A blog entry that captures the need for telling your story in the job search is Chris Pearson’s The Only Thing on Your Resume that Matters to a Smart Person. Pearson writes:
Intelligent people really don’t care what’s on your resume. In fact, intelligent people don’t really give a damn about formal interviews, resumes, or anything of that sort. Sure, your portfolio matters, but even that’s secondary to the number one, be all, end all factor. It’s the one thing that matters above all else to any truly smart person with whom you’ll ever do business. What is it?
It’s you. It’s everything about your character. It’s every emotion you represent. It’s the reflection of your passions on your character. It’s how you represent yourself – verbally, physically, mentally, and socially.
It’s you.
Really good, really smart people actively seek out those with whom they share an intrinsic kinship. The capitalists among them are constantly on the lookout for those who stand head and shoulders above the crowd not only because of everything they represent now, but also because of everything that they could represent.
Just like Major League Baseball scouts judge talent on the basis of perceived potential, intelligent people rate others with the future in mind. They only basis they have for determining your future worth is your current character.
What really matters for YOU: No matter who you are or what you’re doing, people are going to try to classify you, to try and lump you into some kind of quantifiable group. While I think it sucks, the fact is, it’s human nature. We use devices like this to help us understand things; otherwise, we’d spend all our time running around, trying to catch up with all the anomalies and inconsistencies.
So, how can you get across you and your story in the job search? I am still in quest of a resume that tells the job seeker’s story. The blog as a resume, as discussed in previous entries is one way to do it. Cover letters, I feel, can tell more of a story than resumes, and of course, you have an opportunity to tell your story in interviews – but you have to make it to the interview first. I see two opposite forces pulling at the recruitment and employment scene – technology’s influence in standardization of information that employers use to select candidates, as opposed to the need for the human touch and connection that Pearson writes about. With more recruiters searching social-media sites for candidates, these venues seem well positioned as a place to convey YOU and tell your story through your profile. Tell it well and avoid digital dirt! Perhaps revealing, employer-appealing stories will be told in some as-yet-unknown form that these two forces converge.