If you’ve ever seen Stonehenge (either in person or in photographs), an image comes to mind that is unavoidable. So what HR guy? There are lots of works of man that are inspiring, what is so special about Stonehenge? Well, here’s my logic. Can you draw a picture of the layout of Stonehenge that would be any closer to 10–20% accurate? Do you know the history of the people that put it together? Not likely. It is a lesson about what makes anything memorable. Your resume full of job duties, history, education and skills doesn’t make you memorable (well, sometimes it does but it isn’t usually positive). Here are four things that job seekers can learn from Stonehenge to make them memorable.
1.) Have vision beyond what you can do by yourself. Your strongest asset is what you can accomplish with the right people and is usually not what you can accomplish on your own. Your ability to work and lead other people to make great things happen is memorable.
2.) Do things that are great. Stonehenge could have been smaller. In fact, there are replicas around the world that demonstrate that principle. The people who built Stonehenge wanted to make it memorable. They wanted to do something great. They did it.
3.) Be unavoidable. This doesn’t mean be a pest (I don’t want to get in trouble with stalker candidates). This means be so good that you are unavoidable in being considered. It means building your reputation and portable equity so that you become the Stonehenge in your recruiter’s mind. If you are anywhere near Stonehenge, you can’t ignore it. In a good way.
4.) Be passionate. Historians estimate that it took 20 million man hours to construct Stonehenge. These people had to be passionate abot what they were doing. There was quite a bit of work to be done and it must have been hard to see the final picture but they had the vision and the passion to make it happen.
Have a great weekend.
Lance Haun - Writer and Consultant on Work Tech 