Resume advice you never hear

When I had my second son, I had a nervous breakdown. I’m not sure exactly what the cause was. But things were bad. I had a three-year-old with autism, a baby with a facial deformity that required a team of ten different types of doctors, and no family helping me, and I didn’t take maternity leave.

This is what happened: I put a knife in my head. It’s a weird thing about the knife. A knife can’t get very far in one’s head. The head is protected. But there was enough blood that my husband and I decided I needed to go to the emergency room.

I took the baby with me. That’s what I called him: The baby. He was very new, and I was having trouble bonding. So I never let him out of my sight in the hope that physical proximity would promote emotional closeness.

The hospital in Brooklyn was well versed in post-partum depression. There was no wait to get into the emergency room. There was a social worker waiting for me next to a bed in a little room formed by large curtains on three sides.

We talked about the possibility of going to the mental ward. “You need a break,” she said. “You need some support.”

“Okay,” I said. Because I realized, when she said that, that I did want a break. Then I said, “I’ll take the baby with me.”

“You can’t. Can you leave him with a family member?”

“I have to breastfeed or I’ll lose my milk.”

She said, “You can pump.”

“No. I need to keep the baby. I need to bond. Look at his face. He’s deformed.”

She looked.

Then the social worker left. She came back with another social worker.

The new social worker asked me how I am feeling.

I took this to mean that she was going to tell me something bad. People do not ask you how you’re feeling if you are feeling bad unless they are about to make you feel worse.

She said, “We can’t have a baby in the mental ward. It’s not safe. It’s not set up for babies.”

I didn’t just cry. I started convulsing. I think it was the fact that I thought I was about to get help and rest and now it seemed like I could have nothing.

The first social worker stayed. The second social worker left. The first social worker said things to me to reassure me that the second social worker was negotiating.

The baby was asleep in my lap. I sat cross-legged on the bed, starring at the wall for maybe an hour. Or ten minutes. Time was irrelevant at that point in my life because I had no idea where I was or where I was going or what I was doing. I was just trying to keep my kids safe, minute to minute.

The social worker came back and told me that they decided they would not admit me to the hospital, because then they would have to give me a room in the mental ward. Instead they would keep me in the emergency room. Right here. For as long as they thought I needed help to be safe.

I laid back and went to sleep.

I woke up to the baby crying and the social worker right there, next to me.

Days passed.

The hospital helped me make a plan. They told me I was probably not safe to be alone with the baby for at least a month.

I used a credit card to pay a nanny agency to be in the house all the time while my husband took my other son to 40 hours of therapy a week. This was not a good time in our lives. Our credit never recovered.

Here’s how this matters for your resume:

Ask me if I went to the mental ward. Is the answer yes or no?

I could say no. That would be, technically true. But the answer you are looking for really would be the answer to the question: did you ever have a breakdown that required serious help at the hospital level? And the answer to that would be yes. So I could answer yes or no to that question, and both answers would be true. It would be hard to call me a liar either way.

So it’s fair that I give the answer that is best for me in the situation I’m in. Life is messy and it is not black and white. There is no single, correct story about your life. Because each moment, in each person’s life, has multiple versions, all true.

The biggest problem people have when they are changing careers, or moving up the ladder, or re-entering the workforce, is that they cannot imagine telling a completely different story about themselves than they have been telling for the last ten years.

Did you know that my resume can tell the story of me as a writer or me as an operations genius? I don’t like operations, but if I had to get a job in operations, I could write my resume to indicate that operations has been my focus for the last fifteen years. And I wouldn’t have any lies on my resume. I’d just frame the truth in a different way.

The Farmer learned this quickly, when I started writing about him. He was engaged to a mail-order bride, he was basically living at his parents, he was lost and sad and anxious.

When I wrote the first few stories about him, he got nervous. He told me, “I don’t want people to get the wrong idea.” And then he dumped me.

But the truth is that all stories are the wrong idea. Because every summary of every part of your life could be a totally different summary as well. And be equally true.

We got back together, of course. And people ask me how the Farmer can cope with me writing everything about our life. They ask how he can cope with no privacy. But he has tons of privacy. He has his own story of our life that is true for him, and that is private for him. He doesn’t ever think I lie on my blog. He thinks I tell my story — in the words and the pictures.

So here is a five-step resume plan for you to take control of your story:

1. Figure out where you want to be in your career right now, this moment.

2. Look back on all of your life and pull out the tidbits of your life that somehow relate to what you want to be doing now.

3. Get rid of everything on your resume that does not relate to what you want to do now.

4. Make a story that explains the way you got from one moment to the next moment in your life where you were doing what you want to be doing now.

5. Once you can tell the story verbally, have a resume writer help you build a resume that tells that story in resume format in a compelling way.

The most important thing about a career is that it is a tool to create a vibrant future. Your career is a mutable, dynamic story that you control. If you cannot tell stories about yourself from multiple angles, then the single story you have on that paper controls the rest of your life. You deserve more than that.

 

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  2. Mados
    Mados says:

    This is the best post and best advice I have read on this blog, and I think this sentence alone is the best & most poetic resume-advice I’ve ever come across:

    “Your career is a mutable, dynamic story that you control.”

    And more gold:

    “There is no single, correct story about your life. Because each moment, in each person's life, has multiple versions, all true.”

    “The most important thing about a career is that it is a tool to create a vibrant future. ”

    “But the truth is that all stories are the wrong idea. Because every summary of every part of your life could be a totally different summary as well. And be equally true.”

    and the five-step resume plan… excellent!

  3. Dee
    Dee says:

    Sometimes I find reading your blog posts to be disconcerting and I don’t know what to make of them. I consider unsubscribing. And then I find the nuggets of gold and I realize, I don’t want to miss any. Like this post. So, I will keep reading every single one. 

  6. Pete Raúl
    Pete Raúl says:

    Great, i’m about to enter the workforce after a well-deserved six month break and this is just the type of post that i was looking for, it will definitely help put things in perspective for my employer.

  7. Sienna
    Sienna says:

    Brilliant Pen. Thanks. I loved this line: Because each moment, in each person's life, has multiple versions, all true.

  8. Dannielle
    Dannielle says:

    Penelope, 
    Just chiming in to say, once again, that you are the best writer ever. I actually read this post out loud to my daughter to explain what good writing is. I don’t really care about the other stuff anymore, though your resume advice is helpful and your personal life is interesting. You are just an absolute genius. From a Jewish perspective I think this is your gift to the world, to share the way you do in this unique forum. Shana Tova (Happy Jewish New Year) and may G-d bless you and your family with peace, love, good health and financial security.
    Dannielle

  9. Dannielle
    Dannielle says:

    Penelope, 
    Just chiming in to say, once again, that you are the best writer ever. I actually read this post out loud to my daughter to explain what good writing is. I don’t really care about the other stuff anymore, though your resume advice is helpful and your personal life is interesting. You are just an absolute genius. From a Jewish perspective I think this is your gift to the world, to share the way you do in this unique forum. Shana Tova (Happy Jewish New Year) and may G-d bless you and your family with peace, love, good health and financial security.
    Dannielle

  10. Kym
    Kym says:

    I would like to know who or whom you would recommend as a resume writer. This post really struck a cord and makes a lot of sense. After being off of work for 2 years, the wheels in motion are hard to get back on the track. 

  12. Adrianna
    Adrianna says:

    dearlisarudgers.com/

    a resume for the age of social media. thought you might appreciate. 

    she was offered an interview less than twelve hours after launching the site. 

  20. Sharon levine
    Sharon levine says:

    Love your story about baby and the mental ward.  Institutions are run for their own convenience.  D. Underwood reccommended your blog.  Which I will now follow.  You might like my Kindle book “What Were You Thinking”, and my Montana blog:  http://montanaair.blogspot.com.  Love your writing.  It’s real!

  22. m
    m says:

    Two years ago, when visiting Penelope’s blog for the first time, I spent an entire day (or two) reading most of the posts on it. I even read her student thesis/project on sex or whatever it was! ha. It was interesting and enlightening to get that overview of her output, and although I didn’t agree with all her beliefs and behaviors (which is the same that I’d find with any other individual in the world, of course), I got the feeling that at least she wasn’t boring, nor afraid to reveal messy, unflattering information, and I also got the feeling that she genuinely wanted to help people by giving them advice, and telling some truths as she saw them.
    Except for following a link from an external site about 6 months ago to read her brave post about how annoying and incorrect Tim Ferriss is (which I recall completely agreeing with), I hadn’t visited Penelope’s blog since my first in-depth visit — until a few days ago, when I saw her site listed in a blogroll sidebar and thought, “Hey, I wonder what she’s up to these days!”
    I clicked on over, and have now read a few random posts from recent months, but I haven’t quite figured out what is going on with her, although it seems that there are some difficulties occurring in her home life. I checked out the specific area of the site devoted to The Farmer but it seems not to have been updated for a really long time (which is fine, it’s her call).
    I’m sorry to hear there have been problems in her family, and I’m glad that she’s still blogging and has many, many followers, some of whom appear caring and kind in their comments, which surely must be a welcome support to Penelope.
    Then I made a longish comment on one of her posts from last week, and I visited that comments section tonight to see if anyone had replied to mine — but I got waylaid into reading other people’s comments there and got annoyed with some irritating folks who expressed narrow-minded, ignorant, or just-plain-mixed-up views, so I started to reply to a few of them, and then I had to tell myself to step back because it’s not my business or my place to get p.o.’ed at some of the more annoying/backwards views that were expressed!
    It must be difficult to have a blog and to receive nasty, biting, stupid, misinformed, or whatever comments from people who can hide behind anonymity or in the faceless population of the internet. I am not so sure that I would let some of these personal “digs” remain visible, if it were my blog. [But I don’t have a blog, because I value my privacy. :-) ]
    I just wanted to say that it is really brave of Penelope to leave certain ill-feeling’d and barbed comments here. I gather that she does read many of the comments (because she’ll reply to one every now and again), and it must be unpleasant to be criticized and attacked on a personal level. It’s her “show” and she could delete or censor them if she wanted to.
    I also want to say — and I don’t know if she has Asperger’s or not – I haven’t read many of her writings on that issue, and I don’t know much about the condition — but what I have read and can believe 100% is that a highly-functioning Asperger’s person, especially a female, is apparently much different from a typical autistic male. A couple of years ago, I mentioned to a medical doctor whom I had dated for a couple of months that I wondered if I had some kind of high-functioning Asperger’s, and he drew a sharp intake of breath and looked at me in amazement, and it was obvious that he’d thought the same thing about me, but hadn’t wanted to say anything. I do get people, especially run-of-the-mill, petty, average, envious women, who accuse me of being highly manipulative and incredibly strategic and not as innocent as I appear — they watch what I do and say and interpret it in a paranoid way. Mainly, they are totally wrong, because I am just being myself authentically, and I’m a kind, thoughtful person who keeps to herself and doesn’t want to manipulate anyone. However, I do have the intelligence and perception and education to be effectively manipulative *if I wanted to be*. The facts that I *choose* not to do that (sometimes at a cost to myself) and am a really good person at heart are often recognized more by men than women, especially smart, mature men.
    I suppose that publishing articles about complicated, sometimes-unflattering, emotional situations that happen to oneself and allowing all and sundry to comment on them is “asking” for armchair psychoanalysts to speculate unkindly and often without any authority, training, or perspective.
    One of the good things about how mobile and detached and fragmented American society is (and there are many bad aspects to it) is that such old biddies can’t control one’s existence, can’t take it upon themselves to define and judge other people in the same way they could when folks were stuck living in small communities in the back of beyond for their whole lives.
    (Sorry if this is incoherent — I’ve just been woken up from a feverish nap by a loud noise and I’m pretty discombobulated.)
    Take care, person whose nom de plume is Penelope. You have a lot of great things going for you and a lot of options.
    You are right to recognize that your observations and behaviors are filtered through a somewhat distorted lens (as experienced by all of us, in different ways). It is difficult to be talented and complex and moderately “powerful” and a teeny bit crazy, and women who are like that are often mistrusted and disliked out of all proportion.

  23. Chris
    Chris says:

    Thanks for the wonderful post and story. My mother had a nervous breakdown when I was only six after her father passed away. To some extent, she never truly recovered. And as a young boy, some of her behaviors transferred to me. That was a while ago but it shows how our children are like little sponges and absorb our qualities.
    Thanks again for the read.

  24. Ed V
    Ed V says:

    I came looking for advice I could actually apply to something as serious as my resume. What I got is a hormoned charged response to child bearing with twist and turns about your personal pyschological dillemmas, and self-centered belief that you saved “The Farmer” from his sad anxious world. Did you ever think he just liked a piece of that city folk a–, more than just once. I basically just wasted my time, and can honestly say I am coming away with nothing I can really use. “The most important thing about a career is that it is a tool to create a vibrant future” sound to me like just B.S. Maybe you are just channeling some of that stuff you may have gotten in your extended stay at the emergency room. But thanks anyway.Hoping you are feeling better..

  25. Joe Wright
    Joe Wright says:

    Penelope,

    I’ve read this post probably a million times since I started reading your blog about 4 years ago. This is one of my favorites.

    Every time someone asks me about my career or what the next step is for me in a job, I think about this post. I guess I connect with what you are saying so much because my dad is a writer and I grew up appreciating what it means to tell a good story.

    So whenever I’m taking the next step, like right now, I read this post and it reminds me that their are multiple versions of my story. And I need to pick the one that is relevant to where I want to be tomorrow.

  27. Sharon
    Sharon says:

    Great tips! Also remember to update your LinkedIn Profile to accurately display all of your accomplishments. Your résumé is the outline; your LinkedIn profile is a complete list of all tasks and skills you have ever required.

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