The Unwritten Resume

Coalescing from some insecurities, experience and a little introspection, a few thoughts from the Book of Andi:

Let me start with the riveting world of Human Resources.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been receiving resumes and curricula vitae from all over the world for a couple of internship openings currently available at Yehu. (PLUG: Click here if you're interested.)

Some impressive...some still working on their impressiveness.

And I think, What funny things resumes are.

A [one-page] summary of "significant" experience and accomplishments in the recent past. Significant by whose standards? Toot our horns, flash our past. What do those words really say about a person? And is it really them that we're reading about on that page?

Shift gears a little and drive with me to an experience I had a couple of years ago.

I was given the assignment to visit teach a lady in my singles ward. At this point in my life I had already traveled the world; learned a new language; graduated from college; accomplished some long-standing goals; had a couple of years of professional experience under my belt and felt that I had left the years of high-school insecurities in my dust.

Oh, but how I was wrong.

I knew this girl like everyone in the ward knew this girl: the one who had done this amazing thing, and that amazing thing, and had won those bazillion awards for it. The one who was expertly talented. The one who worked for that one influential organization in such a responsible position at such a young age. The one who was professional, polished and pretty much perfect.

Immediately I felt like an awkward 16-year old all over again.

Ahead of my first visit, I decided that maybe I should do some clandestine investigating on my own, as to what this girl was all about. (Of course I'm admitting to a Google search, here.) That only made matters worse. Whatever confidence that I had left at that point, juvenile or not, dropped to somewhere below my ankles. This was one accomplished individual that I was dealing with--even more so than I had originally thought. And suddenly anything that I may have ever felt was "impressive" on my own resume paled like my skin in comparison.

My first visit was, as you might have guessed, less than inspiring on my part. I was nervous, fidgety and stumbled my way through the message that I brought to share--worried more about what she was thinking about me, than what I was saying. Pretty unimpressive, I'm sure.

For the next few months, my pride raged in a way that it hadn't for a long, long time. Instead of being meek, humble and inspired by her, I compared, contrasted and lamented over what a failure I was. Instead of working to serve her and become her friend, I sometimes visited her out of duty, feeling very awkward every time I did. Don't misunderstand me; she was always very nice to me and never made me feel like she was better than me. I'm ashamed to say, I did that all on my own.

Which brings me to today: I hadn't thought about this for a while, not until I randomly came across some information about her on the Internet. As is characteristic of most successful people, her trajectory of accomplishment has only continued. And suddenly--even in the midst of the incredible experience I've been given--it all came rushing back to me...the visiting teaching, the adolescent awkwardness, the pride.

I stopped.

I put my computer down.

I walked to my room.

I began making my bed. (Don't ask me what time it was.)

And I thought, What funny things resumes are.

Toot our horns, flash our past. What do they really say about a person?

In the case of my once visiting teachee, a lot. She is as amazing as it says. And unfortunately, I was too prideful to really appreciate that and glean from her what I could have.

Today I thought, it's just as much about what our unwritten resumes say as what the painstakingly crafted ones do.

Where do we tout our abilities to forget ourselves?

Where to we talk about our lack of pride?

Where do we describe the personal challenges we have surmounted to get to where we are today?

Where do we show how we are able to love, care for and help others, when there's nothing spectacular about those moments?

Where do we list the long phone conversations with a friend in need, taking dinner to a neighbor, comforting the sick, making cookies for the unsuspecting.

Where do we articulate the joys and heartaches shared in championing a spouse?

Where do we highlight the way in which we have crafted the life of a child through play time, story time, dinner time and bedtime prayers?

How do we annotate the ways in which we touch the lives of others?

Certainly these won't appear as drawn-out highlights on any of the CV's that any HR professional might receive. But this unwritten resume is what memories are made of. It's what's eulogized and cherished when we are gone. It will be to our commending or our condemning in the most important job interview we will ever have. It will be our ticket through the pearly gates into a world where only those with the most disciplined of hearts can be.

Today I realize that I could most certainly stand some more discipline in this life of mine, but that sometimes it's my heart that needs it most.

So I say to myself, and to anyone else who may have felt this way, that this unwritten resume is what matters most. Because it's a precursor to much greater things than could ever be reduced to one page.