Thu, September 17, 2009 - 5:05:56

What’s in a Name?

Tom sat at the dinner table feeling perplexed.  After spending more than six months sending out resume after resume, he had yet to hear back from a single company.  With strong experience in his field, a degree from a prestigious university, and fluency in no less than four languages, he couldn’t understand why no one was calling.  Then his wife looked at him and posed a seemingly inane question:

“Do you think it could be your name?” she asked.

“My name?” he echoed, befuddled by her question.

“Yeah, like do you think people are afraid to call because they can’t pronounce it?  I mean, you’ve heard the telemarketers…” she trailed off.  “Never mind, it was just a silly idea.”

But as he slurped up his fettuccine, Tom got the feeling that she might be on to something.  You see, on paper he wasn’t “Tom”; he was “Toshihisa,” using his full name—one that he hadn’t been called, well, ever.  And one that over and over he had heard others struggle to pronounce, even on his graduation day.  Who could forget the memorable messages he would receive from cable repair men, sales people, and doctors’ offices, all interrupted by the same hilarious moment of panic:

“Hi, I’m calling for…uh…Tuh…Toha…Tohee… Oh, jeez, Mr. or Mrs. Sato?”

Tom had to admit, it was an interesting idea.  Could employers be missing out on a great candidate just because his name, with its intimidating string of H’s and I’s, was so impossible to pronounce?  He decided to conduct an experiment.  He pulled out his laptop, opened up his resume and deleted his first name, replacing it with the easily uttered “Tom.”

The next morning, while searching his favorite job site, he spotted three positions he would be perfect for.  So, with his new resume ready to go, he drafted three new cover letters, signed “Tom Sato” and sent them on their way.  After spending most of the day in meetings he looked at his Blackberry and saw three missed calls: one from his wife, and two from Human Resources at two different companies.  It seemed that their hypothesis was correct.

Tom’s story is just another striking example of the countless ways in which SMALL works every day.  By putting his head on the other person’s shoulders and recognizing that his hard-to-pronounce name might be intimidating to otherwise interested employers, he made a tiny but ingenious change that revved up his once-stagnant job search.  The simple act of changing the name on his resume from the formal title no one called him to his widely known nickname took him from a candidate on the backburner to one hot commodity in the matter of a few hours. 

And if SMALL can work for Tom, it can work for you, too.  All you have to do is retune your focus from the big picture to the small pixels.  By zeroing in on life’s little details, you can recognize the potential in the things you might once have deemed trivial and in doing so, you can change not only your mindset, but your career, your schoolwork, your marriage, or even your whole life.  So get out that magnifying glass and start looking!  The answers are out there; it’s up to you to find them.

Posted by Linda and Robin