You recently lost your job. Pretty predictable these days. Equally predictable is that one of the first things that pops into your head upon getting the news sounds something like “I better get my resume together.” If it is not one of your initial thoughts, one of your well-intended friends will make it so. They will ask you for a copy of your resume so that they can sprinkle it around to their network. Conventional wisdom says that thing one after job loss is resume preparation. I call this the “rush to the resume.” Conventional wisdom is none too wise in this case.
There is nothing wrong with getting your resume together. Of course you need to do it. But it needs to be sequenced appropriately. You have to get your head together, first. Most of us are so shell shocked after getting the news of a job loss, that we lack the type of clear thinking that is prerequisite to planning our next job marketing campaign. The resume is but one, albeit important, part of the process. And it is a downstream part at that.
Getting your head together involves a broader perspective of discovery. You take the time to think creatively and expansively about possibilities. Maybe you nail it down to one thing, or maybe a few. Then, and only then are you ready for the downstream activities, including preparation of your marketing materials (resume). I encourage people to think of this time as the “gift” that they would never buy for themselves.
There are myriad people out there in unsatisfying jobs that make them miserable day-in and day-out. They hate their jobs for a variety of valid and not so valid reasons. But take that job away, the source of the dissatisfaction and misery, and people panic and lament the loss. It may have been a horrible job, but it was my horrible job. If you are one of these people, it’s time for a mindset shift. It is not a job loss, it is a job gain.
The problem with the “rush to the resume” is that it is almost always a “rush to the predictable.” Absent the time to get our heads together and dream about possibilities, we rush to what we have always done, even if it made us miserable, and we build our resume to achieve this outcome. Dumb.
If you are a senior level executive, I would argue that the resume (even when focused to the right outcome) just isn’t that important anyway. Your strategy needs to focus on the type of connections that lands you as a “warm” candidate, not a cold resume feeding some mindless automated screening program. But I digress.
So if you have lost your job recently, consider this advice. Do not rush to the resume, at least until such time as you have a clear-headed view of what you want to do next. Otherwise you run the risk of landing in the “same place with different furniture.”