nightgarden.org

According to you, what should the writer of this weblog have achieved, how can he best describe his potential and what can he do for you? As I have found out now, my personal approaches to convey that message were a total failure. According to some anonymous person at career services, my resume is arrogant, presents myself as part of an elite that won’t find recognition in the area I am targeting. What’s more my writing is self-consumed, chaotic and cryptic for anyone who reads it. I am supposed to tell you all that, so that you can decide whether or not to continue reading.

Here is something I could never write within a resume, but still holds true.
What it really means to be a consultant. It means that you get a flight ticket and you wake up on a plane, just to present yourself as the long awaited expert for something that you a) don’t have the faintest clue about b) have heard about but never worked on or c) that you know about but is close to impossible to realize. Ok there are some d), e) and f) alternatives, but for new assignments they are rare, especially in the early years. Maybe it is the same situation, but just a different feeling later on, as you know that experience is just another word for knowing how to approach things that you don’t know anything about.

The problem is, that after all that experience your environment can assimilate you back into a world of darkness. Darkness being the feeling that only profound knowledge and expertise within an area can lead to being hired. Darkness being the reality of many companies being convinced about the exclusiveness of their business. Darkness being the self imposed limit to corporate fit.
Would they actually pay for someone who doesn’t live their everyday reality, so that he can bring another perspective? Usually quite a lot, see a), b) and c). (But consultants are never hired by human resources) Now what can you expect from someone that is trapped in the darkness, but is supposed to hire you? As for me, he will hire someone else, of course. My environment is leading me into darkness, and so does everyone who has become a part of its institutionalized framework.
As Randy Pausch put it, brickwalls are there for a reason: They let you know how badly you want something. After all I achieved, went through and overcame, I find myself in front of a tremendous brickwall. A resume is simply not the right tool to break the wall. It might be useful for open doors, useful to overcome a filter, but not more. Which is why I should discard the whole idea of using it, or simply stick with the elite, that the mainstream career service thinks I am a part of.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.