If My Resume Had Alt text

the alternative title for this post was:

Wanted:
A career in a position with
amazing coworkers,
incredible benefits,
and tons of learning opportunities.

Well, I am sad to say that the last contract has ended, leaving me looking for a job, once again. This has put me in a crazy mood, reminiscing about the jobs I’ve had, giving them all human names, as if they were people I had once gone on boozy lunches with, rather than just dusty old “job titles” at “companies” paying me “salaries.”

This time around, while writing up my updated resume and looking back on my career, my jobs took on personalities of their own, and rather than listing them as “positions in which I helped a company grow and improve and succeed,” I had fun thinking of names that sort of described with the companies as I remembered them. I think of this post as the “alt text” for my actual resume - or maybe just “the interesting, narrative version of the resume, focusing on what I thought about the whole experience rather than just listing company names.

Karen

This most recent job was 15 months in Marketing, during which I exercised my managerial and creative experience. It was a confidence-building, emotional intelligence experiment in which they let me build a really fun creative department and process from the ground up. I was surprised that it wasn’t as daunting as it would have been if I had been told at the beginning: “Hey, let me tell you what you’re gonna end up doing for us.”

Trevor

This gig was cool. 9-months in a gaming production contract, working with constant change and great people, and truly a learning experience. I learned so much about alternative versions of production and the ever-changing needs of a HUGE gaming company - thanks to my teammates, I made the crossover from “creative producer” to “marketing producer” to “games producer” and back several times, due to changes within the various departments and my willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

MABEL

My long-term career position that ended up being my Covid-19 Layoff Job, “Mabel” brought me 9 years of consistency, collaborative support, and creative mentorship in an advertising agency, working with a very diverse group of creative people, developers, engineers, all working together to create thousands of interactive digital projects. I am really proud of the work I did here, and wish I had kept a portfolio of each of the clients I worked on as a producer - the range of templates I adapted with the art directors was dizzying, and rather than having the images, or the 1000 words to describe, I will just say that I was happy to have been a valuable contributor to the successful consistency in design and brand identity.

Madison

“The Company that I loved so much, they had to drag me out when it folded.” - in which I built thousands of websites with gorgeous images and incredible writing every day for 6 years. I loved participating in daily editorial meetings with an amazingly smart and popular-culture-saturated team - this was the best job I’ve had so far - I will always treasure the people I met there and the nuances of design, culture, tact, and grace that I learned from my coworkers.

THE FUTURE Job - To Be Named

What will the next job be? My hopeful request to the job gods is that it will be a long-term, life-changing experience with amazing coworkers, incredible benefits, and constant learning opportunities.

(And as a hopeful request to the job gods, I mean this “as a part of the hard work I am putting in to find, apply for, interview, and (soon) land a new job.”)

I am looking. And networking. And, despite being unemployed, I am paying back to the job search karma gods by helping fellow unemployed people however I can.

Let’s meet up for a drink and a chat - we can connect on LinkedIn and I’ll send you my resume, in case you hear of any good leads in the meantime. I promise to do the same for you.