Lose your job and you’re in a sea of choices – find a new one, take a sabbatical, go back to school. At some point, you’ll have to incorporate this time into your resume. What will you say?
11/08-11/09 Wanderer
11/08-11/09 Professional Period of Tumultuous Change
11.08-11/09 Manager of My Own Personal Loss
Say this transition time is a long one and next August you’re in a job interview. Will you offer a meticulous accounting of the bad days of the last eight months OR share how you discovered you really didn’t like your old job anyway? Will you present a sabbatical resume along with your professional resume?
An explanation – your story – of what you are in the midst of now will become part of your future.
Authors Ibarra and Lineback in What’s Your Story?,an article in the Harvard Business Review state that storytelling in times of personal transition has a role not only in your future professional resume and interviews but in your life. We all construct narratives about ourselves – where we’ve come from, where we’re going.
But the challenge of the transition story, with its inherent drama and discontinuity, is telling it with authenticity and meaning. Will you bare the emotions – vulnerability, sadness, relief, fear? How much emotion will make a compelling story?
And if you’ve decided to take a career break for some of this time, then how do you convey that you really did learn from your sabbatical and not just blow past eight months with zero outcomes? (The Sabbatical Resume – what is it, why you want one and how to write it – will be a part of future posts.)
For now, pay attention to the story you are creating. It will be your opportunity to tell a compelling story of transformation.
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