The Project Update

People are asking me how The Project is going. They correctly guess that I am further along in the process than I have written about. The result will no doubt dictate how I want to portray the experience, so the lead-time is a necessity, but I can relate a few things.

I declare The Project a success even before it is over. Even if I fail to find my dream job, and must take something less than ideal, the search is worthwhile. It’s surprising how far you can travel down a path you have not chosen. Stopping to inspect your surroundings and select a direction is immensely valuable and important. I won’t belabor the Robert Frost imagery any further, my point is that you rarely ask fundamental questions of yourself about what you want and what makes you happy. Work, school, and the kids’ soccer practice will quickly eat away the decades if you never stop to look up. I am happy I did.

The objective of What Color Is Your Parachute is to create the One Piece Of Paper. It’s you distilled down to your essence and put on a single sheet of paper. I took the process one step further and converted the resulting diagram into a resume of sorts. It contains the entire contents of my old resume in a single line, “Civil Engineer with thirteen years of experience managing projects in commercial construction, environmental contamination, and software design totaling more than 11.5 million dollars.” The old version spent two pages saying the same thing by listing my work history and detailing my activities with bullet points, and it was as boring as you can imagine that would be. What I have now is a far better representation and I am immensely pleased with the result.

The actual job search has begun. In addition to listing my skills my resume contains words like love, friendship, and fun. I have given it to a small group of business people in search for a job thus far, and the reactions have been varied. Predictably, I received the comments you would naturally fear when handing such a document to a potential employer, “That’s great you value kindness, but, um, times are tough, you may want to be a little more practical.” As you can imagine, this is very disheartening, but to my surprise and delight, my resume has also resulted in some very positive reactions. There are those that find it imaginative and unique, and they enjoy meeting the person who wrote it. What results I obtain have not been determined, but I feel optimistic.

As the results of my Project unfold for me I will continue to let you know how it goes by letting you in on my job search methods, my resume, my One Sheet Of Paper, and ultimately I will let you know how it all turned out.