WHY THE RESUME DOES A DISSERVICE TO WHO YOU ARE

I have been working on building the perfect resume for more than 30 years and have come to the harsh realization that no matter how much I tweak it, it will never come close to telling the story of who I really am.

So, several years ago, I started writing a list of ‘100 interesting things’ that people generally don’t know about me that would add texture to my resume.  I initially started doing this because I didn’t want to forget these things as I got older, but it was also to show that I am more than a checklist of titles, degrees, and accomplishments.  A resume boils down your experience to a predictable list of ingredients which leaves little room for anything that could appear to be whimsical.

Obviously, there are multiple lists that we could all write, and some of them are probably best left to funny stories that you would only tell your spouse or closest of friends.  Other lists are probably better suited for that roast that you secretly hope to have thrown for you one day.  In my case, this list shows the creative, adventurous, vulnerable aspects of my life that my resume is devoid of, but which reveal a fuller picture of the employee that my next employer will hire.

For example:

I love to ski, and a few years ago, finally broke the 60 mph barrier while on a ski trip to Crested Butte, CO with my neurologist and a bunch of his patients who have multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injuries.  I have lived with MS since 2000 and am a better man for it because it gave me a degree of empathy that I would never have had without knowing what it is like to live with a disability.

I used to play the tenor saxophone, and in 1999, during a Southern Governors’ Association conference in Memphis, TN, I sat in with B.B. King’s house band at his club on Beale Street where I played ‘Mustang Sally’ and gave the best performance of my life.  The next evening, I ended up being the guest performer for the SGA closing banquet where former Governor Mike Huckabee’s band ‘Capitol Offence’ was playing. 

My first job was working as a game room attendant at Showbiz Pizza in Marietta, GA, a restaurant very much like Chuck E. Cheese. I eventually moved up to being the guy who operated the show (the animatronic characters) and did some of the voice-overs, but would also do a ‘Blue Show’ after we closed.  My co-workers thought that was hilarious.  The manager, however, was not a fan.  And so ended my career in robotics…

I skipped the second grade when I lived in New Jersey, so when it came time for me to graduate high school in Georgia, I wanted to stay an additional year because I loved our band program THAT much. At my high school, being in the marching band was cooler than being on the football team.  Having a band with 275 people that marched classical music (Holst’s ‘The Planets’ was my favorite) which was ranked among the Top 10 in the country had something to do with that.  Alfred Watkins, the legendary director of bands at Lassiter High School, is the ‘Tom Landry’ of band directors and a man whom I will forever be grateful to for teaching me what servant leadership really looks like.

So, while I am proud of my resume and understand what it says about my career, it doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the man behind the titles. Maybe that is what is missing from a successful job search these days?