Putting it all out there

One job type that I never look at is sales. Asking people for things is hard for me. If the specific goal is getting their money, that is even harder. (This is one reason that an agent would be a huge help.)

Selling yourself is part of job-hunting, and that particular aspect is difficult for me. I've never felt that I look good on paper, going back to when it was time to apply for college scholarships and I discovered that I had done my high school activities all wrong. That some of the best things I have done in most jobs have been outside of the regular job description has contributed. There are various positions that I can fill, despite having no history of it. Realistically, the lay off was a big blow to my self-esteem as well.

There was an exercise that I did to remind myself of what I was capable of, and what examples I could use for backup. I had been looking at transferable skills, and I decided to do a journal session telling my career history as a story. How did I find each job? What was it like there? Why did I leave? Often there were direct connections between jobs, especially for my Intel time. I left nothing out. I even wrote about my early time babysitting and picking berries, followed by sports jobs, all of which happened before McDonalds.

Some threads emerged. Yes, I found myself remembering things I had done and am capable of doing that I hadn't thought about for a while. That was useful for resume building and my LinkedIn profile.

I think it was even more useful to remember that I am competent and responsible. My job has never been the most important thing in my life, but I still do it well. People trusted me and gave me extra responsibility. When contract rules created time limits, people looked for ways to keep me. They believed I could do things that were new but built on what I had been doing. And they were right.

Let me add a couple of notes to that. Anyone who follows me regularly knows that writing comes very naturally to me. It's how I work things out in general, so there's no surprise when I turn to it for something like this. If that doesn't work for you, other things can.

I have a friend who needs to be talking to someone else to work things out. If that's what you need, there's probably a friend you can talk to. There are career and life coaches if you need it to be more formal.

If that doesn't sound right for you, try drawing your work history as a timeline and adding graphs. Chart out your skills as a map. There will be a way of tackling things that is more effective for you, and there is a lot of value in finding it.

The other thing that has been very helpful is that a long time ago I wrote up a list of jobs and kept adding to it.

Resumes would have a lot of information, but not everything that gets asked on a job application. It is common to be asked for addresses and phone numbers, and sometimes for supervisor names and starting and ending wages as well. That has been a very helpful reference all along, but it served as a good job for my memory as well. If you don't have something like that, think about creating one. Fifteen years later it can be hard to remember a supervisor's name.