I love creativity, and one of the most fruitful uses of creativity is landing a job. You have to set yourself apart from the crowd.

Over the years I’ve encountered some very creative ways that people have found jobs, and I would like to share some of my favorites with you.

Social media is a great way not only to meet potential employers, but also a place to post some of your work or start a blog. How about creating your own website?

Enhance your resume by adding images, graphs, color and design. Make a video. One person even wrote a song.

Send some extra special items with your cover letter and resume, such as cupcakes, cookies, a box of chocolates or doughnuts that spell out your name. As hokey as that may sound, it can work.

I really get a kick out of crazy stunts. Like sending a potential employer a shoe with a resume and a note, “Just wanted to get my foot in the door.” One guy took out a billboard touting his qualifications. I’ve heard people doing radio ads and creating an imaginative brochure or direct-mail piece. Still another sent a singing telegram praising her skills.

One reader shared with me that when she was looking for a job, she went to the Atlanta airport and passed her resume out to dozens and dozens of business travelers. She thought this would be a good idea, since a high percentage of travelers during the week are on business. As she passed out her resumes, she told the recipient to please give it to a decision-maker.

“It was incredible how many phone calls I received!” she said. She had several interviews and got a “great job in medical sales.”

Another individual I personally counseled was zero for 100 in trying to crack the advertising ranks right out of college. She went to one of the top ad agencies in Minneapolis and offered to work for free for six months to get her foot in the door. It ended up in a permanent job.

One woman who had been out of work for four months saw an ad for her dream job with a local TV station. The standard tactic -- a cover letter and her resume -- netted absolutely nothing. So she launched a more imaginative campaign, which included letters from the fellow she was dating, from her lawyer, from her 80-year-old mother, even from her priest, who wrote, “I’m enclosing this in hopes that you will hire" the woman. "It’s depressing to look at her sad face, and besides, we haven’t had a donation from her in months.” She got the job.

Steve Schussler, founder of Rainforest Cafe and a good friend, had a dream of working in sales for a radio station in Miami. He went to a container company and purchased a wooden barrel large enough for him to fit in. Then he went to a costume shop and rented a Superman outfit, complete with blue tights, red shoes and cape. He paid two friends to deliver him in the crate to the radio station manager’s office. As it turned out, the manager was in a board meeting, but they insisted he come out, which he did with the entire board. When they finally slid the lid away, Steve flew out of the crate like a jack-in-the-box, gasping for breath. He smiled at everyone and announced, “I’m your new super salesman.” One of the board members said, “Son, you are the sickest person we’ve ever met. You’re hired.”

One of my all-time favorite job stories happened years ago, when my youngest daughter was graduating from the University of Michigan. Seated up in the rafters, I watched thousands of graduates parade across the stage collecting their sheepskins. Suddenly, a roar went up from the crowd. A female student was walking across the stage with a placard on top of her graduation cap. In huge white letters were the words, “I need a job.” After the program ended, businesspeople were falling all over themselves to give her their cards.

Did she land a job because of her creativity? I don’t know, but I do know that 8,333 graduates without jobs sure wished they had thought of it first.

Mackay’s Moral: Creativity has no script; it is inspired ad-libbing.

Practically every team in professional sports has one or more players who were not high draft choices but have excelled. Look at the National Football League. Quarterback Tom Brady was drafted 199th in the 2000 NFL draft and has led New England to six Super Bowl titles. Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl victories, yet was only a third round pick. John Randle from my Minnesota Vikings wasn’t even drafted, yet the defensive tackle is in the NFL Hall of Fame.

How can draft experts and team executives be so wrong?

Easy. You can’t always gauge passion, desire, effort or heart.

As author T.S. Eliot put it, “It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.”

You can detect passion in someone, but trying to predict how far it will carry or what will result is more intangible. But without real passion, a job is just a place to go.

Passion is at the top of the list of the skills you need to excel at, whether you’re in sports, sales or any other occupation.

There is no substitute for passion. If you don’t have a deep-down, intense, burning desire for what you are doing, there’s no way you’ll be able to work the long, hard hours it takes to become successful.

However, I will offer one caveat about passion. If you’re not good at what you are passionate about, it doesn’t matter. I was passionate about becoming a professional golfer at one time, but my mother helped me realize that because I lived in Minnesota, where you can play golf only about half the year, it would be difficult for me to catch up with young golfers from warmer climates. Now I’m passionate about golf as a hobby.

When you start to discover your own passion, my advice is to surround yourself with people who are passionate about their jobs. You’ll catch their passion. And remember that you can’t be passionate when you feel like it. You have to be passionate about your job, product or cause all the time. There’s no off switch on a tiger.

I have always admired the passion demonstrated by the late Steve Jobs, who said, “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.”

But what do you do when you lose the fire and passion that fueled your ambitions when you were younger? You can regain your enthusiasm by doing a little introspection.

Reflect on the past. Draw up a timeline from the very beginning of your childhood and figure out when you were happiest and what got you down the most.

Find your guideposts. List five or six principles that guide you in life, and decide whether they are values you truly live by or ideas you merely talk about.

Make it real. Write down your thoughts, feelings and hopes and share them with your family, or tell them to a trusted friend. That way, there’s someone to witness and hear you out, and you’ll feel responsible for making some changes.

Don’t panic. You may discover you have developed a new passion for a career change. Follow your dream!

Mackay’s Moral: Passion never goes out of fashion.

Derek Redmond was favored to medal in the 400-meter race for the United Kingdom at the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. But 150 meters in to the semifinal race, he felt a searing pain in his right leg and fell to the ground in agony with a torn hamstring. He was not willing to give up. He wanted to finish the race no matter what. He got up and limped around the track until a man came out of the stands and broke through security to help him. It was his father.

He told his son, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” he told his dad.

And his dad said, “Well then, we’re going to finish this together.”

And they walked together with arms around each other’s shoulders until shortly before the finish line, when his dad let him finish the race alone. Redmond received a standing ovation from the 65,000 people in attendance, including me.

That is what I absolutely love about the Olympic Games -- the determination and never-give-up attitudes that these athletes bring to their sports. They demonstrate an amazing resilience that is inspiring. And that is why I’ve only missed one Summer Olympic Games since 1972, in Munich.

We’ve all hit roadblocks and dead ends that can make us think twice about whether it’s worth our efforts. Discouragement and disappointment cloud our judgment. It’s exhausting sometimes trying to figure out how to get past a problem.

So before negative thoughts lead to negative actions, you need to develop a strategy to clear your head. It becomes even more important to train your brain to look for positives.

Researchers believe that people who embrace a positive outlook have less stress, an increased sense of well-being, better coping skills and longer life spans. Do whatever it takes to get to that attitude. Learn to look on the bright side.

Or, to put it simply, in the immortal words of the great philosopher, Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Really, that’s not just a punch line. Keep moving forward. Keep trying. Keep hoping and dreaming and believing you can do it. Be resilient.

Because when you don’t give up, you usually don’t fail.

This is true in life in general and business in particular. Every organization that gets hit with any sort of emergency needs to have people who can respond in a productive and clear-headed manner. Your value to the organization increases exponentially if you are one of those people.

In this ever-changing, fast-paced business climate, resilience is one of the most critical skills you need to master. Clinical psychologist Susan Dunn has observed that people who can bounce back after failure and confront new obstacles without losing their nerve generally do these essential things:

-- Learn from experience. Resilient people reflect on what happens to them, good and bad, so they can move forward without illusion.

-- Accept setbacks and losses: You’ve got to face the reality of what happens in order to get past it.

-- Recognize emotions: Resilient people don’t hide from their feelings. They identify what they’re feeling and express their emotions appropriately.

-- Keep time in perspective: Past, present and future are separate. For example, don’t mix them up by letting what happened in the past determine your choices in the here and now.

-- Think creatively and flexibly: Look for new ways to solve problems and face challenges.

-- Take care of yourself: Resilience is based on good physical and mental health. Get enough rest, eat sensibly and spend time with people who support you.

-- Ask for help: Resilient people don’t try to do everything themselves. Accept that you’ll need to ask others for assistance, and learn how to do so graciously and effectively.

The children’s book “The Hugging Tree” tells the story of a little tree growing all alone on a cliff by a vast and mighty sea. Through thundering storms and the cold of winter, the tree holds fast. Sustained by the natural world and the kindness and compassion of one little boy, eventually the tree grows until it can hold and shelter others.

The resilience of the Hugging Tree calls to mind the potential in all of us: to thrive, despite times of struggle and difficulty. To nurture the little spark of hope and resolve. To dream and to grow.

Mackay’s Moral: When the wicked winds blow, learn to bend, not break.