We are More Than Our Resumes

There are some things that resumes may reveal and much more that cannot be revealed.

On LinkedIn, I have seen some people foreground their Ivy-League professional certificate obtained after a few weeks, as if they received a four-year undergraduate or two-year graduate degree there; I get it, all in the hopes of catching a recruiter’s eye. This is still very much a credential-obsessed world we live in. Pedigree matters in many organizations.

I have also come across people who lie about their positions, having been terminated long past the date stated on their profiles.

What does this say about LinkedIn? It is a marketing tool that presents only a sliver of a person’s professional life.

Life is not a linear path, nor is one’s professional life. There will be gaps, changes and detours. Decisions sometimes have to be made unexpectedly. People take breaks to spend quality time with their newborn babies, to travel or to recoup.

When some people read my LinkedIn profile, what do they see? Probably that I’ve been moving around since I left Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).  Well, I left VCU to return to Singapore for about a year, because BOTH my parents passed away within a month of each other. I returned to Singapore to take care of estate matters. There are more stories I won’t tell here, suffice to say, some stories cannot be told openly.

I came across a tweet by Kristina Brant, which combined with some recent experiences of mine, inspired this blog post. She wrote about a postdoc position she finally received but which she turned down because she didn’t want to live 17 hours away from her husband. This lady has got it right. Kudos!

“We are more than our CVs.” – Kristina Brant

I am more than what my resume tells you.