Recruitment and networking in Lean Six Sigma are always raised by students in our workshop. If you want to start a Six Sigma career you have to acknowledge that it is like a journey, and the certificate is just the beginning. Consequently, it needs time and some work to maximize your professional network including leveraging your certificate with valid experience.
Connect with your Classmates and Alumni
As part of Optness Alumni Network, you need to connect and create relationships. It’s important to reach out to our people, they can help you get jobs, share knowledge, or solve problems.
Steps you could taker to improve in this area:
- Reach your Six Sigma classmates, colleagues and teacher in LinkedIn
- Search and connect to Optness Alumni of all time
- Search for Six Sigma people on the market and on your industry
How to Present your Six Sigma Certification To Interviewers
The job market is so competitive and there are little differences between candidates. Looking from a recruiter point-of-view most MBAs and master’s degrees are at the same level. And what can make a difference is the experience, hard skills, or that you have Green Belt Certification, etc. Consequently, make it very clear to recruiters that you are a Green Belt. Furthermore, you can actively do it by highlighting on your CV, LinkedIn, and also talking about it with recruiters.
Presenting yourself
When you’re going to career fairs and companies highlight your Green Belt abilities and skills. Remember that most recruiters don’t know your background. Including that there are so many candidates to overview that normally they take 30 seconds for each CV. Therefore you need to highlight and differentiate from the others.
The first thing you cand do to create opportunities is to ask things about the company. Try to understand what problem HR is trying to solve with this position. Next, create a compelling argument with your Six Sigma skill set. If you have real story examples to back up these skills it will be a game-winner strategy. It’s important to share this with HR people so that people would respect it.
Make it clear to recruiters that you are what they need
Almost all companies hire people because they need a problem to be solved. Recruiters always are looking for people with a specific profile and also the most suited ones for that job. But what you really need to do is:
- What are the HR recruiter customer internal demands?
- What problem does this job need to solve?
- What is the ideal candidate?
And this is why it’s important to make sure that they’ve seen you as this type of person. Furthermore, for them, it’s easier to sell someone with Six Sigma certification and an MBA, to differentiate from others. This on your resume is definitely a value-added to you. Plus is a differentiator in the career phase and in networking events.
When I was in business school, I’d already done a certification. It was very interesting for me to see how many companies were new about Six Sigma. Even to the HR recruiters who were immediately interested when I met and explained what the certification means.
Differentiate Yourself During Interviews
A clever strategy is to research the program details and use that in interviews. Any company likes candidates that talk the same language as them. Great companies have strong brands and culture, they look for candidates that focus on knowing their program. This is what they understand and know.
That place where it can make a huge difference for you is in interviews. So it’s always good to bring it up in the interviews. Try not to wait for the interviewer to raise the subject by asking. It will hardly occur, and if it happens the benefit will be minimized. You have to get it right, so look for some question patterns like:
- What was a good thing about your MBA experience so far?
- What skills have you learned?
- What would make you different from another candidate?
- Why should we hire you over somebody else?
- What are your strengths?
Reframe your past experiences using Six Sigma
Also it is important to take some time to think about your past experiences and see if at that time you did something that could be called Six Sigma. Think about the experiences where you see a problem and did the whole analysis with data and discover the causes also came with a solution. Or when you did a process improvement. Maybe someone was in charge and you were part of it. What is important here is to look at the past, at things that happen and try to tell this with another approach, a Six Sigma one.
Here is an example of approach you could use:
“I was working on this project at manufacturing and I saw a problem that I thought I could help fix.I got the data from the database, and focused on understanding the real causes. I put a project together And oh, by the way, if you want to see it, here it is and I did this. This is how I use these tools. And oh, by the way, it tells a couple of things and talks a lot about your character.“
Use the elevator pitch in interviews
Use the Elevator pitch conversations in the recruiting phase a way to present yourself. It talks a lot about your appetite to get things done, not somebody who is an observer, but an engaged bias for action. In short terms, these are some ways you could use this approach.
- Structure answers and stories based on the interests of the company
- Preferred simple and short statements and answers.
- Take initiative, bring up some qualities that match company principles and exemplify with your experiences
- Explain how did you solve difficult company problems and quantify the results
- Lookup for something that this company can improve and say how do you think they can do to improve
- Talk about the elective courses you did for professional development like Six Sigma that brings value to the table
- Talk about projects you’ve volunteered