Introduce
Writing your resume is an opportunity to write your future. This is your preordained appointment to update, advance, and “re-image” who you are. It’s a time to ponder your passions, values, and hard-wired skills. It’s cause to contemplate your life-work and your distinctive destiny-what is meaningful to you and how you will bring significance and value to your corner of the world.
What circumstances led you here? You may be reeling from the news that you are the latest casualty of another corporate cost-cutting, downsizing, or offshoring initiative. Or, perhaps you’re reasonably happy with your job but just learned of an unbelievable career opportunity, so you’ve decided that now is the time to dust off and polish up that outdated résumé. Maybe you’ve just finished a hard-earned college degree and are ready to bag your first “real” job (preferably one that will pay off your school debts). Perhaps you’re one of the millions of Baby Boomers facing retirement, yet you’re interested in part-time work for the intellectual challenge or excited to dust off a dream that’s been put on the back burner for far too long. For some, philosophical differences with new management or personality conflicts with coworkers are the impetus for your search. Perhaps it’s a difficult time of transition-divorce, death of a loved one, children leaving the nest, or changes in your financial status-that has caused your job search. Statistics tell me that a number of you have been out of work for some time and are frustrated with your job search. Perhaps you’re researching ways to resurrect a lifeless résumé and jump-start an ailing job campaign. Many of you are simply overworked, undercompensated, or unappreciated, and it is time to move to greener pastures.
Regardless of the circumstances prompting you to write a résumé, be grateful for them. They are the door to a new and important chapter of your life-a chapter that will move you forward and increase your capacity for success.
This blog is designed for people like you who are capable of carrying out a successful, self-directed job search. You fall into this “capable” category because you had the sense to get yourself to a bookstore, library, or online bookstore and glean the information and ideas you need. I admire how the literary critic Gilbert Highet captured the wonderment of books:
Books are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
To read is to think, to wonder, to be challenged, to find encouragement, and to tap into the energy to try something new…
