Tag: Development

Working Content & Happy

With Covid-19 hitting the world hard in 2020 and still feeling its effects in 2021 I took a hiatus from my career planning and job searching. I did not feel it was the right time to up-end a large portion of my life with so many other things in flux.

Now that things are starting to get back on track, I have opened my career “folder” yet again and back to some career soul searching. Although many things have remained constant since I started to seriously consider a career change many have also sprung forth such as my ever more fervent desire to work remotely, solidly identify with a company’s value pillars and culture, and want to bring in an international component to a future endeavour.

To better organize things this time around I have taken a step back to help better define exactly what it is that I am looking for. With so many varied interests there are many things that I find appealing about a number of jobs or careers for that matter.

As I sought to focus my interests an idea came to mind. Instead, of just writing a resume/cv focused on my results, responsibilities, and the usual stuff, I started to rewrite what I would call an “Enjoyment Resume”.

Pure Enjoyment
Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

What an “Enjoyment Resume” is to me is going through each job that I have had and identify what it was that I really enjoyed doing in that role or at that company. As I started to go through my nearly 20+ year career I began to notice some trends. Some of these included: love to work on varied projects, seem to prefer a smaller company so I can wear many hats, found happiness in working with people from all over the world, loved more strategic and “big picture” work as opposed to more detail-oriented.

Now with this information on hand, I feel that I have a much better sense of who I am in a professional sense and just exactly what type of role and where I am the best fit moving forward in my career.

Can’t wait to get started. So if you are feeling stuck in your career search give an “enjoyment resume” a chance and perhaps you will find it as helpful as I did.

I Have Changed…for the Better

The end of 2020 allowed me some moments to take a step back from the world and reflect and what was happening to me. Many things were positive but I was mostly disappointed with my professional career and development.

I am a frustrated internationalist stuck in a role for a mid-sized upper-midwest based company. I have been spinning my wheels for the last 4 years trying to make things stick but I am not being true to myself. Currently, I am misfit and poorly cast in a role that does not suit me and even worse, does not benefit the company I work for in any beneficial way. I have sat on my ass for too long and it is beyond time that I start taking an interest in myself and what I want to do instead of living in fear of others and of the unknown. I know that I have the tools, the knowledge and the experience to make it work. I need to find the right fit and I know I can succeed.

Now the task is to make these realizations more of a reality. Here is to 2021!