Co-crafting Resumés
I had a wonderful experience this week & I’d like to share it with fellow leaders out there. So, two questions for you:
- Do you know what’s on each member of your team’s CVs/resumés? Or is the only time you saw the content when you hired them?
- Does the thought of updating your people’s CVs/resumés with them, & making them as awesome as possible for their next employer, fill you with joy or horror?
At Tao, part of our mission ‘to bring dignity, belonging & ass-kicking performance to every workplace‘ includes finding major investment/acquisition partners to scale our tech-driven offering that delivers culture change in 12 weeks. In preparation for that, we need to have up to date CVs/resumés for each team member.
Honestly...the trigger to craft these with each employee was actuallydriven by the terrifying thought of having 11 differently branded CVs/resumés, creating a cognitive disfluency for potential investors ??. So, I created one branded template for each of us to use, to deliver a consistent experience.
In case any of you are squirming at this point, & saying, “We’re not looking for investors, we’re regular organisational leaders,” please bear with me & perhaps consider a cornerstone belief I hold:
“We have to expect our people to leave at some point, & more than that, we have a responsibility as leaders to help them prepare for their next role.”
That means talking about their aspirations with them, mentoring, coaching, funding their development &, yes, helping them polish their CV/resumé to give them the best chance of realising their career ambitions.
Because the ‘War for Talent’ is real, especially in the tech sector. Get more than a couple of years service from someone & you’re doing well. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn founder, writes about this attitude in superb detail in his book ‘The Alliance’. I’d encourage you to read it cover to cover. I’ve placed the Slideshare below. The essence is thinking of the relationship as an equal partnership or alliance, preparing them for their next employer but doing as much as possible to keep them engaged so they stay.
Co-crafting a CV/resumé with your people can be a great experience for increasing trust, transparency, & engagement. You can go a step further by repurposing the content you write about them as a LinkedIn recommendation, since LinkedIn is their online CV/resumé.
In the spirit of transparency, here’s an example of one of my team, Marcus, (with his permission) so you can see how we co-crafted the CV/resumé to help each team member shine as a professional & as a person. Both pages were a collaboration. I wanted the new CV/resumé to be something each team member could be proud of.
Talking Point: What do you think about co-crafting CVs/resumés?
Thanks for reading. I’d be delighted to hear your positive & constructive thoughts about this process.
