Are you living for your resume, or for your happiness?
A resume can be a collection of your achievements and career experiences that make you proud, or a piece of paper that makes you feel shitty. Well, if not that, at least it can make you ask yourself: “What have I been doing all this time?”.
That, I believe, is the reason why many people hate writing their resumes.
It forces you to come to terms with your career path or the lack of it.
As you put together your resume, you are reminded of all the things you should or shouldn’t have done, time wasted, opportunities missed, and phases of life where nothing much was happening.
If that wasn’t hard enough, now you need to write it in a way that conveys the message “I’m at the top of my game and know exactly what I’m doing” to potential employers.
And while you’re beautifying your resume it makes you feel worse because you think that if your achievements were good enough, to begin with, you wouldn’t need to do that.
That is why there are countless resume writing services that help reluctant people to get over and done with it.
I have a love and hate relationship with resumes.
During the phase of my life when I was pursuing a fast-track career in banking, resume writing felt easy. I was working for a large, global bank that everyone knew. It was clear from my resume that I was a high performer as my title got fancier each year.
I looked at my resume and felt satisfied with it. Little did I know that I was in the grip of it.
I was living for my resume.
Okay, that sounds a bit dramatic. Sure, I was not living just for my resume. I made career decisions for my own happiness, e.g. when I decided that I wanted to move abroad, to Singapore. I fought for the chance to be transferred overseas and declined other very promising opportunities.
But in large, I was living for my resume. It looked so neat and I wanted to keep it that way.
I wanted to continue collecting titles and achievements.
I wasn’t really aware that that was what I was doing that at that time. As many of my insights in my blog posts, the big realizations and aha moments only came years after.
At that time, I was moving around in my little bubble, thinking that the world of retail banking was all there was. And that the best game to be played was to climb the ladder.
Fast forward I realized how unhappy I was in the industry, I experienced severe burnout, and quit my job and my career in banking altogether.
It felt scary. I was no longer weaving this nice familiar pattern of achievements. Instead, I had to start with a new design.
My plan was to pursue acting while starting my own business (And starting two new things at the same time is a ‘brilliant’ strategy btw!).
And no matter how that would turn out, there would be no conceivable connection to my banking career.
I was relieved and nervous at the same time. Relieved, because I was no longer beholden to my banking career path. But super nervous because, in some way, I had to start over. I had to work my way up again, from the bottom.
This unsettling feeling was the price I had to pay to pursue a life of fulfillment and meaning. And I can’t tell you how hard it was at times.
But I never regretted this decision, because I gained something much larger and much more valuable: I changed the game I was playing.
I was no longer playing the game of ‘chasing promotions and salary increases in the world of banking’, but instead playing the game of ‘pursuing a career that is fulfilling and meaningful.
I was free from ‘the resume’.
Not entirely though!
At various points, I still needed a resume. Even for freelance work, getting funding for my film project, and the occasional temporary part-time job I got to supplement my income, I needed to show my resume. But it was no longer the main thing. It was no longer ‘the story of my life’.
Instead, my resume now is just a tool that I use to help explain to people what work experiences I had so far. Nothing more than that.
What guides me now, is a roadmap for my life. I call it the ‘Multiple Careers Roadmap’ and this will be one of the main things I will talk about in my upcoming book.
In short, the Multiple Careers Roadmap is a customized, personal map of success for your career, that spans over a lifetime. It is directed toward fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. It aims to live a life and have a career with the least regret.
Now, when I make career decisions, I never think of my resume. Instead, I think of my multiple careers roadmap and about how I can move forward on my map.
What do you associate with your resume, and has it ever given you any anxiety?
I hope you enjoy my ranting. One of the main differences between my youtube videos and blog posts is this: my youtube videos are more scripted to maximize viewer retention. A lot of depth gets lost on the way. These blogposts are much more organic. The words and stories flow (almost) straight from my brain, through my fingers, the keyboard of my almost 5-year old MacBook, onto the page.
Sometimes, there are stories that I doubt putting out there. But in most cases, I decide to leave them, just in case they might be useful to anyone out there who is going through something similar.
This blog is meant to be a space to work through the fun, challenging, exciting, but also devastating parts of my career and how I navigated everything until this point. It’s a place for everyone to share their stories and experience as well, so I would love to hear from you in the comments!
