Another True Story: Re-telling your career journey

I once had a client who had always dreamed of being a veterinary technician. She had pursued the schooling, the hours of practical experience, the necessary certification, and she had achieved her dream. As often happens, however, after a number of years the dream had faded. As she put it, she was done dealing with the bodily fluids of any animal not her own pet. When she came to me, she was already part way through training for her new software field, but she was stumped about applying for software jobs. Why, she wondered, would an IT hiring manager be interested in her veterinary experience? How could she explain that she was an experienced worker with new skills?

I had been in veterinary offices with my own pets, so I asked whether she had ever dealt with a human who insisted that a pet had a dire emergency when the staff knew the condition was less urgent. Had anyone ever tried to pull rank on her in order to jump the line? Had she ever had to calm someone down in order to get the information needed to help them? Had she ever had to control her own emotions in order to do her job properly? She said Yes to all these questions, and I explained that similar situations occurred with internal or external customers in every organization I knew of. She could tell IT managers how she prioritized multiple urgent tasks and how she kept her focus when other people were upset. She could confidently describe her discipline, persistence, and ability to work with colleagues, leaving out the clinical details and emphasizing her good judgment and capacity to learn.

I call this creating another true story about your work experience and your career. It’s like those optical illusions where the stairs in the picture are definitely going up, until suddenly they are going down. Once you’ve seen both versions, you can point them out to other people. Once you recognize your new true story, you can tell it convincingly to other people in person, on LinkedIn, in your resume.

Often the first story you were telling yourself wasn’t even true: Your career may have hit a dead end, your dream may have faded, but you aren’t a quitter or a failure or whatever name you were calling yourself. You may have been too inexperienced to know that you couldn’t do your best work in a windowless inner room, but you weren’t stupid to give it a try, and now you know the difference between persistence and plain stubbornness.

This kind of new true story is about more than transferable skills, important as it is to recognize that what you already know is going to be useful in other roles. It’s about gaining new understanding of the value you bring to any kind of work. Once you see your strengths, you’ll be able to describe them in the lingo and context of multiple parts of the world of work. You’ll be a desirable employee wherever you go, and you’ll navigate the changing world of work and your own changing priorities gracefully and effectively.

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