Reinventing Myself?

How does a person make sense of an itinerant “career” for a potential employer when it doesn’t really make sense to oneself?

I’ve been thinking about employment/work issues for some time—both writ large and over my own ersatz career. That’s how I think of it because I never mapped out a career path. Even in graduate school, it seemed unnecessary: it was implicit that I’d earn my doctorate and get a job at a university or college, as most PhDs in my field did then. I had poor timing, finishing up as the glut of PhDs was just becoming problematic. I also had the misfortune of having a partner who geographically limited their job search, which severely reduced my options. Universities were starting to hire adjunct instructors to meet their teaching needs because older faculty weren’t retiring and budgets couldn’t stretch enough to add enough tenure-track slots (but they sure could find funds to add administrators!). So I took an adjunct position, thinking I’d soon be able to pivot to a tenure-track job.

That never happened. And I’ve gotten over it.

Since then, I’ve been in and out of academia, and in and out of other employment, including being self-employed in a variety of ways. My wide-ranging work experience has taught me many hard skills as well as soft skills. At the same time, the way we think about work in the US has shifted, along with how we find and land new jobs. That has made it more difficult for people like me—whose work history has been steady but not linear—to be considered a serious candidate for many roles we’d excel in.

In my case, credentials seem to work against me rather than for me. My PhD is often a red flag, suggesting that I’m overqualified and/or likely to be trouble for a team.¹ And the lack of specific certifications for roles that didn’t require them until fairly recently disqualifies me from a lot of work I’d be excellent at and would enjoy.

I have to confess that I don’t understand why the lack of a 100% match on hard skills immediately disqualifies many candidates.² In many cases they can be efficiently taught—and in doing so, they’re tailored to the organization’s needs. Soft skills are key to finding the best candidate for a position, but they’re often treated as an afterthought in the process. After years of work, I know my strengths (collaboration) and weaknesses (cutthroat competition) and apply only for roles where they’ll be of value, and where I’ll be happy providing that value.

Someone who was trying to help me figure out what kinds of jobs to apply to asked me what was important to me in my work. My answer was immediate and emphatic: “Being of service to people.” They pooh-poohed my response with the rejoinder that everyone feels that way. It demonstrably wasn’t true then, and it’s even less true now. I’ve had several colleagues whose work ethic seemed to be “min-maxing”—doing the minimum amount of actual work for as much pay as possible. My work as a massage therapist solidified the importance of going above and beyond for clients, but also the value in treating coworkers well (read: professionally, including holding appropriate boundaries). Just being courteous to customers has gotten rare in my experience.

A common piece of advice I’ve been getting is that I need to reinvent myself for today’s job market. I know how to apply my general work skills to a lot of tasks—and I think I clearly communicate how they’ll transfer to a new role—so I’m no longer sure I understand what’s meant by that. As segments of American culture turn away from service and empathy and toward self-centered greed, I’ve watched with shock and dismay. I’ve always deeply cared about the people around me. I’ve learned how to be more professional about expressing it at work, which is good. But I can’t pretend to be a person who would be anathema to my being.

1: My biggest dissatisfaction in being self-employed is not being part of a team. I do best when I’m working with people who have different skillsets and know different things than I do, and working together makes us all more effective. (back to the paragraph)

2: thanks largely to applicant tracking systems, which have hurt the process more than they’ve helped (back to the paragraph)