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Giulietta
Helping others find their true genius.
Challenger of assumptions. A believer in speaking one's truth. Karaoke queen. Essayist. Pianist. Painter. Explorette. Lover of animals, trees, travel, dark chocolate, Torch music and lending others a helping hand or two ... ...
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Tying Up Loose Beginnings

Friday, March, 21, 2008

I’m a bit exhausted today. Spent the evening at a public forum being a rebel with a cause. A good crowd showed up. One by one each of us stood up and spoke our truths, experiencing that bearable lightness of being. I left thinking I could fly! As a fellow resident said to me six years ago, “it’s only a democracy if we participate in it.” 

The Original Giulietta

With only one week of musing left, it seemed appropriate to cycle back to my first entry where I mentioned my grandmother Giulietta and ripping up my resume. I’ve been working on acquiring my dual Italian citizenship for six years. It’s taken extra long because I couldn’t find the date of my grandfather Filippo’s naturalization. I spent a lot of time on ancestry.com trying to track his arrival through Ellis Island.

After going down many dead ends and on the verge of giving up, his name appeared one day out of the cyber blue on a ship manifest page I’d never seen before. A miracle? I think so. One of the columns listed his naturalization date. I took this date and went to the closest national record archives. Churning through the microfilm, watching the lives of immigrants blur by, I stumbled on my grandmother’s! In a name changing instant, I learned that her real name wasn’t Julia it was Giulietta.

I’d been baptized Julianne and changed it to Julie and gone back to Julianne and then back to Julie, but I fell in love with the name Giulietta. It most resonates with the person I feel like inside.

Ripping Up Resumes

As for ripping up your resume, it will take courage to come up with your own format if you choose the traditional job route or no format if you try the self-employment route. What bothers me most about resumes is their excluding, generic nature. Based on what you state on a piece of paper you are sorted into a yes, no or maybe pile. A person’s self and business worth distilled down to a sterile 8.5 x 11 sheet devoid of real story. A resume expert advised me once to take off my hobbies because it wasn’t professional. “But that’s the only thing on this flimsy piece of paper that reveals in any way who I really am,” I cried.

Why do we continue with this soul-less practice? Just think of all the amazing people that get tossed into the no pile because their paper self doesn’t measure up. Almost everyone singing on American Idol this season, had a job before making it onto the show that would have been considered “menial.” Yet, here they are shining all over that enormous stage week after week, belting their dreams out. Years hence, will that experience fit onto a rigid 8.5 x 11? Probably not.

Does anyone out there have any new ideas for replacing resumes? Or should we be listing our true geniuses rather than our skills?

Muse thx

Giulietta


pink lizard
pink lizard
Posted Tue, 03/25/2008 - 14:55
Mm, I am with you, Guilietta, about tossing (no, let’s burn) those resume papers. I do like the personal essay approach that colleges use. At least there, you get a chance to show who you are beyond titles and test scores. Because we are so much more than a reduction of labels on a piece of paper. Anyway, love the blog. You’ve got a great conversational tone that is uplifting.
Giulietta
Giulietta
Posted Wed, 03/26/2008 - 10:10
Hi Pink Lizard! Great idea to use the personal essay approach when job hunting. A good platform for something a little more heartfelt. I know we are supposed to leave "heartfelt" at home, but maybe that's why so many people are miserable at work. I say bring heartfelt back to the workplace! thx for commenting. G.
sally
sally
Posted Sun, 03/23/2008 - 21:10
I think that many employers are losing faith in the resume. In some cases, candidates are being asked to "try out." One friend of mine who's a radio producer had to do this for a few days before getting hired, and it's not unusual to be called in to teach a class if you are interested in a teaching position for which there are a lot of candidates. Unfortunately, this can be a burden on applicants because some of them have other jobs and have to arrange time off. But it benefits the employer because they can take the applicant out for a test drive. In some professions, like writing, it's also "show, don't just tell." Send in a copy of previous work, or send the employer a link to your blog if you have one. You probably have to assume you're going to be googled, so watch what you post online. I agree with you that resumes are ineffective in representing a candidate for a position or assignment. I have recently updated mine, and it felt like what I have done in my past only scratches the surface of what I want to become and what I have to offer to an employer. You can shift the focus of your experience and skills to make yourself appealing for a certain profession, but in the long run, a resume serves mostly as a list of your work history and accounts for where you may have been physically at a certain time.
Giulietta
Giulietta
Posted Mon, 03/24/2008 - 08:07
Hi Sally, thanks for the interesting post! a test drive works both ways. when I first used to interview I didn't realize that interviews were two-way streets, that I was "checking them out" too. you're right on that a resume mainly accounts for your physical work whereabouts, when your emotional, spiritual and soulful sides dance elsewhere. Employers moving toward canning the resume also might consider moving toward a corporate work structure that makes it possible for the "whole" person to come to work. thx g.