B schooled episode#4 - Thou shall Résumé'

Most of us are supremely confident of our needs and wants.

As kids, there were some of us who had already thought through the conundrum of what they wanted to become in life. They were able to pin point their ambitions, even though panes of naivety their single- digit age brought, from the motley of options presented to them.
Needless to say, our Joey wasn't one of them. If you have been following Joey's escapades you would know that Joey was the kind who didn't have an iota of a clue of what he was ought to do, let alone what he wanted to do.

Joey's B-school tenure had quickly transcended from days to weeks to months and he was at a juncture where his aloofness had grown into a monster, one he couldn't run away from. In his typical, now fabled, way of doing things, Joey decided to do what every other soul on campus was - he started authoring his resume. A deluge of written words was something he was actually good at.

However, he soon found out that filling out an A4 sheet and bleeding one's professional story on it wasn't his forte. Joey was good at exaggerating, but even exaggeration needs a starting point - Joey didn't have one. His friends, at the MBA program, were wary, scared even about the impending uncertainty of their futures – “Will I get a job”…”Will I get a job that pays me well”…”Will I get a job that pays me well and that I love doing” … “Will I get a job that pays me well and that I love doing and that will get me girls” – you know what I am talking of….. The simple innocent needs and wants one has of life. Joey had the same fears, but what he didn't have, unlike his peers, was a resume - That wafer thin piece of paper that makes one a self-proclaimed SUPER HERO, one who saves his organization from perils, one who mints money for his organization and one who is always given awards that only the top 3% of employees get.

Joey finally decided to get started!!

He found a secluded dark corner and sat there with his laptop. He wrote and wrote and wrote. Legend has it that seasons changed, storms passed and recessions came and went - it seemed to Joey that he was writing for eternity. His keyboard thumping could be heard in the distant hallways of the LRC where his 'straight A' friends were solving management problems even Kotler and Merck couldn't find a solution to. And only when he was finally done did he dare to have a look at what he had keyed in. Now if you have ever authored a resume, you would know that 'white spaces' are blasphemous. There were enough white spaces on Joey's resume for da Vinci to paint a new Mona Lisa. Joey realized that what looks great in one's head, needn't always look all that great on paper. So Joey again did what everyone else on campus was doing - he got his resume reviewed. Soon the language of his resume changed......the words were now written with a vigor that would put the best management gurus to shame. 'Creating' became 'Conceptualizing'  .....'Helping' became 'assisting' and then became 'Consulting'.... 'Water cooler' talks became 'endeavors of collaboration'....and finally Joey had a smirking smile on his face.

In a bit, to satiate the hunger this accomplishment had given him, he decided to show his resume to an ex co-worker. Joey looked upon with anxious eyes as his friend's eyes traversed the length and breadth of the A4 sheet. Once his friend was done reading Joey stood up, perhaps waiting for a 'respect salute', instead what he heard was this: "WHO....WHAAATTT are you....... Where is Joey"!!

Rakesh Malayattil
Class of 2015


© 2014 Indian School of Business, Disclaimer.