Stop Building Your Resume
I spent last Tuesday night at a career fair in Madison. Personally, I’ve always thought career fairs are entirely worthless. But after being on the other side of them, I realized that they’re only mostly worthless…
I was expressing this opinion to a co-worker of mine and she said, “Well at least it’s a great resume builder for you.”
That got me thinking… I feel like there are a lot of people who look at opportunities through that lens. They look for the next opportunity to put on their resume or the next opportunity that will get them a promotion. Personally… I feel like that’s a really bad idea.
By focusing on getting a promotion, you don’t look for the project that you’re passionate about… You look for the project that will advance your career. There is a world of difference between working on a project because you want the end result versus working on a project that you’re passionate about. And it shows in the work you do.
When you focus on building a resume, you lose sight of your goals. You stop doing what you want to do, and you start doing what you think is best for your career. But what’s best for your career is finding something that you truly love. If you continue down the path of trying to get the next promotion, you’ll end up with a powerful position in a job that you hate. To be honest, I’ve seen this the most among college students. You’ll see someone who lists 14 different groups they’re involved in, but if you ask them how they improved an organization or what they learned from one, they’ve got nothing to say.
Lastly, when you focus on doing things to build your resume, you miss the learning opportunities. It’s easy to get caught up trying to get the job done so you can move on to the next one. But that keeps you from taking a step back to analyze what you’ve learned. And what you learn often matters much more than the outcome of the project. Jim Goodman was an influential mentor of mine… He once told me that he had never failed at anything… He just had a lot of learning experiences.
It doesn’t matter if you succeed or fail. What matters is what you take away from the experience… Not what you can put on your resume.
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This is so true! I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the “resume builder” line in my college career. Sometime in my third year of college, I discovered the product of a project I’m passionate about is much more robust and fulfilling than one done out of necessity or greed.