Beyond the Resume: Telling the Story of a Multi-Faceted Career
When you have a wide variety of interests and experiences, it can feel challenging to tell a cohesive career story.
Your resume is typically a linear representation of things you have done over time. Different jobs, roles, etc. It might show progression, changes in industry, or stops back in a school setting to learn something.
But, most often it goes like this:
Year 1: Job XX
Year 2: Job YY
Year 3: Graduate degree
Year 4-6: Jobs AA and BB at the same company
These are important pieces of information, but they aren’t the whole story. They show the what of the work but lack the why and the how.
Generalists tend to do a few things at once
They have a main job, while also taking classes in coding and writing a newsletter about the cuisine in their hometown.
Or they are building a company while also hosting a podcast and refurbishing vintage furniture on the side.
You get the picture. It’s not an either/or, its usually an AND.
It’s a Venn diagram, not an up-and-to-the-right chart. So, as a generalist, or truly as anyone with a non-linear career, the traditional tools might not suit your needs.
You can think of this as your generalist multi-hyphenate. Check out these famous Generalists for inspiration:
You don’t have to be just one thing to be successful.
And, you don’t have to use a single tool to share who you are.
But, you may need to do more work to identify the threads of your own story and put them together in a woven picture of who you are.
The process starts with knowing the pieces of your story.
Ask yourself these questions:
What are your closely held values?
What are you most passionate about?
What do your different experiences have in common?
What underlying ‘whys’ drive your decision-making?
What types of new things are most likely to grab your attention?
Which ways to you go about solving problems?
The point is to find the threads and see how they fit together.
Then, choose how you tell the story:
Create a version of your resume that is skills-based instead of linear
Create case studies that showcase your ‘how’ and connect them to your past work experiences
Write content about your passion areas and explain why you are drawn to certain types of problems
Showcase endorsements and testimonials that highlight the diversity of your skillset
Design infographics that visually represent how your experiences interconnect
Find public speaking opportunities where you can talk about your multi-faceted journey
Share a day-in-the-life view of how you juggle your different interests
Remember, stories resonate - as a Generalist, you have many avenues to capture your unique path and share it in a memorable way!
Need help uncovering your Generalist story or figuring out how to tell it? We can help.