Being marketable has to do with things like education, certifications, experience and most importantly what you have accomplished in your career. It also includes things like a nice clean employment history, that shows progression and advancement and increased responsibility. It also helps if you have worked for some recognized companies. The problem is your real talent and ability may be obscured by things like gaps in employment, a short time with a past employer, or being pigeonholed in a field or industry.

Marketing yourself is a different thing altogether. Marketing yourself has to do with things like developing a strong personal brand, communicating an effective value proposition to a specific organization, and in many cases translating skills.

For what kind of situations are you known as “the go-to person”? This is your personal brand. If you have a strong personal brand, opportunities will come to you.

The application of your personal brand to the specific needs of an organization is your value proposition. As such, your personal brand is relatively static, whereas your value proposition is dynamic, per the situation.

When you find yourself in a job search, it is easy to get lulled into thinking organizations are looking for educated and certified people with a clean employment history. But it’s important to understand this: organizations have objectives they are trying to achieve and problems they need to solve. People get hired to help organizations achieve their objectives and solve their problems. Put it this way. If you are a decision-maker, do you want to hire someone who has a certain certification, or do you want to hire the person that you believe can solve your problem?

You can tweak your resume ad nauseam, only to be analyzed by keywords or screened by someone who in most cases has no real grid to evaluate your talent. Or, you can identify the organizations and decision-makers for whom you have a value proposition and strategize how best to create dialogue with them.

By all means, work on your marketability. Get the certification or degree and take on the challenging project. All of that can be an asset when you get to the actual marketing.