Meandering through the cyberworld

If you watch a dog walking down the street, paying no mind to anything he finds at his feet, suddenly, the dog abruptly turns to the right. With his nose to the wind there is no telling what the dog will land on. The dog is just walking along when, oh new smell, and then continues walking, oh new smell, oh new smell. In fact he may take several more abrupt turns before he stops at a resting place.

My brain operates similarly. While I found it an intriguing way to procrastinate in college, and deepen my knowledge of archaic philosophy, now I find it works to my advantage in the search for jobs in the nonprofit field.

Take for example a recent walk that I took while perusing Idealist for their latest job posts. I saw an intriguing nonprofit name. I followed the link to their homepage, to meander through their work. I found a list of their partners on a PDF image of a recent benefit dinner. So I started to look at one partner's web page. On that web page I found a link stating that they were a member of the emergent village. After finding out what the Emergent Village was, a week later I ended up at an emergent village cohort meeting. At this meeting people discuss issues relating to faith, the church, and society at large. I had a really interesting discussion with the other members and look forward to future discussions. I didn't land a job, but I have found a fulfilling place to discuss topics of concern to me.

Lesson: let your nose guide you through the world, you never know where you will end up. However, if you have a paper due the next day only follow your nose around the block vs. around the world.

Dressing for the Job

There's an old saying that we should dress for the job that we want. How many articles have I read that instructs us to wear our way up in the world?

(Strangely do you think that is what most of the world is doing with our never ceasing drive of consumption. But I digress.)

So my friend and I were discussing what our resumes say about us. Here was her question "what do we do when the standard format for a resume does not pay justice to the work that we have done?" For example both her and I have had a substantial number of Administrative jobs at varying levels. WE took these jobs because at one time we were both under the impression that ANY job in the organization/field you want is a good one. Now we are both realizing that this may not be entirely true. Do we really think that the secretary is given the chance to lead or manage a project? Yes, but so rarely.

So we both took the same root, seeking leadership opportunities in the volunteer fields. Both learning and refining our management ability.

Now back to the resume, both of us now have substantial volunteer experience however, some employers don't even look at the volunteer experience. Some only care what you do when you are getting paid, as if this determines our character. Our problem is that resumes are geared towards the "standard" tract. School, work, more work and all with increasing responsibilities. But for many of us our desire to volunteer more substantially has interrupted our work seniority, taking us around the country and around the world.

My question is how do we dress our resume for our perspective jobs? How do we show that our drive for a cause has lead us up ever increasing responsibilities and ever deepening commitment?

You might ask why we don't work for the organizations we volunteered with. Well, for the most part they are small nonprofits, barely able to pay their current employees and both of us do have substantial debt from school and living.