Resume therapy: A career search starts with a search inside ourselves

For me, so many good things have come from asking questions, from my first career as a journalist to the conversations since that led to professional growth and personal inspiration. For the next few blog posts, I will feature exchanges with some wonderful people who have deeply influenced my view of the world, my work and myself.

This post is a conversation with Amanda Coyle, a friend and former colleague whose experiences and training span organizational development, human resources, social work and counseling. Our regular discussions have deeply influenced my belief that we have to understand ourselves to understand how to succeed in the workplace. Our shortcomings as leaders are usually the unfinished business within our souls, such as the work of healing our old wounds, gaining the confidence to put love over ego, or bringing forth our authentic selves. So I often turn to her for advice, since she thinks as both a professional coach and a personal counselor. The following is a conversation we've had over the past week.

Me: A friend of mine has been conducting a job search recently, and I'm impressed by the way it has prompted as much inquiry into herself as it has research into opportunities. Does a job search start inside or outside ourselves?

Amanda: The ideal is to begin the search inside ourselves, where we connect with what we are seeking and process what has transpired so far, as opposed to responding predominantly to marketplace opportunity. Of course, the two are linked; your ideal job may not be available in a certain geographical region or there may not be a demand for that role at this time and that is a factor in the job search. But it's still preferred to start the search internally to connect with our interests, skills, and preferred environments first, then to go externally to match the marketplace demand.

I think of it like a Venn diagram: our sweet spot is the overlap between our passions and skills and marketplace demand. That's where we should focus our energy. While you could reach that overlap by starting externally, I've found that opportunity in the market tends to skew folks' view of what they are seeking and can arbitrarily stunt our thinking about what could possibly come next. For example, I see quite often how hard and draining the job search process can be and how it can erode our confidence in ourselves. If we've done the hard work to own our strengths and process our mishaps, we can return to that knowledge and regroup following rejection. It doesn't completely shift our course. In contrast, if we aren't in touch with where we can really add value, then the rejection can be overwhelming and can cause us to doubt ourselves and limit the scope of our search.

Me: It occurs to me that what we're talking about is connecting the story of ourselves to the story we explain to others. This is hard, which probably explains why I've always struggled to write a resume. What is at the root of the difficulty in telling the story about ourselves that would connect us with the opportunities or advancements we seek?

Amanda: Our careers and our sense of self are usually tightly linked, yet we don't always recognize this tie. Sitting down to write a resume feels daunting because it feels like a reflection of who we are. In reality, it's a summary of our career journey thus far, but emotionally it can feel much bigger. Unless we take the time to process and let go of our career mishaps, we experience a tremendous block to our ability to tell our story.

As humans, we are wired to focus on the negative. This survival mechanism was critical at one point in our evolution, but clearly today it's a disservice. When we look at our career, we often focus on the negatives: the promotion we were passed up for, the job we applied to and never heard back, the class we failed, or the boss with whom we didn't get along. This negative lens makes it challenging to weave our past experiences into a purposeful narrative about our future success, which is the whole goal of a resume. It's a snapshot of our past as an indicator of our future success. As you can see, a focus on the negatives makes this process particularly challenging.

Sometimes our career decisions were not our own, so it feels challenging to "own" them and describe them to others. For example, perhaps we consciously or unconsciously selected a career path to please our parents. If this path isn't a good fit with our personality and skills, we may feel disconnected from it and therefore have trouble writing the narrative. Or, perhaps our career decisions are a result of layoffs and mergers, about which we were not happy, and therefore we feel it isn't our story to tell. Connecting to the twists and turns of our career story and putting it on paper for the world to see can leave us feeling vulnerable, particularly if we haven't felt ownership.

Highlighting our accomplishments can feel like we're bragging or promoting ourselves, which for many of us, does not feel natural. We feel that our accomplishments should speak for themselves, yet in reality, we need to weave together the story so that others can understand what we've achieved and where we want to go from here.

Me: I think all of us know this struggle. Especially women. Is it harder for women to speak about their accomplishments? I feel like it is. Why is that?

Amanda: Women tend to attribute positive outcomes to a group effort or to our boss. This attribute can result in a greater sense of team spirit and accomplishment, along with more harmonious working environments, but it can also result in underselling our strengths and the impact of our work. We don't want to feel like we are promoting or marketing ourselves.

I see this a lot in the language women use in their resumes. Soft words like - assisted, supported, collaborated - undersell the individual's contributions to the outcome. Hard action words like - lead, delivered, spearheaded, designed, created - give the reader a clearer picture of the individual's role in the outcome. In general, men tend to use more action words and women tend to use softer words.

Me: In the spirit of stronger words, thanks for all you've done for me and others. You've spearheaded work that has transformed corporate cultures, and you've led people to great self discoveries. Thank you for all you do to catalyze the insights that can only come from conversations like this.