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Monday, April 18, 2005 Volume VII Number 15

Résumé Anxiety

by Ken Kemp

To launch the program, the program director invited the man who is also my mentor to bring a keynote speech.  Students, faculty and community business leaders were in attendance.  Ted just celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday last month, not that age has any bearing on his qualifications as a compelling speaker.  One may wonder about his capacity to deliver the goods at this life-stage.  But you wouldn’t wonder long. 

The fact that he served as President for several years and chairman of the board and close confidant to every other president of the university to this very day, well, it gave him an unmistakable degree of credibility in this place.  Recently, they reprinted his book, The Fine Art of Mentoring, and made it available to this crowd.  He has long believed in and practiced that fine art for most of his adult life.  So, they made an introduction, and off he went, delivering a riveting treatise on the development of a leader and the significant people who contribute to it in a process called mentoring.  Ted is an articulate advocate to this very day.

It was an honor for me to stand beside him this week at the university in a large conference room as Exhibit A.  I told the crowd how we met and what it was like to sit across the table from him month after month for well over a decade.  We talked about our friendship and how through the years he became more and more acquainted with my hopes and dreams and ambitions.  He helped me bring them into focus.  I relayed to the folks how my business decisions progressed through our years together, and then how just recently I took a turn from business to ministry.

Afterwards, we chatted with attendees.   In the talks, I found something I see everywhere.  I call it résumé anxiety.

For a young student bright eyed and eager, knowing he/she is still looking at a blank page and knowing that the script has yet to be written, résumé anxiety is rooted in the enormous pressure to select an undergraduate major, as though anyone really knows what they want for a career at the tender, impressionable age of nineteen.  There is the rare, focused, self-directed high-school graduate who knows The Life Plan.  But most college freshmen view the world through untested eyes.  Their SAT scores may give them a sense of their place on the science vs. arts spectrum, but that’s about it, really.  So they choose a major.  Résumé anxiety hits college graduates right about the time they finish school and go job hunting.  They realize that their choice of major, made back then under duress, has narrowed the career options considerably.  Or so they are told.

For those who have put in considerable time in the work force, résumé anxiety comes later.  There are those rare examples of those who stepped from one choice role to the next, each transition a living illustration of upward mobility, crashing through one glass ceiling after another, rising in prominence and ever expanding compensation packages.  But look around you.  How many of those examples can you name?  Most of us struggle.  Most follow the path of least resistance, taking the most convenient option, hoping there will be satisfaction and reward somewhere down the road and not quite sure how we got where we are.  Ultimately, when the promise goes unfulfilled and the hopes fade and the realities sink in, there’s a feeling of discontent.  But where do I go from here?  I’m stuck.  My résumé tells the story – it’s a roadmap to here.  Who would want me?

Classic résumé anxiety.  It hits young and old.

Here’s a keen sense of the obvious: these are all the wrong questions.  Your résumé is not a life sentence.  It is not confining.  Your experience is not a catalog of errors.  Your career track is not so limiting as you may think. 

I reflected back on a book I read years ago.  It had a profound impact on me then.  It’s been more a guiding light to me than any other book I’ve read on the subject.  I learned recently that it remains, decades later, a primary source for people thinking about where to go next.  It’s Richard Bolles classic: What Color is My Parachute? 

I can still cite the main points from memory.  First (here’s the hardest part), decide what you want.  Second, forget all the traditional means of finding a “job.”  Forget the Sunday want ads.  Forget the head-hunters.  Forget the search firms.  Forget the placement departments back at school.  Forget Monster.com.  Forget the shotgun approach to sending out résumés.  Forget résumés, for that matter.  (Yep, you may need to write a summary of your past experience at some point, but not until they want you.)

Here’s the key: once you know what you want, find someone who is doing it.  Someone who is a proven success.  Someone you like.  Someone you admire.  Someone you can learn from.  Then study everything you can about his/her work.  The company.  The mission.  The market.  The business plan.  Then elbow your way in.  Find out what’s needed.  Figure out how you can add value, not for the sake of a paycheck, but to enhance and enlarge the enterprise.  Get close to the decision-maker.  Let them know what you can do – not for your career, but to contribute to the cause.  Make yourself indispensable.

Bolles’ promise – they will figure out a way to put you on board.

I look back on my life.  I look back on my relationship with Dr. Ted.  I look at the name on my new business card.  I ought to write a thank you note to Richard Bolles.

I think I just did.

Oh – one more thing.  Overseeing the whole process is a living God who knows us by name and says…

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Posted in Placentia, California

© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2005

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