Now the time has come to give form to this piece of communication about ourselves we call a resume.
Do we simply toss together our list of past employment experiences?
Of course not. We need to use this piece of paper to organize our past experiences in such a way to demonstrate that we’re ready for our next experience.
We want the past we are moving away from to make a case for the future we want to move toward.
Can it be done?
Listen in.
We bring more to the table than our work experience alone.
We bring a distinct working style, rich values, personality traits, approaches to leadership, teams, problems, communication, etc.
The challenge with a resume is communicating who you are given the limitations of a piece of paper.
How do we then find ways to describe what we bring to the table beyond merely listing past jobs we’ve held?
Listen in.
With our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles, we continue our series on Resume Branding.
Traditional resumes ask you to list what you have done. They ask, “What have you already done?” But your next job is not a step toward the past. You want to progress forward. You want your next job, not your last job.
The question, then, becomes, “What do you want?”
In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss how to turn this question into a resume. How can we use our work experience to make a case for what we want to do next?
Listen in.
So what’s the big deal with how others perceive me?
I can’t control what another person thinks. I can’t force them to change their mind about me if they have settled on some incorrect perception.
The big deal is that those other people are making decisions that affect you. To the extent that their perception about who you are and what you bring to the professional table is incorrect, so will their decisions be.
Decisions like whether to hire you, promote you, invest in your training, or in the worst case, lay you off in a recessionary season.
While you cannot make someone see what they will not or cannot see, you can exert influence.
Our conversation topic this month is how our resume can be a powerful perception influencer. That is, if we accept responsibility for choosing how we present our professional interests and work history.
Begin by listing three responsibilities you would love to have in a job, even if you don’t have any work experience in them.
Now turn each of them into a job title, however silly it might sound. For example, if I want to be in charge of the development of a new product and lead the process from beginning to end, I might call myself a “Project Manager” or a “Lead Designer” or a “Brilliant Idea Implementor.”
The idea is to create for yourself some job-related vocabulary that would be helpful for describing yourself in terms of what you want to do next.
Try it. Share one or all three of your desired responsibilities and corresponding job titles in a comment here.
On your side,
– Karl Edwards
With our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles, we thought we would revisit a series on Resume Branding.
In this series, Claudia and I explore using the resume as a tool for describing what we’ve done in the past in such a way that we communicate what we want to do in the future.
We want to accept responsibility for maximizing the communication opportunity that this awkward piece of paper (the resume) offers us.
Over the course of the next four weeks, we’ll introduce an entire method for crafting a resume that articulates your distinct “brand.”
While listening to the show, make your reservation for the Resume Workshop on February 7th now!
Do you ask for it? Do you command it? Do you trick people into it?
More than any other, there is nothing like needing others to up their game at work to tempt leaders into faking authenticity.
Is it that others’ responses are ultimately out of our control that we act so desperately and foolishly to exert control?
Join Claudia and I in this week’s discussion on this tendency to apply complex leadership principles related to influencing others as if they were band-aids or simple step-by-step instructions.
Listen in.
Are you pretending to be competent?
Where do you think you got the impression that you needed to appear to be more than you are in order to be effective?
Could you be making assumptions about leadership, competence, respect and authority that may not be grounded in reality?
In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss the temptation to fake authenticity in situations that require us to peform beyond our current skill or experience level.
You won’t believe how much happier, energetic and effective you will be when you stop trying to be someone you aren’t.
Listen in.
I don’t know anyone who loves confrontation. Do you?
Work life, though, is filled with situations where something or someone needs to be confronted.
Confrontation is one of the most common situations where we feel we need to be someone we’re not.
We put on a “fake nice” to head off a negative response, or we cop a “fake stern” to show we mean business.
Could it be we don’t trust how we’ll show up in a complicated situation if we are simply ourselves?
In this week’s show, Claudia and I look at faking authenticity in situations of confrontation.
Listen in.
There is no virtue in hiding one’s talent. Impressing people at work is a legitimate and necessary exercise in self-disclosure.
There is a difference, though, between authentic self-disclosure that’s grounded in reality and flows from a place of personal security on the one hand, and what we are calling “faking it” in order to get the perception you want on the other.
Join Claudia and I in this week’s podcast discussion on staying authentic when we want to impress.
I’ll think you’ll come out pleasantly impressed with yourself!
Listen in.
It’s one thing to interact authentically. It’s another to feel that you have to prove your genuineness. (We have just started a new podcast series discussing “Faking Authenticity.”)
This awkward feeling often rears its head when someone makes an unprovoked accusation about your “true” intentions or hints at possibly “mixed” motives. “Are you trying to undermine my authority?” “Look who’s going home early.” “You’re not doing anything, are you?”
In response we rush to do something that will prove that the accusation has no merit.
I suggest that this unsolicited extra effort on our part is the act of a cheap prostitute.
A public confession of sorts that your value is open to negotiation and requires continual substantiation. “If I just show a little more flesh, they’ll choose me.”
Accusations about the inner workings of your heart and mind are forms of baiting the “prostitute” in you. The part of you that might believe that the accusations could have merit and need to be disproved. The result is your own voluntary offering of “flesh.” Like the prostitute, no one is forcing you to do anything. You actually take it upon yourself to give away what is yours. You give away your power on the cheap by legitimating their original suggestion with your unsolicited “proof.”
Are you sabotaging your own efforts by giving yourself away for cheap? Are you kept off balance by the felt need to make “flesh” offerings to those who don’t deserve them? When you work extra hard, do you end up feeling more valuable or less?
If you’ve been feeling cheap, we need to talk. There are alternatives to the desperate tactics of the cheap prostitute.