Seth has a great post up titled Why bother having a resume?
There is something comfortable about the standards of a resume. You know how to fill in the blanks. The format has already been worked out. The only question left is if you are going to send it in a Rich Text Format or Word Document.
If you blow up the resume, the questions are wonderfully endless.
- What I am going to say?
- How I am going to say it?
- Is this really what I want to do?
I was describing my career to someone last week and realized the textbook method doesn't really explain who I am or what I want to do next. Today, I was looking at the description at the top of my tumblr blog and came to the same conclusion.
Every person is a sum of their experiences and certainly my mechanical engineering degree and the time at General Electric is important, but there are a whole set of new things that show better what I can do and want to do with my time.
This image is from a document I turned in for a chance at an internship with Ben and Jackie from Church of the Customer. I always liked this representation, experiences overlaid and fading with time. That collage is three and a half years old and would look quite different today.
As I look at the things that I am interested in now, there are seeds in those past projects and positions, but they would be hard to see through bullet points and required corporate speak of a standard resume.
This post should not be considered by anyone reading that I am looking for a new corporate home. Seth's post just made me think about the stories we tell other about what we do, both in form and content.