The jury that will decide on your application when you apply for a position will usually consist of but one man, or will be composed of a committee or board of directors.  Treat him or them as a jury.  Remember that your capabilities and your deficiencies are on trial.  Close your case with the same process the skillful lawyer uses when he sums up the evidence and weighs it before the minds of the jurors.  Do what he does as a weighmaster.  Avoid making any impression that you are not weighing your demerits fairly, though you minimize their importance; also miss no chance to impress the full weight of your qualifications.  The essence of good salesmanship at this stage of the process is skillful, but honest weighing.  That means using both sides of the scale, to convince the prospect that the balance tips in your favor.  He will not believe in the correctness of the “Yes” weight unless you show the lesser weight of “No” in contrast.  Then he cannot help seeing which is the heavier. Decision on the respective weights is only a process of perception.

[Sidenote:  The Process Of Perception]

Let us suppose the employer has asserted the objections that you are not sufficiently experienced to earn the salary you want, and that you don’t know enough yet to fill the job.  It would be poor salesmanship to try to convince him that you have had a good deal of experience.  If you exaggerate the importance of the things you have learned, he almost surely will judge you to be an unfair weighman of yourself.  So you should tacitly admit your inexperience and treat the value of experience lightly by reminding him that his business is unlike any other.  Then bear down hard on your eagerness to learn his ways and to work for him.  Thus you can make him perceive the two sides of the scale as you view them.

[Sidenote:  Tipping the Balances Your Way]

It is possible for you so to tip the balances in your favor, though previously the mind’s eye of your prospective employer may have been seeing the greater weight on the unfavorable side. It is legitimate salesmanship to influence the decision of the other man in this way. Your weighing is entirely honest; though you sharply reverse the balances.  Certainly you have the right to estimate the full worth of your services, to depreciate the significance of points against you, and to picture your desirability to the prospect as you see it, however that view may differ from his previous conception. If your picture of the respective weights is attractive and convincing, the other man will adopt it as his own and discard his former opinions about you. Not only will he accept the idea of your capabilities that you make him perceive; he also will see that your deficiencies are much less important than he had before considered them.

[Sidenote:  Serving Hash For Dessert]