Mindmapping Your Career and Resume
I've been putting it off since I joined Meritide back in May, but I finally need to grit my teeth and do it. They need a "profile", which, for those of you who haven't worked for consulting companies, is a customized resume.
I've always hated maintaining my resume, despite using it frequently over the years. This is due, in part, to the fact that everyone seems to want it in different formats. Because much of my work history has been more project oriented than company oriented (I did work for 3M and Wells Fargo while employed by Analysts International), I usually orient my resume that way.
However, lots of recruiters bug me to get it into their nice "chronological" format. Others, like the consulting profiles, want it formatted without the company names.
This led me to wonder, this time around, whether there might be a way to capture all of the information that goes on a resume seperate from the format or even a linear text document.
As I've used mindmaps and Freemind for taking notes, I wondered how it would work. I'm not done, but I'm liking the results and I thought I'd share them with you.
The idea is to capture all of the resume and career accomplishment stuff in this file and using it when it's time to write the documents. The bulk of the time spent writing a resume isn't stringing the words together, it's coming up with the information and accomplishments themselves.
You can download the mindmap file itself to mess with it. I took a couple of screenshots how I'm planning on using it.
The full view (with all of the links expanded) is cluttered and one might think you'd want to get rid of some of the links. However, if you just expand the 2 sections of the mindmap that you want to see the relationships between, you can get nice, quick views of the section you want.
Expanding the companies and the Projects sections shows you which projects were done for which companies.
Similarly, opening up just the Roles and the Companies shows which job roles I've filled at which companies.
I'm sure the final result will be a rat's nest of links, but will actually be a useful tool in keeping track of the entirety of what's going on career and business-wise. The fact that you can mess with the mindmap file via XML/XSLT is a bonus.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:36 am
That is so cool! Another great idea!
I will do the same thing. Actually in a few months I'll be hitting the job market/looking for clients, so after I do my resume mindmap I can let you know whether the visualization actually aids employers or not.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:40 am
Actually speaking of resumes and projects, it's very hard to convey what technical proficiencies you in fact have.
Often you may have expert knowledge in one area (i.e., SQL), but if you haven't mentioned the particular flavor that interests the employer (sqllite, mysql, oracle), employers assume the worst.
A good resume would not only highlight your actual skills, but also equivalants in other tools.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Just a clarification, I won't be giving this directly to anyone who I would normally give a resume. I'm using it as a tool to help organize the facts of my career and to assist in writing the actual documents I'm asked to produce: resume, consulting profile, list of related experience, etc.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:21 am
The great thing about this kind of approach is that additional branches can be easily added or moved around and different dimensions of relationships between items can easily be set up.
So, for instance, after the SQL entry, you can list all of the dialects as children of the SQL node. You could easily map those dialects to projects and companies just like anything else.
I'm likely to bring along some form of this actual mindmap to interviews to help expand on those kinds of things when asked.