Here is a recent post from Seth Godin, top selling marketing author and one of the web’s most popular bloggers, on the importance (or unimportance) of resumes.
Godin’s criticism is that, “Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just more fodder for the corporate behemoth.”
One of the problems of the modern job hunt is that the resume is both a necessity and a barrier. Recruiters and managers have to handle so many applicants that the standardized metadata contained on a resume is absolutely essential, yet that standardization can make much of the information on resumes meaningless.
And this problem isn’t limited to the resume itself: it spreads to what people do, how they plan their careers and distinguish themselves. Few major decisions are made in an ambitious person’s teens and twenties that don’t involve the question of whether the outcome will “look good on a resume.”
This arrangement works well for square-minded folks who are gratified by conventional objectives and step-by-step expectations, who imagine we live in a simple, stable world of certain rules and formulas.
But we don’t live exclusively in a stable and certain world. Admittedly, there are rules and formulas that work well for a while, but there is a whole other aspect to life that is all about coping with uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and change. This sphere of uncertainty is where rough-minded, creative people like me thrive.
More and more people appreciate this reality; the creative skills and attitudes suited for uncertainty are increasingly in demand.
Yet the demand for creative skills and attitudes continues to be framed and managed using the same techniques that were developed to hire candidates for conventional and uncreative frameworks.
Doing something because it will “look good on a resume” is the antithesis of creativity. Going to art school because an MFA will stand out from the thousands of MBA’s is not a reflection of genuine creativity. Having a blog so recruiters can find your name on the first page of Google searches is not a reflection of genuine creativity.
So then what is a “reflection of genuine creativity”?
How about taking a concept as conventional and supposedly untouchable as ‘the resume’ and reconceiving it, redesigning it to address emerging realities and needs, identifying the underlying assumptions, redefining the concept to generate unexpectedly new uses and benefits, as part of a larger project of reframing our attitudes towards working, learning, and living?
Who’d be audacious enough to tackle such a project? The end result probably wouldn’t look much like the concept that inspired it, nor would it accomplish the same results.
If you’re asking “Then what’s the point if it accomplishes different results?” then you’ll never understand creativity. The point is to learn unexpected things along the way.
Stay tuned… (or take a look at my long first draft).
Like the conventional resume, this challenge to reconceive the creative resume functions as a metaconcept for organizing and tracking my diverse accomplishments and aims.
And it’s only an introductory formality. The really important impressions are made in the conversations that follow.
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