Everyone looking for a job has a story to tell with their resume. Fashioning the story is vital. Assuming your resume has gotten past the first steps and has landed on someone’s desk that can make the hire. Ask yourself, what separates me from the three or four others that are also sitting there?
Times are tough and companies want someone who can creatively stretch a dollar. This can happen through innovation, but innovation is hard. Another way to get the most for a dollar is by changing behaviors associated with the dollar. Two forms of this exist: Personal Influence and Social Pressure.
Personal Influence requires you to have relationship collateral with the people you want to sway. Many analysts of Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots, say that he is one of the hardest workers in practice. He drives himself continually to improve. When his teammates see this they know he is giving it his all. This tireless work ethic provides him a lot of respect and when times are tough and he needs a certain performance from his team mates, he gets it. But what else is important to note is that he doesn’t live on past accomplishments. He repeats these diligent activities because he knows that he has to personally connect with each person he wants to influence over and over again. That is the strongest bond.
Social Pressure is an awareness mechanism. No one wants to be a jerk, so leveraging that feeling can yield terrific results. For instance littering; a couple of decades ago you would see soda cans, newspaper, and other odds and ends on the side of the road. Nowadays that is an infrequent occurrence. Why? Adopt-A-Highway. The people who participate in the program clean it up and take pride in their area. Their organization name goes on a sign on the side of the road and passersby realize they know these people and know they don’t want them on the side of the road picking up needless garbage. Another example is power usage. Several utility companies are now alerting their customers about their usage patterns compared to their neighbors and an average. This leverages competitiveness and promotes improvements in every customer – some more than others of course. And it costs the utility very little to implement.
You’ve probably participated or even developed programs in your work environment that directly correlate with one or both of these behavior changers. If you haven’t, then I suggest you start immediately. It will pay dividends. Then add it to your resume and underscore how you accomplished something that used very little money and is mainly successful because of your character reputation and insightfulness.
Working Thoughts 