Attention Job Seekers: Being Is as Important as Doing

I empathize with my job seeking clients who tell me how frustrated they are trying to come up with a "value proposition" and write their resumes.

The language used in securing employment and in transacting business in general in the U.S. is heavy on doing, and light on being.

By doing I mean achieving, accomplishing, completing, winning, trumping, securing, scoring, managing, and so on. We are expected to quantify our value and enumerate our measurable accomplishments in order to be deemed a worthy risk in which to invest (i.e., get hired).

By being I mean those qualities that are not by themselves about achievement, although they often make what we achieve possible. We may be inspiring, authentic, honest, strong, nurturing, competitive, tenacious, creative, optimistic, patient, reliable and so on.

Some of my clients feel frustrated that because so much of their self identity is tied to who they are rather than what they have achieved that writing a great resume and being successful in an interview will be a discouraging process.

The truth is that who you are being on the job is every bit as important as what you are doing (at least in most professional jobs). People experience and evaluate us very much on what we show of who we are.

This is why getting your foot in the door of a company or new career through personal contacts can be so much more successful and gratifying than applying to a posted job opening as an unknown quantity. Who you are is immediately part of the conversation - the decision to bring you there is based on it. Articulating the details of all of your spectacular career achievements comes second.

If you are relying on your resume to secure an interview, then I advise that you pay attention to how the job search game is played and make sure your resume is filled with all kinds of doing.

But the good news is that there is room on your resume for plenty of the less quantifiable but equally critical qualities you bring to the table. A good professional resume writer understands this and is able to make your resume a more three-dimensional portrait than a mere list of accomplishments.

Posted by Heather Mundell

cross-posted at life@work

Comments

[Sital]

Heather, great article

The good news is that more and more businesses starting to hiring based on the 'being' instead of just the 'doing.' Yet it's still a challenge

But as you say, the way to get around this is via people who know 'who' you are (and not just what you have accomplished)- i.e. your network

[Karen Lynn]

"Well that's a great start," I thought to myself as I a read your thoughts Heather.

I agree the 2D list is dead. But even this 3D picture resume is ineffective. Why? Because it is still a 2D rendering of a multi-dimensional human offered within and operating in our current system of how workers gets picked to do the work.

There is an entirely new option coming which offers even more BEING that you propose here. I'll let you know when it arrives. Until then, keep highlighting the being we are as workers - it will surely translate into more and better doing!