I’ve sometimes had ideas about unique and engaging ways to represent my experience that doesn’t look like everyone else’s and allows me to tell a fuller, more descriptive story…while sticking to the same broad visual design of the standard resume. First some info that will set the scene…

I am a card-carrying Librarian with a capital “L”. That means I have the requisite terminal degree in my field of practice–the Master of Library Science degree–that allows me to legitimately call myself a Librarian. I focus primarily in scholarly institutions, so far entirely higher education.

In higher education, for professional positions that require certain levels of education (like Professor and Librarian at all ranks) we don’t follow the business-minded standards for resumes: one-page, education first, bulleted list of work done at a job. Professors tend to follow the Curriculum Vita standards of many pages (sometimes upwards of 15?), listing ranks and topics first (without details), followed by education, and detailed lists of accomplishments in research, teaching, and service. Librarians tend to follow a bastardized hybrid of the two, with 2+ pages (but 7 is a bit much) listing job titles/topics with bulleted lists of the work done (usually matching the official job description) followed by education, and lists of professional service and professional engagement.

It’s the bulleted lists, or something that looks more like a paragraph with list elements separated by semicolons instead, that I first considered changing.

When you apply for jobs with the federal government, such as in the Library of Congress or library jobs in the Department of Defense, you complete a multiple-choice form in which you have to justify your choice in a narrative form. The narrative can be up to something like 10,000 characters, which is no small feat in writing, and equates to a couple of cover letters. You cannot simply write “See resume” either. Multiply that by 10-15 multiple-choice questions, and you end up writing a book to apply for a job. I think of it like writing 10-15 cover letters.

As I thought through the exercise, I realized it was nice to be able to provide more detail about my experiences and tell the story of each more fully. So, I tried it out on my “resume” using short narrations instead of bulleted lists. Though I didn’t get that particular job, this exercise took place during the COVID-19 pandemic when social media was flooded with stories from nurses facing deadly situations and often framing the stories within the ideas of “other duties as assigned” and “above and beyond.” I started to think about that in terms of applying for jobs–would it be beneficial for a nurse to, instead of listing the bullet points of a nursing job (which I imagine are standard enough to be assumed), tell the part of their story that goes above and beyond? Is that what would make them stand out? Is that what would make me stand out?

I keep an exhaustive resume-style vita from which I copy and paste pertinent content into a resume/CV that is tailored for a certain position. In that exhaustive form, I maintain both updated bulleted lists of responsibilities and narrative descriptions of the work, including the “above and beyond” in both.

However, since my day-to-day has primarily been in the back room part of librarianship (traditional library cataloging in a technical services department) so much of my exhaustive resume does not apply to that kind of job. I happen to do the things I want to do and that interest me, and quite often those things are not contained within the job description; not even the “other duties as assigned” because they are my choice, not assigned to me.

Now, I am exploring a way to visualize my experience, taking a more birds-eye view that shows the extent of my reach in the field. I have begun to think of what I’ve done based on the physical location of the actions, and how wide-spread that is. If I envision a whole library, I can see myself throughout the building, not just in one office or one department. So why not show others what i see? I’ve experimented with this and my experiment can be found on the CV page of my website.

There are times when I talk about my broader experiences in conversation and I can tell by the facial expressions of others that they don’t believe me or that they assume I’m exaggerating. And when I think about it, I realize it’s others’ limitations that prevent them from doing more and being more. I don’t doubt that I have been unwittingly ignored for positions for which I am highly qualified with extensive experience simply because what I say I’ve done doesn’t jive with the narrow view others have of my job title. For those who may believe what I say I’ve done but still push me out, there is likely a feeling of inadequacy because they can’t even fulfill their responsibilities much less more than that.

But it’s not me, it’s them. Basically, I feel like my life is the plot of the movie Big Fish, and when my time comes, folks will come from all walks of my life and realize the magnitude of my truth.

It’s my story to tell, I’ll tell it how I want.

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Disclaimer:
All words and images are my own. If they are not, they are cited as such to give proper attribution to the intellectual property owners.
No words or images reflect the opinions or viewpoints of my current, former, or future employers and educational institutions. They are from my own viewpoint.