My cousins daughter had gone missing. They were taking their dream vacation, a big hotel on the beach in Florida. She was only 8, panic ensued. They frantically searched the pool area where they’d spent the better part of the morning, their four kids playing, not much supervision needed. Maybe she’s back in the hotel??? Maybe she’s back in the room??!!! they thought. My cousin ran to the elevator bank, pressing, pressing the buttons, begging them to move faster, open quicker. And then they did. And there my cousin’s daughter was, in the elevator, with a sign. She was charging guests $1 to press their floor. Tips were welcomed. She’d already made bank in her short time in operation.
Any company should want to hire this person. If businesses scouted the same way the NY Rangers do, they’d be fighting crawling over others to recruit her.
Yet at the same time, I’m pretty sure this story didn’t land on her resume. And I’m sure she didn’t distill the experience to:
“Leveraged hotel resources to tap in to a captive community with a needs based approach delivering excellence with a scalable proposition optimized for maximum ROI.”
Yet resumes continue on in their same state. Or worse now - thank you AI for handing us “resume slop.” I asked Chat: what’s a better way to say that “I am a creative pragmatic thinker” and it replied: “I have hypothesis-driven problem solving skill and actionable insights.” Sure, ok. But if I read this, how would I know you’d made bank in the Hilton’s elevator bank?
The point is, I don’t. But the bigger point is, you don’t either. This is what I mean.
Resumes can define us because they say a lot - and many of us think they say everything. This sequential timeline of our experiences neatly laid out in black in white. How do you know what you’re really good at, where you excel, if you value yourself on the merits of a “Trad Resume?” What we’ve achieved, or think we have the possibility of doing, is often framed in this limited and sometimes excessively convoluted vernacular and it doesn’t give us permission to think widely about what could be. In fact, not only does it not give permission, but it kind of taunts you - like “who are you to think you can do xyz????
I’m making a case here for creating your own Reckless Resume. I’m not suggesting you submit this to JP Morgan along with your interest in the derivative’s market. But I am suggesting that when you build one for yourself, you’ll have a far greater sense of the unique bundle of skills you bring to any job- even if, and ESPECIALLY IF, it’s just the job of living your life.
DO THIS
Build your Reckless Resume.
The left side, that’s the “Trad Resume”. We’re going to focus on the right side. Start brain dumping the simple, seemingly inconsequential things you can recall doing, growing up. The things that stuck with you, make you laugh, cringe or cry. If you’re extracting something you did 15 or 40 years (depending Gen Z or X here), the fact that it’s sitting there waiting to be plucked from obscurity tells you something. Now drill hard on them- what were you really exhibiting? If you treated them the way you would a resume entry, how would you sum them up?
For me, the left side of my resume allowed me to get a fashion brand off the ground (advertising, business, drawing skills), but the right side is what helped give the brand its longevity and competitive distinction. Headlines about AI domination, and you can see that the left side is where many of our skills have become commodified. It’s the right side that takes what we do and makes us human, makes us individuals, makes us unreplicable.
When you write your Reckless Resume, it forces you to think of the “so what” of your past actions and you start connecting dots - understanding viscerally why you’re really good at some things, and at others …. not so much. No one is a 10 out of 10 on everything - and that’s OK, as long one knows it. Sometimes our weaknesses are identified not to improve on them but for no other reason to know where we will need to augment. Knowledge is power and it’s why I would never hire my carbon copy. Traci, our head of design, is my perfect foil.
I’ll give you an example of an event that was so much more than the sum of its parts and lands squarely on my Reckless Resume.
I skipped out midway through an exam my freshman year in college to fake a kidney ailment because I found myself wholly unprepared and facing a failing grade. I chose the kidney because my dad suffered from stones and I knew the symptoms. I went immediately to the school Emergency Room as proof of my “whereabouts” and was told by the very handsome student doctor that the symptoms I’d identified were “consistent with an acute sexually transmitted venereal disease”. Whilst being tortured for the next couple of hours with my feet in stirrups I was playing out how I’d share this with my history teacher and then how this will be spun for laughs over drinks with my friends.
But if I translate what happened to resume speak, I would say I was able to:
Quickly assess if a situation would result in a failed outcome, no matter how much more sweat equity is put in (I knew I was going to get an F, a D at best).
Identify options and determine risk versus reward
Execute a sharp pivot that required fast thinking with no time for information gathering
Exhibit a determination to not accept failure as fate
See the humor and find perspective
This isn’t about creating a delusional story line for yourself. It’s about uncovering those attributes that get hidden under the constraints of how society/schooling/family etc. frames success. It’s also about using what you have - because this is where you find a great equalizer. A combination of these experiences play a huge role in determining our success - but the thing is, if you allow them to stay buried and never articulate them, then it’s hard to actually put them in to play. Once you put words to something, you can get your arms around it, own it and take action. Ok?
My book Almost Reckless helps you put a vocabulary to what you have to offer. Because once you can say it, you can be it. And that’s a great thing. You can purchase here.
