Kay’s career story just wouldn’t make sense as she sat down to write her CV/Résumé. She was asked all the usual questions to help squeeze and blend her experiences into a single document but the answers weren’t coming and none of the old tips or tricks worked.
It felt to Kay like she had done too many different things and that they would look strange on the same piece of paper (or screen). As if the story was of two or three different lives all mashed up together. And if this was confusing to Kay, how could she expect anyone else to get it, let alone hire the person telling it?
The connection for Kay – and for anyone else trying to make sense of their career story – is a simple one and it is based purely and simply in fact. No matter what we have done (and Kay had done quite a few things like selling homewares, managing a cleaning company and learning how to use a plasma cutter) our skills and experiences will never be some random list. The unique thing that connects them is us – they are the situations, events and times that make up an individual career.
A new task that did make sense to Kay was to sit down, start from the beginning and just tell her story the way it happened. Who better than us (the one person all of it happened to) to know exactly how we started, where we went, how long it took, who we met and what we ended up with (in Kay’s case much more than she thought!). All the different sides to a career story come together in the same way, regardless of whether we have been working 5 months, 5 years or what feels like 5 lifetimes. A simple, clear connection shines through and shows itself in the choices we make, the reasons we made them and the things that have been important to us along the way.
Your career story – like Kay’s, like mine and anyone else’s for that matter – builds up the same way. It comes together in the facts and leaves us with a better idea of our values, talents and goals (to name but a few central themes). Now Kay has started maybe I should wish her good luck but I know she is already looking beyond her initial writing task. Kay now has a much clearer vision of her career and her story and it just makes plain sense. First to her, then to others and that’s the best way.
Story Bridge, Brisbane, Australia
[Image courtesy of Urban Adventures on Flickr.com]
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Look out for an update to Kay’s story soon!
Paul
So here’s the update I promised on Kay,
After really struggling to make sense of her own career story, Kay has now written a really beautiful one-page bio to as well as her CV. Her one-pager starts right at the beginning and goes on to explain all the twists & turns she’s been through in her years of work.
I’m going to (gently) persuade Kay to share what she wrote here one day but in the meantime, it doesn’t matter if no one else ever reads this bio. It had to make sense to one person above all others and that person was Kay herself.
Paul