure out the business case for the job. How do the job requirements support the employer's goals?

Then consider your abilities that match the job requirements. Why does the employer want somebody with your skill? What is the value of your skill? Ask and re-ask what happens for the employer if your skill provides that value. Stop when you get past your sphere of influence, and take a step back. Now you can state the value you will bring by doing what you do.

Don't claim the VP's accomplishments. State that your redesign saved the final $2 million that made selling doohickeys profitable, but don't claim to have saved the Division (unless you really did). For example, if the required life of a satellite was seven years, you could describe how you contributed to on-board diagnostics that extended the life to 15 years.

Specifics build a case for the truth of your claimed abilities.

Set a time limit to avoid agism.

By the way, only go back ten (plus or minus) years. If you haven't lost the skills you had in ancient history, they've probably become obsolete. I break that rule. I divide my employment history into Recent Employment and Early Employment (>10 years ago) and go back all the way. I enjoyed and want to return to those older jobs. Without the older jobs, I can't support some of my claimed abilities. However, if I can support my claim to be qualified for a job based on my recent employment history, I chop out the Earlier section.

Let the shoe fit the foot.

This goes to tailoring your resume for each position. The combination format allows me to sort my Accomplishments so the most relevant skills appear at the top. It also allows me to delete distracting, irrelevant skills.

If you apply for a variety of jobs on a corporate site, however, they probably limit the number of versions of your resume. In that case, you have to keep each version of your resume longer and more general.

Less is more, but more is more, too.

Starting out, one page is reasonable. Short and relevant is best. A lot of technical managers want details, though. Making them get out a magnifying glass is not the way to do it. A veteran engineer who organizes a resume with lots of headings gets the "core competencies" across in a 15-second reading. If that 15-second read catches the hiring manager's interest, the applicant will probably get away with two or three pages.

Apart from the part about job objectives, Barclay's podcast provides a great overview.

Note: Most European employers and many American professions such as academia and research require curriculum vitae (CVs), not resumes. All I know about CVs is that they can run many pages.

Conclusion.

The worst resume mistakes of 2011 include describing what you want or what you have done. Every statement of proposed value, accomplishment, or history should demonstrate how you will support the employer's business. Keep it as short and as simple as you can, but include enough to support each claim you make.

For a good audio over view of resume writing (except that he still uses Objectives instead of Value Statements), visit The Job Stalker - PodClass III - Resumes.

Four More Tips for Using Social Media in Job Hunting

5 Tips to Keep Your Head Above Water with Social Media
by Laura Click, founder of Blue Kite Marketing
Guest post on the blog of Dr Shannon Reece
21 December 2010

I’m at a turning point in my approach to job hunting. The referenced article (above) reinforced my decision. The article aims at a wide audience (points #3 and #5 have the most value for me), so I'd like to apply it more narrowly to my comrades in the unemployment line.

1. Perfect your profile. Your profile on an SM site is your resume. Make sure it shines when recruiters find it.
   
2. Search for the best way to locate open positions. Learn to use Twitter’s search function and to find job announcements in LinkedIn groups.
   
3. I get a lot of self esteem from helping people by answering questions, but the ROI is zero. Figure out what activities do and do not get you interviews.
   
4. The recommended half day is way too much time to put into social media. Allocate more than a half hour only to activities that produce leads.

Social Media and job-hunting experts have repeatedly told me to use SM to help people so somebody will notice and help me. I give up on that. Or, at least, I’m going to apply that advice a lot more narrowly.

Recruiters - What to Expect

Reference
Two Types Of Recruiters – Retained and Contingent
Brad Remillard
IMPACT Hiring Solutions
Undated; downloaded 16 January 2011

Summary of the Article

Recruiters contract to find applicants on behalf of hiring companies. Two major categories dominate: Retained, and Contingent. They may be a convenience, a connection to that job you need so badly, but neither works for you. They work as hired guns for the employer.

Retained recruiters get paid 2/3 of their fee whether or not the company hires the applicant. They only get the final 1/3 if there's a hire. They also offer guarantees to their clients (the employers), so if a new hire doesn't stick around, the recruiter has to return part of the fee and loses a bit of his reputation and future business. An employer won't want to pay multiple fees for each employee, so he will contract only one retained recruiter.

Retained recruiters protect their business by getting to know a company's culture and job requirements and by obsessing over finding the perfect match. Expect a thorough, frustrating screening and then having to repeat the process with the hiring company. They also submit only a few resumes, so the applicant competes against only a few others; but the others have gone through the same screening and match the job well, too.

Contingent recruiters get paid only if you're hired. No matter how many contingent recruiters submit applicants, the company only pays one, so a whole squad of recruiters might go out looking with a single position to fill. If two submit the winning applicant's resume, the first one gets the fee. This put them in competition, so they collect resumes for fast submission and skimp on niceties like pre-screening.

Applicants relying on contingent recruiters compete against the larger number of applicants from multiple recruiters and have lower likelihood of fitting the job; but other applicants are less likely to fit the job, too. Applicants don't go through dual screenings, and their names get in front of the employers sooner, but they experience more of the black hole effect, never hearing back from the recruiters.

Also, once a contingent recruiter has your resume on file, he might submit it to companies without your knowledge. This can complicate your search if employers get tired of seeing your resume submitted for positions for which you don't qualify.

When dealing with a recruiter, ask how his client compensates him and how he will use your resume later.

Middle Aged and Long-Term Unemployed? Eight Ways to Mitigate Discrimination

Reference:
Employers Shun Long-Term Unemployed

Candice Arnold

Oct 22, 2010

Hiring managers want young applicants who already have jobs. Though federal law prohibits agism, discrimination is human nature. Recruiting people who have less knowledge and wisdom, who have the greatest financial obligations, and who least need new jobs seem foolish and unfair. But it happens.

• During lay-offs, the least productive get booted first, so slackers are over-represented in the market. Employers increase their odds of getting great employees by favoring those with jobs.
• Being "wanted" -- that is, being retained during a bearish job market -- gives workers perceived value. The challenge of "stealing" employees away from other employers excites some recruiters.
• Less-than-stellar job seekers have a harder time finding new positions due to their weaknesses, and they often don't look as hard for new work. Employers increase their odds of getting better workers by favoring those recently laid off over the long-term unemployed.
• The average income tapers off after 45 and declines after 50, partly because of obsolescence and partly due to negative perceptions of mature workers as costing more in overhead due to health problems. 

To get around negative stereotypes of agism and long-term unemployment, consider the following:

• Were you a less-than-ideal employee? What specific steps can you take to become more valuable? Be merciless in your self-evaluations, but once you create a corrective plan, put the criticism behind you. Failing to forgive yourself saps your energy for the hunt and undermines your countenance during interviews. Adding to your skills and your character adds to your attractiveness as a potential employee and builds confidence for interviews.
• Were you in the right career? People who love their work produce more, put more into developing relevant skills, and live more fulfilling lives.
• In investment, diversification spreads risk. The same principal applies to vocations. Do you have a back-up career plan? To what other careers could your skills transfer?  Spend a portion of your time preparing for and pursuing your second choice.
• Increase your perceived value by either volunteering or by getting a less-than-optimal job*. Employment, even underemployment, shows initiative. Volunteering shows energy and involvement, and it might lead to a temporary job or new career. Both can help you develop skills and can present networking opportunities.
• Take classes to refresh existing skills, build new skills, obtain certification, get out of the house. Improve your value to hiring managers by proving you're not an old dog who can't learn new tricks.
• Use a resume style that de-emphasizes your age and status. Consider using a professional resume writer. Which will cost you more: a professional resume, or delayed re-employment?
• Maintain your appearance. Naturally, you want to groom and dress for success during the interview, but have you considered how your health affects your appearance? Try not to skimp on medications you might need. Boost your energy and maintain your health through exercise and superior diet.
• Maintain your countenance. 
• Release feelings that need catharsis in a safe setting
  
• Build your spiritual life
• Do those things (above) that build your self-worth
• Teach yourself to think positively (even if you don't believe it)
• As a last resort, pretend you're an actor and fake it.

Middle-aged and long-term, unemployed job seekers increase their odds of successful hunts by understanding why such discrimination happens and then taking steps to prevent those effects.

* Before seeking or accepting underemployment, check the effects on your unemployment insurance claims. Public Law P.L. 111-205 (see H.R. 4213 or H.R. 4213 ) prohibits states from penalizing under-, temporary, or part-time employment by reducing benefits. Some states, however, have yet to adapt to the new law. 

Copyright 2010, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal or non-profit use. 

Four Unconventional Job Search Strategies

Has your job search made you feel under-qualified and obsolete? 
AP article* hints that it may not be your fault.

Before the recession, 18 unemployed people competed for every 10 jobs. Now, there are 46.*

Unemployed workers surfing the job market face a string of towering waves.

More competition. The most obvious wave is the number of other applicants. As with recent tsunamis, however, this is only the first wave in a chain.

Stiffer competition. A Widget Technician (WT) competes against other WTs. As the population under the Bell curve increases, it includes a greater variety of WTs, including those who are less experienced or competent and those who are more experienced or competent. Obviously, the WTs who convince ACME Widget Manufacturing that they have the better skills will get the jobs. So the first wave of better-qualified competitors results from the larger pool.

Competition from above. Since Master Widget Technicians (MWTs) compete for fewer MWT jobs, more of them remain unemployed. More MWTs, therefore, apply for lower-level WT positions. The WT has to compete not only against other WTs, but also against more experienced and skilled MWTs.

Job consolidation. Employers down-size not only due to a lack of business, but also to increase their ability to compete in a shrunken marketplace. They cut workers and expect remaining workers to take up the unmanned tasks and work harder, longer, and smarter. ACME Widget Manufacturing wants a Master Widget Technician who also has internal Widget Technician Trainer experience and Lean-Six Sigma Black Belt certification. When the former MWT from Consolidated Amalgamated looks at ACME's job descriptions, he faces not only a scarcity of jobs and a surplus of competition, but also a much higher bar.

Stricter requirements. The push for efficiency drives employers to minimize learning curves for new employees. To achieve this, they want greater experience, a better match between the resume and the job description, and greater familiarity with the company's way of doing business. As a result, more employers cross-train and reassign their groomed, existing employees.

Down-shifting openings. Promoting people from within has an unfortunate side effect of shifting openings to lower levels. When ACME trains a WT to fill their MWT position, a WT position opens. The opening has shifted down one level. If ACME replaces the Widget Technician with a Widget Assembler, the opening downshifts yet another level. Eventually, the job description locks out the laid-off WT from Consolidated Amalgamated because he's over-qualified.

Inflexible qualifications. Whereas hiring managers previously considered an applicant qualified with an 80% match between the resume and the job description, employers now hold out for a 100% match. Human resource specialists say employers who increasingly need multi-skilled employees aren't willing to settle for less. They'd rather wait and hold jobs vacant.*

Fear of commitment. U.S. employers not only ship jobs overseas for cheap labor, but increasingly contract work out to staffing agencies.** Using temporary personnel reduces costs of benefits and makes getting rid of people easier and less expensive if they don't work out or if the economy does not support the position. As a variation on outsourcing, employers increasingly assign lower-level tasks to avoid losing high-value employees.

Deteriorating opportunities. Available jobs pay less. The National Employment Law Project claims that higher-wage industries represent 40% of jobs lost during the recession but only 14% of new jobs during the recovery.***

Advice for the Job Search

1. Give your resume writer more ammunition.

• Take advantage of seminars and training programs that your unemployment agencies offer. If you can afford it, pay for your own training. 
• Look for free Internet tutorials, podcasts, and videos. 
• Hit the Interned and the public library. Read everything you can to increase your workplace skills. 
• Collect wallpaper. Professional certifications or degrees not only make you compete better, they also open up new options.
• As you study, write it up. Taking notes and writing reports make more of what you read stick in long-term memory. As you can create a portfolio of blog entries (as I am doing) or e-books, you position yourself as an expert as a side benefit of increasing your skills.

2. Working out issues, increasing your faith, and strengthening your character will increase your confidence during that job interview, keep you motivated during your job search, and make you a more valuable employee.

• Study self-help books.
• Take time for introspection. What personality traits or character flaws may have put your managers more in the mood for putting you in the lay-off list? What can you do about it?
• Go to candid friends, family members, former managers, and former co-workers and ask for the top-five issues they wish you would work on. Before you defend yourself, just bite your tongue. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. (Proverbs 27:6)
• Go to church to network -- not just professionally, but also socially and spiritually.

3. Volunteer your best skills.

• Employers want applicants who don't just sit on their butts.
• Getting out into the community keeps you balanced, gives you purpose, and boosts your mood -- a valuable benefit during that next employment interview.
• Staying involved with other people builds your networking and your social skills.
• Exercising your workplace skills keeps you fresh, widens your perspective, and might even lead to a different and more rewarding career.

4. Change your focus. Working to increasing one's qualifications requires time and energy, takes away from time to look for a job, and repulses some people.

• For a quick transition back to employment or if you just can't stand learning, aim low. Since the job descriptions have changed, you may find your match in a lower level position. It's not fair, but the set-back in pay and grade will cost you less than continuing unemployment; and during the next interview, it will help you avoid embarrassing questions about gaps in your employment. 
• Since many employers offer training benefits, a lower-level job will give you a better chance to broaden your skills and get back to your previous level once you have a job.
• You may find another occupation to which your skills will transfer and that might be far more satisfying.

Standard advice for the unemployed focuses on finding jobs, networks, and personal branding. The job market, however, pressures today's job seekers to undertake far more substantial and challenging strategies: changing who you are.

* Rugaber, Christopher S. Unemployed find old jobs now require more skills. Associated Press. Posted by bestlogicstaffing. October 12, 2010, 5:16 pm.
** Madden, Kaitlin. Who’s Hiring This Week, you missed it we got it. The Career Guide. Wednesday, October 13, 2010.
*** Anonymous. Data Brief: A Year of Unbalanced Growth: Industries, Wages, and the First 12 Months of Job Growth after the Great Recession. National Employment Law Project. March 4, 2011.

Copyright 2010, Richard Wheeler

Values and Value-based Resumes

In a discussion on LinkedIn, a poster confused value statements in resumes with statements about values. I included the post after my comments (below) because he made some excellent points.

A value-based (not values-based) resume addresses exactly what the poster said. I do not know who started the use of value statements, but they appear to have taken a lesson from marketing: Instead of just telling the customer (the hiring manager) the products' specifications (your skills and experiences), show him how hiring you will relieve his headaches, make his office sparkle, and put money in his pocket.

Have you met somebody who bored you by talking about nothing but themself? Most job seekers still use self-centered objectives and static lists (or even worse, paragraphs!) to identify all the mundane things they were supposed to have done. In contrast, a value-base resume stands out by letting the hiring manager know that you are the labor-saving, money-making machine that makes him the envy of his corporate neighbors.

Several tactics will help hiring managers see you as the product they can't live without:

• Replace the heading, Objectives, with the title of the position you want. This starts to give you a "brand," creating a mental image of you in the coveted job. It also helps you focus on the job, making it easier to tailor your resume.
   
• Replace the statement of your objectives with a statement about how you will make your employer the one that smiles like "Bob" when he walks around the office. For example, from one version of my wife's resume:

Events Manager

• Events facilitator with training and experience in successfully planning and coordinating events attended by up to 10,000 guests.
• Leads with passion for the mission, flexibility, respect for coworkers and guests, and exemplary ethics.

• Tailor your experience to the opening. Cut out irrelevant tasks. You're going to need the room.
   
• Tweak tasks into accomplishments by adding results that draw a mental picture of your value. For example:

Facilitated successful church and civic events with attendance up to 10,000 and guests such as Phillips, Craig & Dean, the Heritage Singers, and Oliver North.

It is not ironic that I used the most verbiage for a single word, Objective. Using the job title molds the reader's first impression of you and renders unnecessary the old practice of saying, "My objective is to [blah blah blah me me me]." Your resume has mere seconds to grab readers' attention before they move to the next sheet in the stack, so don't waste their time with superfluous labels and statements of the obvious.

Applying the 80/20 rule, 80% of their impression of you will come from the first 20% of their reading. Accordingly, conveying at least 80% of your value in the first 20% of your resume.

The bottom line is that most hiring managers choose someone based on confidence that the candidate will deliver value corresponding to their level of experience and training that meets the hiring manager's need, AND based on perception that the candidate is a good fit for their work environment and position. Fit is based, in part, on the degree of alignment that a candidate presents himself or herself.

The poster offered excellent advice except with respect to values. As he stated, "hiring managers choose someone based on... perception that the candidate is a good fit for their work environment and position." Many corporations, especially those that deal with the central government, stress values. Issues such as ethics, compliance with government regulations, and teamwork can spell success or failure, so you need to say something about how you will support your employer as a good corporate citizen.

Most hiring managers, especially but not exclusively in the secular world, are utilitarian when it comes to hiring rather than values-based. In other words, as a hiring manager do I have confidence that you can do the job better than other candidates? Will you ease my work burden or create more work for me to do? Values, when they are considered at all in hiring, are in reality lower down the chain. The key to your question is to put yourself in a hiring manager's shoes. As a hiring manager what would you look for when sifting through a hundred resumes?

95% of what a hiring manager cares about is a candidate's relevant experience and education to a particular job opening. Everything else, including an objective or value statement, is secondary at best. That being said, if I was to rank objective or value statement, objective would be higher. However, objective should not be a generic statement such as, "Marketing position in a high quality company that values its employees." The objective should be customized to your target job and organization, such as, "Marketing Assistant at Nike." This demonstrates that you want a specific job in a specific company. If you are unsure whether a particular job opening exists in an organization, I advise omitting the objective altogether.

As a hiring manager I want to know that a candidate wants my job opportunity and my organization. I'm less interested in candidates that submit resumes in what I perceive as mass distribution.

The bottom line is that most hiring managers choose someone based on confidence that the candidate will deliver value corresponding to their level of experience and training that meets the hiring manager's need, AND based on perception that the candidate is a good fit for their work environment and position. Fit is based, in part, on the degree of alignment that a candidate presents himself or herself.

Values can be presented with impact when they are incorporated into a cover letter or as measurable performance in a resume. But that's another discussion.