You Have to Be Memorable to Be Hired
Resumes are boring. Cover letters aren’t worth the time to read. Executives are never found on job boards. Even LinkedIn is a place that buries people.
Discouraged? Don’t be. There’s a magic bullet:
Be memorable.
Being memorable is critical to rising to the top of the pile of candidates
For every job you’re interested in, there will be dozens if not hundreds of potential candidates with excellent credentials, some likely better than yours.
You win by being unforgettable… not just qualified.
You need for the hiring managers to believe you’re interesting so they are looking forward to talking with you.
- Do you sky dive?
- Did you dive competitively from the 10-meter platform?
- Did you (even once) perform stand up comedy? Or improv?
- Do you have a pilot’s license?
- Did you drive a tractor at 10?
- Have you lived on 3 continents?
Everyone has done something different, difficult and perhaps even somewhat dangerous…even as a youth.
The key is to tie the unexpected to a personal strength or skill that can be useful to an employer
These unusual deeds could showcase preparation, training, concentration, coaching, leadership, skills, or sometimes nerve and judgment.
Work hard on the first sentence. It’s the hook that draws the screener into wanting to learn more about you as a person as well as your career. This works for networking, emails and direct mail.
A purely fictitious example:
I hit 45 out of 46 targets when skydiving. The one I missed taught me the most about being prepared for the unexpected in business.
Three days after launching the most important new product in 7 years, an influential troll attacked us with a fictitious accusation that our product was dangerous.
My team already had a contingency plan prepared and launched a multi-media counter attack within hours that successfully blunted the potentially devastating assault.
I don’t expect the same problem to happen to (company name), but needing to be prepared is a temperament that I will bring in addition to all of the marketing skills on your spec for (job title).
I look forward to talking with you when I’ll happily relive that 46th jump as well as how we saved the product launch.
Note that this example is one or two paragraphs longer than I’d prefer. Regardless, it illustrates a memorable story that links your unique personality to the company in a useful and relevant manner. It also includes a promise of being on spec and shouts that you have executive-level planning and social media skills.
The next approach is taken from a previous job that communicates overcoming problem solving in a relevant way.
In my second week at my company, I discovered that a favored project was running way over budget.
I can’t say it was fun telling the project champion, but the bad news was not fatal to either the project or myself when I discovered a practical cost savings.
I look forward to talking about how to reduce costs for (company name) without reducing results.
This example uses a more business-oriented approach that communicates: Becoming valuable immediately, concern for budgets, understanding finance, honesty, willingness to communicate bad news, and especially the ability to solve problems.
Personally I wouldn’t include a resume
Your resume will be necessary later, but at this stage it would answer too many questions, making you less intriguing. A somewhat wimpish middle ground is to include the link to your LinkedIn profile, which most people will do.
If you’ve read this far, here’s another a blog you might like that I wrote last year: What’s Your Job Search Clickbait?
About the Author | Richard Sellers
Richard is Chairman Emeritus of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), founder of the Demand Marketing consulting firm, and former Sr. VP of Marketing for three multi-billion dollar companies: CEC, WLP, and Service Merchandise. His early career was at GE, P&G, Playtex, and the Marketing Corporation of America.
