CAREERS DEPEND LARGELY UPON CREATIVITY

Whether you are looking for a job, or trying to get ahead in business, imagination is a key to achievement.

            Job hunting should call for strenuous idea hunting. And yet famous employer reports: “In my experience, not one applicant in 500 uses any imagination in applying for a position. Anyone who suggested idea of possible use to his prospective employer would stand out and be almost sure to get preference-even though his suggestions were un-usable.”

            For 15 years, Sidney Edlund, former head of Lifesavers, Incorporated, has made it his hobby to teach people how to go after new jobs. His basic principles are these:

1. Offer a service instead of asking for a position.

2. Appeal to the self-interest of your prospective employer.

3. Be specific as to the job you want, and as to your qualifications.

4. Be different, and still be sincere.

All these principles call for thinking ahead, or thinking creatively, or both. Even in the matter of our personal appearance, we might look into the mirror of imagination before looking for a job. And to be “different”-to lift ourselves above the other applicants-we need to generate ideas before we knock on employers doors.

            We also need imagination to help us set out job-seeking sights. Our first questions might well be: “In what vacations would I be most likely to succeed?” Let’s jot down all lines that seem at all likely. Having done that, let’s use some check list. Let’s run through the classified section of the telephone directory and scan the 200 or so different lines listed there. Then let’s talk to some experienced friend and seek his guidance. But let’s not make his do our creative thinking for us-let’s show him our list of likely lines and ask only for his judgment.

Walter Hoving, of department store fame, estimates that of the 400,000 college graduates looking for jobs each year, only a few think creatively about what to try to do and where to find the right job. “I am constantly staggered,” said he, “by this passive waiting for someone else to do the thinking that they should do for themselves”.

Nowadays our aptitudes can be revealed to us through scientific testing. But such knowledge should be but a prelude to our creative thinking about our future career.