Introducing The IMAGINATOR

 

Quick review from my last post:

In the Human-Centered Resume, WHO, WHY and HOW are the 3 KINGS.

The message is:

WHO I am as a person, WHY I chose my past experiences, and HOW I went about doing them drives WHAT I've done, WHERE I did it and WHEN I did it. Therefore WHO, WHY and HOW  are the best indicators of my ability to succeed in the job I'm applying for.

Then I left you hanging with this suspenseful phrase: The resume itself looks like:

Drum roll please…..

CONSTRUCTS ( aka SUPERPOWERS)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

EXAMPLES:

            Short (one line)

            Story based

            Tie in with previous employment AND non-employment experiences

The first construct/superpower I’ve developed for my personal resume is “The Imaginator.” 

The IMAGINATOR

Never content to do something the conventional way if a better way is possible, the Imaginator always has an eye to possibilities.

When empowered in my workplace, I also have the efficacy to make improvements and experiment to help already awesome organizations spiral toward even more greatness.

As the Imaginator, I improved the line for more efficient and ergonomic short order cooking for two seasons at Stanley Baking Company. Ask the manager Becky about this; she was game to try nearly every suggestion I put forth. I also executed a number of wild lesson plans as a Teaching Assistant in the Sociology department at UMass Amherst to increase student engagement. Imagining a brave new life, I’ve lived in a new location every six months for the past 5 years.

 Woah, Woah, Woah. What Just Happened There, Mary?!

Notice how I gave some job history/experience information, a tie in to a reference, and demonstrated how this superpower works in two vastly different work situations.

One reason I wanted to create this kind of resume is because I’m transitioning out of my “career” as a seasonal line-cook and into any kind of work that nourishes my mind, body, and soul.

Housing my variety of experiences under a construct/superpower is so empowering for me because I’m a Meaning Maker (it’s another superpower). I see continuity in my life where others see chaos and skills-based resumes represent my life as disjointed and confusing to employers.

Wait she was a Teaching and Research Assistant for two years at a top university and then she worked for free at a Buddhist center and then became a line cook working in a town I've never heard of in the-middle-of-nowhere Idaho?

Actually, yes. That’s my life. And it may well be yours, too. Bold folks do weird things, ya know?

Keep In Mind

This is what I wrote off-the-cuff without a specific job posting/position in mind. 

My vision for the Human-Centered Resume is to tell relevant, short, simple stories that illustrate things at the intersection of:

·      Deep personal resonance in terms of illustrating who we are as gifted and capable humans

·      Deep resonance for employers in terms of our ability to rock their world by meeting eligibility requirements and then some

Value-added at every turn and completely in the realm of “show not tell.”

I am from The Show Me State after all.

 

As I play with this more I also want to make it visual. For example, “The Imaginator” would be represented with a symbol (e.g. imaginator x-ray goggles). I’ve just begun exploring how the visual element can be incorporated, but I love the idea of images and words dancing together on a page.

 

My first ask:

I'd love your feedback on the concept I've presented here. What, if anything, gave you an "aha" moment? What, if anything, made your brow furrow in skepticism? How can I make this better or present the idea better?

Compassion-fueled feedback is welcome; be aware this is rough and I am tender.

Reach me at marykoppes at gmail dot com

 

Photo Credit: photobunny

Human-Centered Resumes (are the way of the future!)

Since I attended StartingBloc mid-February, I've been full of excitement, ideas, and energy. One major benefit of attending SB is that I got some perspective on a personal blind-spot. I was among a group of 100+ do-ers n' entrepreneurs. 

Though I think of myself as more of a be-er than a do-er, the blind-spot that I got some insight into was my own ideas ---> action gap. Sometimes I have "good" ideas but they seem "minor," so instead of taking them seriously and pursuing them, I just dream up more ideas. Having some insight into this blind-spot has piqued my curiosity about what would happened if I fully explored even one of these "good" ideas. 

Follow thru, baby.

To make this all more concrete...

I've had numerous conversations with folks in the past several months about the process of applying for jobs, constructing resumes, writing cover letters and interviewing. I'm (f)unemployed and so are a number of folks I know so these kinds of conversations surface frequently.

In all my conversations about the job-hunting process, I've never heard anyone say, "I love it. I wish I could be a professional job applicant. Chronological resumes make my heart sing!" 

I myself may have used a couple expletives in expressing my views on the topic. My frustration has fueled what I'm now calling The Human-Centered Resume project. It's part of my practice of harnessing the power of "negative" energy and channeling it into building something better which, along the way, converts the "negative" quality into a "positive" one. It also shines the light on my blind-spot.

Bi-product: Happier Mary. Happier world.

So this: 

"I f*&%ing hate searching for jobs. It's so $#%&ing frustrating to make a resume that reflects who I am." (Full disclosure: I was stuck in this thought process for about two months.)

Became this: 

What would a swoon-worthy resume and job-hunting process look like? Why am I so irked by the current process? Considering those irksome properties, how can I build something better that eliminates them?

Then I actually started to build it... The Human-Centered Resume was born.

Let's start by examining the logic of the current resume model...

.

I call it: 
The Skills-Based Resume. 

It treats WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE as the 3 KINGS. 

The message is:

WHAT I’ve done in the past, WHEN I did it , and WHERE I did it are the best indicators of my ability to succeed in the position I’m applying for.

On the resume itself, this looks like:

A description of duties in previous positions and/or professional titles (WHAT) 

Displayed in reverse chronological order, showing "progression" in career (WHEN) 

Headed up by the name of the organization & the physical location (WHERE)

Here comes the irksome part.

WHO I am as person, WHY I chose to do the the things on my resume, and HOW I went about doing them is:

a) considered irrelevant and ignored

b) matters (at least a little) and is assumed to be reasonably well derived from looking at the 3 KINGS

or

c) we’ll figure it out if we decide to interview or hire you whether we want to or not (e.g. Damn, that guy's got a a major anger problem. His work is brilliant but it sucks working with him. Who knew?!)

Taken alone I was irked that the WHO, WHY and HOW are exiled from the resume kingdom by the 3 KINGS. So my frustration was compounded when I realized that the resume-exchange and hiring process are but a microcosm of (and entry point into) the whole dehumanizing* system of workplace organizations. 

Build a Better System AKA (to SB LA '13-ers) "Show 'em the clean glass of water!"

In the Human-Centered Resume, WHO, WHY and HOW are the 3 KINGS.

The message is:

WHO I am as a person, WHY I chose my past experiences, and HOW I went about doing them drives WHAT I've done, WHERE I did it and WHEN I did it. Therefore WHO, WHY and HOW  are the best indicators of my ability to succeed in the job I'm applying for.

Here's a side-by-side comparison.

On the resume itself this look like:

STAY TUNED! The next post will reveal the secrets of Human-Centered Resumes. They really are the way of the future, folks.

 

*My intention in using the word "dehumanizing" isn't to trigger ya. I mean it as literally as possible. We are literally reduced, in our resumes, to skill sets, past experiences, dates, titles, etc.  I think that even in the least human-friendly organizations there are elements of humanism, but on the whole organizations (especially large ones) take on a bureaucratic tone and are essentially dehumanizing. Read some Max Weber.

The Connection Manifesto.

This is the first post in a series designed to bridge the gap between ideas and action. I love the world of ideas, but the fact remains that lack of information is not the problem in our culture. There's plenty of good information, readily available. We have an action problem.

These practices and exercises will ask you to do something if you feel compelled. (Often we do feel compelled to try things out, but we stop ourselves and excuses ourselves. Not everything I post will call to you, but when one does, go!)

The first exercise asks us to examine how we want to be in our relationships and interactions. We spend a lot of time in our culture thinking of how we are (as if our identities are fixed) or how we were (in the past). We spend less time pondering how we'd like to be. In the ideal.

Living deliberately (which I wrote about here), with integrity, means we have to know what we stand for and the kind of person we want to be.

This exercise, from The Buddha's Brain by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, guides us in this endeavor:

 

"Now write your personal code of unilateral relationship virtues. This could be a handful of words. Or more extensive dos and don’ts. Whatever its form, aim for language that is powerful and motivating, that makes sense to your heard and touches your heart. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful, and you can always revise it later."

"Personal code of unilateral relationship virtures" sounds a little, ummm, stiff to me. So I call my list The Connection Manifesto. (I like manifestos, maybe you've noticed?) Here it is:

Keep empathy at the forefront my awareness.

Listen attentively.

Whenever possible, leave it (mood, energy level/quality, level of inspiration) better than you found it.

At the very least: Do no harm

If you fail to meet this guideline, reach out later and make a repair.

Speak honestly to support living with integrity.

Remember: Human beings are complex creatures. Everyone is acting and speaking in an attempt to meet their needs. You don't have to understand why people do what they do to be kind. When people are rude, mean, or snarky, it's not about you, it's about them. 

I'm learning to apply the same rules in my interactions with myself as I stumble along trying again and again to put this into action. I aim to review my manifesto as often as possible (at least once per day) to help keep the guidelines in my awareness. As the guidelines are more and more in my awareness, so is my awareness of every violation. But, like I said, human beings are complex; I am not exempt. And I don't even have to understand my own self to be kind to myself as I practice.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds

Take it away Rilke!

For the next 10 days, I'll be at a Vipassana Meditation retreat. I will be meditating silently and surely encountering limits I've never know I had as I explore my mind. This is part of my goal to do one thing every month in 2013 that challenges me and allows me to point to my comfort zone from well outside of it. There you are comfort zone.

I have some posts lined up for while I'm away since I'll also be away from the interwebs. 
Stay tuned.


Today I thought I'd let Ranier Maria Rilke do the talking. These excerpts are from Letters to a Young Poet which is in the running for my favorite book of all time.

"But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens. For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the more incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths."

"For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and fourth. In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity the drives those prisoners in Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us."
 

The Good Life.

I lived for two summers in a beautiful and surprisingly lively (for population 63!)  remote mountain town in central Idaho. I was a part of the influx of seasonal summer staffers, the majority of whom worked on the Salmon River as raft guides (I was a cook). Since business is weather-dependent and summer only lasts so long, the work in town was condensed into an intense three or four month period. We worked hard. But most folks also played hard. Really hard. And as we were drinking beers with our feet dangling in the beautiful mountain lakes or river with the sound of bluegrass music playing in the background, it was inevitable that someone said, "Ahhhh. The good life." Or "livin' the dream!"

I am quite fond of those particular moments of camaraderie, relaxation after 10 hours of hot and heavy kitchen work, and taking in scenes of unparalleled beauty. However in my head there was a caveat..."the good life...for now..." I felt like there was more out there. Especially in terms of what I can contribute. I've been privy to tremendous blessings in my life. Sure it feels awesome to soak all that in and live in a bliss bubble. But there's been a nagging feeling that I'm meant to be doing more.

Even before my adventures in Idaho, I thought quite a lot about a life well lived—what that means, what that looks like. On the path to finding answers, I got a B.A. in Sociology, went to graduate school to investigate further and dropped out of graduate school to investigate even further in the school of life.

Philosophers, psychologist, sociologist, and lay people tend to agree on the components of "the good life".

To live the good life, we basically need two things:

·      good relationships or love and

·      meaningful work which I think of as a sense of contribution plus purpose or meaning

As I’ve learned though my daily practice with meditation, simple and easy are far from one and the same.

This opens up a whole host of questions about how to cultivate good relationships. How do we connect in meaningful ways with people? And questions about purpose. What is meaningful work and how do we find or create it? How do we know what our purpose is? Or worse, what if we know our purpose(s) and can’t see how it could possibly ever support meeting our material needs?

Much of the reason driving this blog and my writings, are reflections on my experiences and experiments with striving for a live well lived. I’m so happy you’re joining me on this adventure, and I sure do hope you find some benefit here.

Photo Credit: jasoneppink