Over 10 years ago, when I was leaving school to search for a job, the tradition was to tidy up one’s resume and look for places to send it.
It was a nerve-wrecking process.
How would one know what to put down on a resume without an idea of where it was going to end up? There was no way to tell, because job listings would pop up anywhere – among friends, on job sites, in the news – so we had to be ready to send at will.
As a result, these resumes had to embody a jack of all trades, basically stating “Yes I’ll get anything done!”.
The results were bad.
I remember applying to over 100 job listings only to score a total of 3 interviews, and eventually 1 job. That’s less than 1% conversion for all the effort!
I’m thankful for that one job, but a decade later, I think this is the wrong way to apply for jobs. The world has changed, and with it, so have employers and the skills required to make meaningful impact. I still believe in the resume, but I advise anyone who applies for jobs today by overworking their resume and sending it en masse to several jobs at once to wake up and smell the coffee.
I recommend three things you need to do consciously while you are applying for jobs: You need to talk to many people, try out ideas yourself and formulate a worldview.
Talk to many people
Do not mistake this for needing to be talkative. Everyone communicates. I am just suggesting you communicate with many different people.
For example, you could start with your closest family member and ask them their opinion on a latest news story. Then ask a friend outside your family about their opinion. Try a third person, perhaps a neighbour. Sooner or later, you will find yourself forming your own opinion, and it will get sharper the more opinions you hear.
Regardless of your personal opinions on the kind of people you like, or the kind of people you don’t like, you’ll have to interact with all kinds of people at your future job.
Yes, sometimes, your job will require you to do things you do not enjoy doing. But, in the interest of another party – your boss, your customer, your team mates – you’ll have to get it done.
So talk to many people; learn various perspectives; be comfortable in having conversations about topics you’re not very knowledgeable about. This will help you prepare for a job, and it will present itself as confidence and open-mindedness when you are being interviewed.
Try to do things yourself
All organizations that hire people started with an idea. The idea grew within one person or a group of people, and went through at least one iteration of a trial in real life. And because at least one of these trials worked, the organization grew the capability to hire others.
The best way to see what your future job might be like is to try it yourself.
For instance, if you see yourself working at a bank, visit a few branches and watch how different employees do their work (try not to look suspicious though). Then go home, or visit a friend, and role play scenarios with yourself playing a bank employee. Done repeatedly, you are bound to find activities you had not thought about yet, or ways in which different bank employees can do their job better.
Other ways to try things yourself are to adopt a new hobby, volunteering your time or knowledge with communities, or start your own organisation.
Don’t tell yourself that trials are impossible because you don’t have the capital, or the skill, or the connections. Many companies started without these, and besides, what’s a thought experiment with a friend or family member going to cost you?
Have a worldview
Nobody tells you this in school, but it’s probably the most important lesson I learned from employment.
A worldview is exactly what is sounds like: It’s how you view the world. Not just how you view if physically in terms of its minerals, colours, rotation around the sun, etc. But also how you view the way we work as society; what makes people do the things they do; what shapes our beliefs, actions and incentives.
You might have one worldview today, and change it tomorrow based on anything new you discover. The important part is to think seriously about one and have it, like your resume.
Why? Well, the truth is, organisations are like people. They have their own worldview, and subsequently their own goals.
Sidenote: Organizations are registered in society very similarly to people, even though an organization is not a living thing.
There is a lot of literature about how organisations should pay more attention to their employees’ perspectives, but when investors are waiting for a bottom line, it’s difficult to work against many goals.
So having a worldview helps you situate your ideas against those of the organisation you will work in. They might match, in which case, you’ll probably have a lot of good days, or they might not match, in which case you will likely have difficult days. And you may accept a job based on other incentives that are different from your worldview. But that is a decision consciously made rather than one accidentally made.
Assume that everyone around you has a worldview as well. Some people know, some people don’t, but the more you are aware about your worldview, the more you will be able to accept various perspectives.
It is this ability to see and respect different perspectives that is precious in today’s world.
My objective here is to make you more conscious about applying to jobs.
A job should not only be about paying rent. It should also be an intentional effort to join a way of thinking, or a way of doing, to nudge society’s progress.
If you talk to more people, try things yourself, and have a worldview – all of which are free! – I am confident your resume will speak for itself and you’ll be knocking on doors that mean something greater to you.
And you’ll be unlike me, 10 years ago, bulk-sending a piece of paper to people who could not relate to it!
Header photo by Ritesh Arya from Pexels
