A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign, which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.
That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?
The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.”
Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply and factually said that the sign’s holder was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky not to be blind.
Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?
The reason that it was effective and got different results because that change in message moved passers-by to act from their hearts and not from their brains. Facts merely appeal to the brain as to their veracity. Most decisions come from the heart!
Moral:
Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. Appeal to people’s hearts through their minds!
As a career coach I see the same mindset that professionals carry when they create their marketing message. It is steeped in factual data about their accomplishments and about how great they are at what they do. What they fail to see is how what they are stating as facts affects the reader, a decision maker, in how they respond to their message.
In the above story the change in the direction of the message, from “me” to “you,” made all the difference in the outcome. Not only that, it made passers-by even feel good about their generosity!
The same is true about any message you create about yourself that you want to result in some benefit to you. To achieve that goal you must first see the benefit others get from what you are offering. So, in the case of your résumé if you move the message from “me centric” to “reader centric” by finding their pain and then their gain by their engaging you, you will have a response very similar to what that blind boy experienced at the end of that fateful day!
Enjoy this beautiful day!
Sunil
Very nice. I was writing a letter to the CEO of a major company and this post gave a new train of thought.