Quotation from Amar Gopal Bose
Inventor of Bose speaker technonolgy
Founder of Bose Corporation
Re-syndicated from MENGonline.com
This great quote was included in an email by Herman Sperling, a fellow MENG member, a marketer of all things audio, a former Bose employee, and an audiophile.
The difference that Amar Bose emphasized was focused on his great products.
You also should apply this idea to your career. You have to be different than your peers for your career to be successful when judged by climbing the pyramid and shortening time gaps between jobs.
- You have to be different to be better than your peers to get promoted.
- You have to be different to beat out the hundreds of similarly experienced executives you’ll be competing with for any position with a new employer.
If you present yourself as generically excellent, you are no better than your unknown competitors. Good luck, but the math indicates that the likelihood of your getting the job is almost as poor as winning the lottery.
It goes without saying (at least I hope so) that most resumes submitted for a job posting include the necessary credentials that an applicant needs to do the job. So, what is going to make a screener select your resume that’s in that electronic pile of 30 to 300 to 3,000 resumes?
Look at your resume as ask yourself:
- What makes me sufficiently different to stand out?
- How is this difference better for the job, the company, and especially the hiring manager?
I’m not talking about being different to be different. It’s a lot more than style.
The difference is your position…your story.
How do you communicate that you are the single best person in the entire world to help the hiring manager not only survive but also succeed?
I’ve reviewed resumes that separate and elevate executives from their competition, although a discouraging small percentage do this well.
Job seekers need to stake out a territory that they own and then prove it.
- The best at quickly rebuilding marketing departments to generate incremental revenue and profit (a positioning which helped me obtain Senior VP of Marketing positions at three multi-billion dollar companies)…
- The best at working across divisions in complex companies to cut new product launch time in half…
- The best at selling blue-collar males…
- The best at adding social media to supercharge current marketing efforts…
- The best at selling through the trade to reach consumers…
- The best at reaching and engaging the hard-to-find B2B buyer…
- The best at….you need to fill in your own description.
Then you need to build your entire selling story around this differentiated position that makes you better.
With today’s economy, no company needs to hire a merely competent executive who can do the job. They are searching for the unique person to make them successful.
You can be the perfect promotion or hire if you differentiate yourself and sell how you are different and therefore better for your boss or the hiring manager.