A résumé for each job

QUESTION: I am now in a position where I’m doing more than one job. I would like to write a new résumé, but I am having a little difficulty. Should I do a résumé for each one, or will only one do? What is the standard for these many jobs? Thank you in advance. – Kirk

CAREERS: Thank you for your question. This situation is becoming more common. You have to become more able to adapt to different career structures. We will look at whether a blanket résumé will do, but let us deal with the reality of having to do more than one job.

You may be doing two parttime jobs instead of the usual one full-time one. You may be self-employed and also doing a part-time job. Or you may have a full-time job and also freelance in your own time. You didn’t say which combination of work arrangement you are in.

You may be aware of what is known as a portfolio worker — you might be one. A ‘portfolio’ worker — popularised by management expert Charles Handy — refers to someone who, “rather than looking for a corporate ladder to climb or a professional trajectory to follow, he or she develops a product, skill, or service, assembles a portfolio that illustrates these assets, and then goes out and finds customers for them”.

Handy writes about portfolio people in the book Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organizations.

He recognised that some of us will have little choice in the matter; others will choose it willingly — some to their satisfaction, some to their regret. Either way, entering this zone of the work world obliges us to rethink many fundamental assumptions about our careers and our lives.

And this is what you have to learn to do. You have to think of yourself in more

dynamic terms. You have to see yourself in the mould of a portfolio person and begin to think of your career in similarly new ways.

The fact of the matter is that employment at every level — professionals, managers, administrative, and technical staff — are being defined by heightened competition nowadays. Circumstances worldwide — price wars and quality wars — for instance, are forcing companies to lay off large numbers of staff. Those employees left back, like you, Kirk, have to do increasingly more with less. This is a growing trend.

People like you will need to find new ways to represent yourself in more than one way to show the variety of work you now do. Your résumé will have to capture what exactly you do within the business’s contractual support network — pieceworkers, jobbers, consultants, temporary of all sorts and degrees.

You will need to be prepared to show what you have done at each phase of your work at the company. Companies will hire you for work accomplished, not necessarily for wages and salaries for time spent actually working.

And you will need to have a résumé prepared for each job as if that is the only job for which you were applying. That is the new standard, if you want to call it that. Start thinking of your job as one of many you will do for your current position. You can look online to see my articles on how to go about writing a résumé, or write to me.