Your résumé tells me something about you?

First published in Italian on Purpletude on July 26th, 2019: https://purpletude.com/trovarelavoro/il-tuo-curriculum-mi-parla-di-te/

Statistics say that you find work mainly thanks to your relationships and to your network. This means that the emphasis is not so much on what we can do, but rather on who we are. Does your résumé answers to this questions? Does it really talks about us?

I've always considered sending résumés and monitoring of job advertisements as the main path to find a new job. In fact it is by means of a self-application that I found my first job.

From there on, everything was very confusing, but the thousands of CVs that I sent during the first years have been a huge waste of time: almost no answers, only a few interviews, no clear results.

I always gave the responsibility to my CV: too old, too low MS grade, experiencies in Companies that weren't too much known outside the local area; I questioned myself and gave myself and yo my past the responsibility of the failure.

Years passed, experiences accumulated, contact channels with Companies diversified: contacts between entrepreneurs, a good impression left in a previous interview, a common work experience, a friend or "competitor" who recommended my skills.

Somehow I've also seen the labour market change: more than on a specialization, they started to rely on the experience in different roles and sectors started, the nerve with which I use foreign languages even if I don't manage them to perfection, the energy with which I face new challenges.

This was the internal dialogue I had with myself, to convince myself, once more, that what didn't work in the past was my history, not my approach.

Then I started studying and I found myself faced with this amazing fact:

Italian Labour Market

Weight	Channel
33.1%	Friends, relatives, acquaintances
20.4%	Self-application (CV sending, direct contact with the Company,…)
9.9%	Contacts in the work environment
9.1%	Initiatives related to the start of an activity as self-employed
2.6%	Reading job vacancies in the press
3.4%	Job centers and other public services
5.6%	Temporary employment agencies
10.0%	Public tenders
3.7%	Schools, Universities and Training Institutes
1.4%	Recruiting Agencies
	source: ISFOL report 2016 on ISFOL Plus data 2014

Shocking: these are official data; ISFOL, now INAPP, is an emanation of the Ministry of Labour and it certifies that all that I believed was wrong: who I am, what I've done, how I introduce myself matters a lot more than what a recruiter can infer from my résumé.

Namely, this table certifies that human relationships, the network of contacts that I built up over the years, are fundamental; and for me, being over 50 years old, it's good news, because I had such a long time to build it.

Starting from this, I begin to review my beliefs and to ask myself further questions:

• how have I sowed over the years?
• how many people have I known who would show their faces to guarantee for me?
• what idea would have an entrepreneur meeting me?

To answer to these questions, I have to make an effort to put myself in their shoes:

• how would evaluate me a collegue I have worked with?
• how would talk about me a person with whom I got in touch while working?
• what is looking for the entrepreneur I'm addressing?

Preparing a cover letter, an elevator pitch, an effective résumé is giving an answer to these questions.

Here comes the first issue:
can I answer HONESTLY to these questions, and still have some possibilities, or do I have to work on myself?

My answer was, of course: "Roberto, you have to work on yourself":

If it is true that we are the average of the five people we hang out with the most, what effect did you have on the people around you? have you been able to point out a way to overcome the difficulties you were in or have you been a whining? have you been honest with customers and suppliers, even when things were bad? have they seen your commitment to improving the quality of their working lives? are you able to listen, giving at least the same importance of your ideas to the ideas of the people in front of you?

Surprisingly there is no tech knowledge, no hard skill, implied in these questions: the relationship with other people is mainly conveyed by soft skills, and only part of them can be conveyed by a CV: it is more important our storytelling ability about ourselves, about the relationships we had or the relationships we could have in the future, about what we are passionate of, about shared goals:

how can I tell you about us, if I don't know you?

Now I understand better why sending tons of CVs is like hoping to win a lottery: how can I tell you about us, if I treat you like anyone else, if I don't make an effort to know more about you, to build a relationship?

Today I'm looking at how we move on LinkedIn, the first-choice platform to look for work: what's the point of filling only the biography part, only the résumé? what's the point of posting the PDF version of your own CV? what's the point of begging for a job, any job?

I understand, I feel under my skin, the despair that is caused by suddenly finding yourself without a source of income. I empathize.

But I stopped fighting a useless battle: if you don't take charge of your Value, who will do it for you?