Your resume shouldn’t be the first place you work out what you’re good at

Most people are terrible at pinpointing their strengths – which may sound strange, but please hear me out.

After all, who knows you – better than you?

Here’s what I’ve learned from writing resumes for 15+ years.
I see people who know their experience.

And in that same person, I see someone who has normalised their strengths.

What do I mean by that?

That means they think that if they can do something – “anyone can”.

A lot of that perspective comes down to how people actually value themselves.

I often hear…

“If I can do this, it’s not that special.”

“It wasn’t just me who made that thing happen?”

(When in reality that ‘thing’ could not have happened without their leadership.)

If this is ringing alarm bells, or you’re at least nodding your head – please meet Janine* who shared a story in our last career storytelling lab.

She came in totally agitated, after a number of anxious sleepless nights trying to figure out how to get a staff member to do something she did not want to do.

That staff member had been asked several times to stop bringing her dog to work in her work truck as she needed to train someone who would be sitting in truck’s passenger seat.

Despite Janine communicating the request in different ways, the staff member kept ‘forgetting’ and bringing the dog to work.

I got a sense that Janine’s anxiety was stemming from the fact that she could not achieve a resolution with her staff member – that perhaps Janine saw herself as “ineffective” a “poor leader” or “terrible at communicating”.

The group in our career storytelling lab listened carefully and identified that Janine was:

“A good leader” – as she wanted the best for the organisation.

“Cared deeply about doing the right thing” – hence her anxiety when things went wrong.

“Flexible” – as she’d tried many different ways to make the request of the staff member.

“Resilient” – as she had kept persisting with this staff member.

Janine had not seen any of that.

Before she shared her story, she was focussed on the ‘fact’ that she could not fix the problem with the staff member – and was so frustrated in that fog, that she could not see another truth in the story.

This is the problem I see when most people start to write their resumes.

Their ideas about themselves often stem from frustration – rather than digging deep into their story then taking a helicopter view to understand their strengths.

It’s so hard to sell something you don’t really understand the truth of.

Yet, that’s what I see most people do on their resumes.

And that’s why they end up using AI to tell them who they are.

Agree, or disagree?

I’d love to know your thoughts.

*Janine’s name has been changed for privacy reasons.