I loathe writing resumes. Everything about it bothers me: the tediousness, the constricting feeling, the frustration of not being able to express myself… It’s a truly awful way to spend time.
I’m comforted that I’m not alone in this hatred for resumes. I’ve heard many multipotentialites complain that it’s a tremendous point of pain for them too.
Not only does everybody seem to hate contorting into a specialist shape, it’s common for multipotentialites to have a complex career trajectory, and this doesn’t lend itself well to writing a coherent CV. If you’ve spent a few years in one industry, a few years in another–again and again!–then it’s easy to worry that your resume may appear off-putting to potential employers.
So, how can multipotentialites write resumes that highlight their best qualities (ideally, as quickly and pleasantly as possible, too)? There’s plenty of great resume advice already on the internet, so let’s focus on a few general principles which might be helpful to multipods in particular.
1. Trust yourself
This advice is especially important when seeking other perspectives online. No advice is applicable in all circumstances, especially when it comes to cultural expectations such as “what makes a good resume.”
What works great in Europe or India may come off strangely in the USA or New Zealand.* Trust your instincts and cultural knowledge, and if you’re applying for jobs in a new place, consider making it your first step to acquire the relevant cultural knowledge somehow.
* (I don’t mean to pair those places specifically; just pointing out that expectations differ greatly around the globe.)
2. You don’t have to include EVERYTHING on one resume
A complain I hear often is that it hurts to leave parts of ourselves off a resume:
“But they simply MUST know everything about me!”
It’s great to come off as well-rounded, but once that’s been achieved you don’t need to list literally every interest you’ve ever had.
Remember the purpose of the document: it’s to get you a job. It’s not a manifesto you have to live by afterwards, so leaving off “poetry” doesn’t mean you have to give it up. It’s just a judgement call: will this resume be more focused without it? Or will showing off a small amount of your poetic side help in this case?
3. …But don’t be scared to show off your breadth
The opposite temptation is to cut off everything that isn’t strictly relevant to the job. Again, this is a judgement call: how attractive are your other passions likely to be to this company?
Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone interviewing for this role; would you see these other passions as interesting, useful, or as irrelevant – or perhaps even detrimental?
4. Explain shifts in your career
Explaining a complicated career history doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Flip the narrative on its head and ask yourself “how has each of my previous lives contributed to who I am now?”
If you’re worried that a past career move might appear inexplicable, then explain it! You had a good reason for that move so tell your potential new employer what drove you, what skills you picked up along the way, and (most importantly) how that experience will help you in the new role you’re applying for.
We gain experience and knowledge from everything we do, so look for the positives that your complex history can bring to your glorious future!
5. It’s okay to have multiple resumes
Perhaps it’s misleading that we often talk about “our resume” as if we only have one. If you’re a multipod with a slash career you might have one resume for one part of your life, and a completely different one for another.
It might be easier to maintain one master resume with everything on it, and then you cut it down as necessary–knock off most of the engineering bits for a dance production, and vice versa for a new engineering job.
All the usual advice still stands
Multipods aren’t a different species (honest!), so all of the usual advice still stands: sell yourself well, don’t go overboard, come off as human, be honest, keep it brief, don’t trail off lists by just writing “and so on”… and so on. 😉
Nobody likes writing resumes, but hopefully these thoughts will help you get past any multipod-specific struggles and create a document which shows you at your best. For more tips, check out this post series on crafting a multipotentialite resume.
Your Turn
Got any tips for crafting a strong multipotentialite resume? Please share them with the community in the comments below!
Wondering how people with many passions make a living? Want the variety, meaning and the income? Check out Emilie’s master course, How Multipotentialites Make Money.
After having spent the entire day writing resumes and cover letters, this was a nice and timely cherry on the cake 😀
Hooray! I love those little synchronicities! Good luck 🙂
I personally crossed several phases in crafting my resume(s). But now that it just shows ALL my career changes and the Whole breadth of my expertise in each of them… I’m off the market in maternity leave 🙁
Sounds like an exciting phase of life for you – I hope it’s joyful too, and that all kinds of good things follow 🙂
I am a multipod who LOVES writing resumes – so much so that I have taken advanced training to add this to my income streams. Most of this information is timely and relevant…except for one thing (a very common misperception, by the way): the purpose of a resume is not to get you a job. It is to get you an INTERVIEW.
Very cool Andy – that’s a great skill to have, and awesome that you’re sharing it with others. I like your perspective too – I guess the eventual goal IS a job, but the interim goal is important to focus on too, so we can manage our expectations and emotions. Thanks for the reminder.
I’m a career-changer currently on the market for a software engineering job, and I was given some advice by a recruiter that was surprising but helpful. I don’t have a relevant degree or work experience, but I do have a bunch of projects to show what I can do. The recruiter said to fill most of my resume with details about my best projects: which technologies I used to build which features. I was grateful for that advice because I never would’ve thought of that on my own.
After that, I briefly list my past jobs. The only details I include are details related to tech, such as the fact that I built a website for my music teaching business.
My past work history spills onto the second page of my resume, but that feels right to me — I want people to be able to look at the second page if they want to know more about who I am.
This is an interesting perspective. I suffer with resumes as well and also feel the best way to show myself is through the projects I’ve lead or participated in. Would love to see how your resume looks like Kristen. I am working on a project page as we speak.
What a great perspective Kristen! I also struggle with resumes and feel the best way to show myself is through the projects I’ve lead or particpated in. Would love to see your resume! I’m currently working on a beta version project page in carbonmade.com. Happy to talk more if this interests you!
Absolutely! I just sent you a message through facebook.
Just wanted to let you know a potential problem…you can’t actually call yourself an engineer without having the degree. Lots of companies require that. And that’s really an obsolete title as only old people can claim to have CS and engineering backgrounds. Try to get the various certificates for networking and system management products. Good luck ?
Geoff, thanks for taking an interest. Words do change meaning over time. So far I haven’t gotten any backlash from using the word “engineer”, and I know other people who have used the word and gotten jobs, who have the same training as me (launchschool.com).
Sounds good Kristen! I think that any appropriate method of showing off what we can do – and how we’re a solution to the potential employer’s problem! – is a good idea. There’s no one way of writing the best resume. (Of course, we don’t want to go TOO extremely individual either – finding a balance between the norm and our unique spin on it is important.)
Good luck with the job hunt 🙂
Thanks Neil. Very useful advice. After 20 years of professional experience in a huge variety of jobs in a couple of countries, I have four resumes which I adapt each time I apply for a job. Sadly many recruiters and recruitment software used to screen job applications in Australia still attempt to pigeon hole people in traditional linear career trajectories. Not ideal for multi-potentialites.
Yeah, it’s always tough to interact with systems that try to force us into one particular shape. It’s a problem for everyone, but especially for people with unusual career paths. I have a few different resumes which I tailor each time I need them too – it just seems to work best for me 🙂 Thanks for sharing, and I’m glad you appreciated the post!
Hi, just read ur post! It made me think bout’ my last resume.
I drew a mountain range with different peaks.
These peaks represent the different turning points since I left highschool. I also put a box, with a synthesis with pictograms like : this is everything I have in my bagpack for new challenges.
Well, I had numerous questions about my resume during interviews.
“Why did you draw mountains?”, “why this point is low and this one high?”, “what happends after 2018?”, …
I answered that I see my carrer (and life in general) as a continuous trek with ups and downs, with different directions, challenges, but the important thing remains that I always need to move on, and keep going ! Even if sometimes I need to stop for breaks, or admire the landscapes, take other ways, …
Well, this creative resume allows me to see if my future employer is open minded and get that I’m thinking out of the box and I’m kinda “different”.
I don’t know if my comment is relevant, anyway thanks for the multipotentialites’ home and the different posts!
Oh wow, this is an extremely unique way of approaching it. I love this sort of individual thinking 🙂 I guess it will put off some employers, but like you say they are probably the kind of employers that you’re not going to fit well with anyway, so it’s a useful way of filtering for the kind of people you’d like to work with. A brave choice but a very cool one – thank you so much for sharing!
I’m a multipod who LOVES writing resumes. (I can spend hours and hours working on a resume for a particular job.) One approach that I’ve found useful for us multipods is using what’s called a functional resume (simply Google it and you’ll find plenty of info on them). It’s basically ordering your work experience not in chronological order but according to field / area. E.g. in my case I have the following headings: Comms Experience, PR Experience, Project Management Experience, and Admin Experience. (Note that it’s not just WORK experience; you can include projects or volunteering or any other experience that’s relevant to the job.) If you’ve worked on fields that are completely unrelated to the rest or feel random but you think are worth keeping, you can bundle them at the end under “Other Experience”.
Other tips I’ve found useful:
-Move Eduction, Experience, Skills and headings around, according to your convenience. E.g. You can start a resume with Skills rather than Experience, if that more closely matches the job description.
-Not every bullet list needs to have three items. We’ve all added a third bullet that doesn’t really add anything. It’s a good idea to get rid of it
-Write about the outcomes/results of your experieience, not simply the responsibilities you had at a job. E.g. better to say “Increased web traffic by 23% by orchestrating strategic social media campaign” than “Managed social media”.
Hope it helps! Best of luck to you all!
Yay, love these tips! As ever, there’s so much that can’t fit in a single article but comments like these add so much. Thank you 🙂
Yes, functional resumes are so much better than chronological resumes! That’s what I started doing a few years ago, and it works so much better for me. I also designed mine with a sidebar, where I put things like software/computer skills, complimentary quotes from people I’ve worked with (yes, they are REAL quotes!), and volunteer work I’ve done that doesn’t necessarily relate but shows a little more dimension. (For instance, I helped some good friends of mine whose house burned down to build their new dream house.)
Neil, great article with lots of good tips!
Thanks so much! It was really helpfull. I’m going crazy everytime I try to write down a resume. Anyway it’s really hard to let the right people even read you resume, normally the recruiters just look for one single tradional career.
I agree with this! In my experience, recruiters tend to have a single system they apply to their clients – it works for the majority but it’s quite uncomfortable going through it if you feel you don’t fit into it for some reason. Maybe a future post on alternative ways of searching for jobs could be useful! Will have to do some research 🙂 very glad the post was helpful to you!
Thanks for the simplification, Neil! Solid advice for those of us wishing to get a regular job.
When faced with customizing my own resume to fit a specific job, it IS very difficult to cull out much of my experience because I know that most jobs could benefit from a MP’s breadth and depth. It’s how we stand out from the others so it’s a Catch 22.
But I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that, if based on a resume, I am pretty much unemployable by now. Except maybe by another MP 🙂
Haha, I’m sure even from the little you share that you could come up with a resume that would make you very employable if you wanted to 🙂 It is always tough to edit down, but I think there’s a way of displaying breadth without necessarily explaining every single facet of it.
Wow! Did this story hit the target! I have so many resumes I can hardly keep up with them! Once I even created a portfolio of my life as a smorgasbord. There was a menu with a separate introduction to each “course.” Worst of all, I always feel like apologizing for my many career lives when deep down, I know this is what makes me an invaluable employee. I keep searching for the employer who will not only accept me but welcome a multitalented staffer.
I would definitely employ someone who self-described as a smorgasbord! But I’m probably not a typical employer 😀
You’re right not to apologise – each of those career lives has taught you something valuable you can bring to whatever you’re doing, and any employer that understands that will be impressed 🙂
Thanks Neil and Emilie for the info.
I find that I rewrite a lot of resumes for friends and extended family members. The struggles for specialists also holds true for those with polymathic wiring.
I do find, though, being able to look at your varied career from a big picture perspective really has helped me, and others that I have assisted, in putting your best foot forward. Highlighting specific talents and accomplishments that a potential employer would find intriguing is the main objective. And writing a resume from this type of perspective can actually be quite a creative process. Embrace it! Divergent thinking can be an asset rather than a hindrance!
I am one who has multiple resumes that highlight specific areas of my career focus. Since I am a consultant, this approach works well for me and then I just alter the resume that best suits the position.
I do find most employers have tunnel vision for what they want to see in a resume. If in an interview, though, other skill sets you have may be an asset you can bring that up (as long as you don’t go into any weird tangents that may seem odd to a potential employer). For example, if you have a background in theater arts that might be something to include in your resume or mention at an interview, especially if you are going for sales or marketing-related positions. This added talent or skill set may just make you more personable and memorable (as well as fun). No one wants to work with boring people!!
Resumes are just a marketing piece. Write that which will get you an interview and dazzle them from there…
I totally agree with all of this, Mary! Thank you for sharing – I’m sure it’ll be valuable to others who come across this post and who are seeking reassurance of a possible way forward.
So I’ve asked about this question elsewhere. So many employers these days rely on Indeed, Zip Recruiter, and similar services using algorithms to get the right resume to the right company (as they all claim in their ads to employers.) I have yet to figure out how to utilize those services from a potential employee’s point of view with multiple resumes for specific skills and then targeting the right resumes to the right potential employers. It just doesn’t seem possible to do. I suspect my composite/slash resume never gets through even the most basic sorting algorithm so never hits any HR email box, and I don;t see any way to have multiple resumes on those servies and tell them which ones to use for what. Any suggestions on how to do this are welcome.
Oh yikes! Honestly, I write my resumes assuming humans will read them, and this post was geared towards appearing more human than less (a general philosophy I think is important, particularly these days). I have no expertise with algorithms that sort resumes, but hopefully someone out there knows more than I. (Also hopefully we don’t go to a fully machine-based system as a society. Even as a techie and developer I think the human touch is important in things like this.)
Yeah, I’m struggling with those “quality ensuring” HR machines, too… Beginning to think there’s not much point sending in applications through those if you don’t match every little required criterium. For example: I don’t have a driver’s licence. And no matter how good a fit I seem to be for a job *apart* from the required driver’s licence (I would very much like to work with refugee resettlement), all I get is an automated “thanks, but no thanks” mail in the end.
Anyway, I came across an interesting suggestion this week, too. Some graphic design job, where they didn’t want a cover letter or a resume – they wanted you to present yourself in a newsletter! Now that opens up possibilities, too… 🙂
During my last job search I completely overhauled my resume (and portfolio) to feature my multipotentiality front and center and make that my selling point. Granted, I do urban planning which is already a multipod friendly and interdisciplinary field.
But I think what I did might still be helpful for others. I basically did a bunch of thinking and listed all my experience, hobbies, and interests to get a clearer picture of what I am about and all the cool things I can do (but also the super mundane and boring ones). In the end, it all comes down to what skills you can bring to your new job, right? What came up was a long list of things like analysing data, event planning, using certain software, telling stories, social media, publishing, coordinating teams, public relations, etc, etc. In the end, The point I wanted to get across to hiring managers is “I can do more stuff than you expect me to, and that WILL come in handy at some point”.
So for my resume I invested a lot of time in wording the skills I used at each job, and highlighted those that were transferrable to the position I was applying. This highlighted some of my experience that I wouldn’t have immediately thought of including!
After my employment and education, I included a more curated list of skills that while not fundamental to the job, might be helpful if need be.
I also made a portfolio and honestly I think that is even better than my CV at explaining what I do. It’s a shame not all industries are used to portfolios because it is your chance of highlighting your best work results. While portfolios are usually about flaunting your prettiest designs, I concentrated on showcasing strong work that fit a set of 4 core skills of what I do and want to do. I included all kinds of work, not just design: policy, consulting, activism, blogging, art. This could also be a personal website that you include in your application! And you could bring it to the interview in case you want to bring something up.
Ok, I’ll shut up now. Hope it was helpful.
For my resume, I made sure tha
Thank you Jimena! I’m sure this will be useful to lots of people – I hope they find your comment and it helps them on their way 🙂
As a recruiter I look for these things:
Can they do the job?
Will they do the job?
Will they fit the culture?
And spelling / grammar
The advice here is really great! I would like to highlight the things mentioned already that worked for me in the tech field, as well as add some things not mentioned and my personal experiences.
1. Getting around the automated systems- add a word dump in the skills section. Some people put them on the bottom, some in their skills section. Obviously, looks cleaner in skills section. I spent a lot of time looking at job descriptions, gathering common skills and words, and put them into my skills section.
I am mid career in IT, but still put the obvious things; printers, Windows, Office, etc. I think I had 4 or 5 lines worth of these, separated by a dot (so it was like a ticker tape of them!) Those computers are dumb, and that is what this section is for. The meat of my resume was in experience, projects, and accomplishments. Now that I am reviewing resumes myself, I find my eyes do glaze over that section anyways. If it looks like there are relevant things there, I am still basing a large chunk of my decision on experience, projects, and accomplishments to tie those skills in.
2. This one is SUPER important for us Multipotentialites- Get on LinkedIn and put the address in your resume! You can shorten the link to something that says linkedin.com/in/(a custom name) in settings, so you don’t have the weird string of numbers. Do that too! Plan to spend just as much time filling out your LinkedIn page as your resume, and put EVERYTHING in there. It is your professional portfolio, and is absolutely the number one best place to show off your multipotentialness! Plus, people recruit from there _all_the_time_. It cannot be understated how important it is to today’s professional job market. Once again, really spend time to fill it out completely- linking a half done profile makes you look uncommitted to finishing a task, while filling one out completely shows that we DO have laser focus and commitment even if our interests are all over the place!
I also found it made it much easier to prune my resume and keep it short, without missing things that could be important, by specifically asking interested people to check LinkedIn for a more thorough look at my career. I was able to even get my art portfolio in there! It is a great way for us Multipods to put all of our interests down and show a depth that otherwise is usually damaging to show in a Resume.
You can follow companies you are interested in too, which is very important mid career- employers want to know you are interested in the field and aren’t looking for another quick stepping stone. And if you are at the ‘quick stepping stone’ point in your career, you can put all the steps in your LinkedIn for a complete map and keep the Resume much shorter and relevant- Unless you are looking for a related job or that is all you have done, no one cares you worked at McDonalds as your first job! Stick that in LinkedIn, leave it off your resume. I cannot stress the importance of LinkedIn enough for your career. Get on it, and fill it out completely! Add people you know and companies you are interested in as well.
3. As I touched on in my LinkedIn rant, KEEP YOUR RESUME FOCUSED! Put all the cool but not relevant stuff on LinkedIn.
So, when I decided to do IT full time, my full time work was mostly labor jobs and my degree was in Art. I was putting all that in my Resume, and even though I was putting a spin on it to show leadership, hard work, accomplishments, and the times I fixed computers, I still looked unfocused and like someone who didn’t actually know about Tech.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, because we know most people don’t understand Multipods! For a traditional worker, this sort of thinking is correct, but for us, we can be an amazing artist, cook, and computer tech! That is why *deep breath* take that stuff not directly relevant to what you are looking for off your resume. Put it on LinkedIn, and push it to the bottom (you can reorder your experience on what should be on top and bottom.)
Instead, fill your resume with your side gigs and accomplishments. Be bold, and remove years and dates if you need to make it look better. The resume is meant to get you an INTERVIEW to show off what you know- you get a job based on the interview, so be prepared to prove it there! Just make sure to list accomplishments and projects when you do this, and include numbers (‘decreased shrink from standard of 3.8% to 1.9% by streamlining inventory with existing computer systems’- this was a fancy way for me to say ‘while I worked at a grocery store, I figured out how to use the handheld scanners correctly, showed my coworkers and manager, and it helped our inventory numbers a ton!’).
I took those cool things I did while working labor, listed them in accomplishments without mentioning the job. I took my side contracting stuff I only did on occasion, listed them under experience, and talked about the projects I did and how it helped my clients. Suddenly, my resume went from looking like ‘a day laborer who is reaching into a field they have no experience in’ to ‘an accomplished technical contractor interested in going full time’.
4. Finally, this was mentioned a bit in other comments previously- certifications are like fertilizer for your career. They really do help a ton! The better quality they are, the more they will do for you.
I was fortunate there was actually a state funded program to get professional training for out of work professionals, and used it to get free classes and testing for vital certs in my own career. Scour your local area for such programs, because they rarely are well advertised. Unemployment offices are a great place to check for these resources, but don’t rely on those agencies to help you find work- they just have warehouse and labor jobs. But they might have a lead on how to get professional training and certifications at low cost/ free.
This one was important to me to sort of ‘prove’ on paper I know the things my resume said I did. I lacked traditional IT experience since I am a Multipod and just sorta did stuff as a side gig, but knew I was good at it and used the certs I got to prove this. Once I got those certs and put them on the resumes I was putting out, recruiters called within weeks. Before the certs, I had been trying to get a job for 8 months with only a couple of interviews with very uninterested looking people. I worked a contract for one of those recruiters (only 6 months), then was looking for work again. I was then out of work for only 2 weeks, and had interviews and recruiters lined up with multiple offers to choose from.
So, what I was lacking for that first foot in the door was proof of my skills- solved with certs. What I was lacking for a full time job was proof of fulltime workplace experience- solved with a temp contract position I got thanks to those certs. Then, pieces started to fall into place.
I encourage people to find those gaps, and instead of fighting them, find a way to fill them to kick start things. Skills can be shown on paper with solid workplace experience and relevant accomplishments and experience with specific things the employer is looking for. Or, lacking that, industry standard certifications in things you would use in your job.
Fulltime work experience can then be shown on paper by holding jobs with *known companies* that will pop out to the eyes of people reviewing, and get you calls. Another reality when looking for work is that if the person reviewing doesn’t recognize the company, it can hurt you. It becomes even more important to emphasize accomplishments with real data and numbers, or, once again, industry standard certs or traditional education. Getting experience with a *known* company to the person reviewing really is huge, and will always be an important step to upgrading your resume and being noticed.
Four years ago, I was a career day laborer. I posted on Puttylike my frustrations, and how I felt I needed to take a scary jump and get out. Emilie responded, encouraging me to do so. And I did. Thank you Emilie. 🙂 Three years ago, I was unemployed after taking the jump and looking to turn my life around. This post is the accumulation of knowledge gained from that experience of being unemployed. Today, I am working my actual, legit, dream job with a highly competitive company I wanted to work at for over 10 years. I took a leap in November, and applied. They hired me on the spot at my interview. Funny thing is, 10 years ago I thought one day I would be an artist or a writer for them. I am actually an IT Tech. 🙂 But this company has an open structure, so I will still have the opportunity to be an artist or a writer with them if I spend time developing those skills like I did as a Tech. Multipod professional careers are an actual thing. 🙂
Final bits of advice (most of which puttylike has told me over the years :)) for those lost souls that looked like me four years ago;
This stuff doesn’t happen overnight, and you have to work it. But we are a smart, talented, capable bunch who make things happen when we put our minds to it. Ask yourselves the big questions of what you want. We all want to survive, of course, and that requires money. But we all also want to be happy, and that can look very different for everyone. It can be a company you want to work for, an Industry, job field, type of work, quality of life, location- find what is most important and prioritize. If things are equally important or some things are harder to achieve, choose a starting point and just go for it! (How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!)
So when tackling your resume, you do need to really evaluate what you want your career to look like so it can get you the things that are important to you. And shape it to get you want you need for the step you are on. You won’t get all you want on the first go, but you can aim to add one to your list each step and consider it your step ‘up’.
We can always imagine a dozen outcomes and ways to get to our goals, but focus on one career path as your sort of ‘lifeline’, that thing that other people are willing to give you sufficient money to do, doesn’t feel soul crushing and life sucking, you feel you can do well, and that will also be able to take you towards another goal without keeping you stagnant. Work it, focus on it, don’t give up, have confidence in your choice despite what others say and go for it. Career maps in different fields are always available, and might help to find a lifeline job you can follow (or upgrade your current lifeline because you have become stagnant!).
When your lifeline, your career roots, are strong, the multipod parts can flourish. Never fully neglect them on the journey (they are the seeds of your future journeys after all!), but there is a point where a leap needs to be made to that rich soil, and an intense focus on one area needs to be made, so those seeds have a place they can flourish. It is a cycle, not an end point, to choose a focus career and push the past aside to the bottom of your LinkedIn page (for now!). More scary jumps to new lifelines will eventually happen to keep us growing- but we never lose our past, and that makes the next leap just as strong as the lifeline it came from.
Having that solid lifeline skill backed up with experience (and that kick ass resume) will ensure our core needs are met (financial stability, location, etc) so the seeds of our other potentials have what they need to grow strong and flourish when their day is at hand!
Be bold, leave the past, create your future. Your Resume is your manifesto on your lifeline career and where it is going. So shape it to tell that story, get the interview, and show them who you really are!
Great comment to a helpful article.
Thanks Neil for your streamlined concise insights. It is important to keep an eye on the main structural aspects of the resume writing.
Thanks a lot Jeniffer for your detailed, insightful and deep comment. I think this should be an article on its own. Please, contact Emilie and her team, for everyone’s benefit!
After possibly hundreds of hours in the makings, I ended up writing 3 different resumes: One reads ‘Project Manager’, the other reads ‘Bilingual Marketing Communications Editor/Reviewer’ and the other reads “Outreach and Inclusion Coordinator’. I ended up writing a skill-based resume. They all are slightly different. I make sure the skills stand out and look transferable. The second page only mentions Job title and Organization. I left 2 of my creative education paths out (can always mention during the interview if it feels right) and I made sure to disclose my undergraduate degree in Engineering as a selling point.
Took me years!.. I am looking for a job at the time. My previous temp work ended. Really into Project Management now 🙂
I like what you said about not having to include everything on your resume. My sister is about to re-enter the workforce after being a stay-at-home mom and doesn’t know what to put on her resume. I imagine if she needed to, she could also go to a resume writing service.
Determinng what to include and what to leave out should depend on the job in question. While it is true that everything that we have done has contributed to what we are today, we need to strike a balance between including elements that are likely to enhance our suitabilty for the position in question, and elements that another person might see as distracting side quests.
Constructive feedback from a trusted advisor can be crucial to acheiving a good balance. We are rarely the best proofreaders of our own materials.
The advice in both this article and the comments really resonates with me right now. I’m in the process of job hunting and redoing my resume and am finding it such a challenge to whittle it down to something coherent with so many different paths over the years. Great advice!