Kevin Geary is the author of Employee Revolution: A guide to being indispensable, irreplaceable, and higher paid (without lying, cheating, or joining a union).
If you have a personal blog, I’m talking directly to you. If you don’t have a personal blog, get one now. Sorry, but this surefire strategy doesn’t work unless you have a personal blog (you can keep your other blogs, you just need a personal one too).
What is a resume`?
Try not to fall asleep. This is short and to the point, I promise.
A resume is a list of your qualifications on one page. It’s supposed to make it easy for a company to quickly determine whether or not you are qualified for a job.
But companies actually use your resume` as an excuse to exclude you.
Secret: They don’t look at what’s there, they look at what’s missing. The key is to not play by the rules.
This is where your personal blog comes in. The resume` is dead. It’s time to be unique. It’s time to be relevant. It’s time to be revolutionary. It’s time to be a real problogger.
I want you to use your personal blog as a launch pad for your dream career. The personal blog is the new resume` of the revolutionary.
What’s it look like?
In the new global economy, skills and titles are commodities. The times are changing so quickly that it’s nearly impossible to keep up, much less completely stand apart from others skill-wise or title-wise.
How much better of a programmer are you really? How many more titles can you achieve over the next person in line? How much faster can you complete the design process? It’s all a race in the wrong direction because there’s always someone (or a computer) who can do it better and faster than you (or good enough to get paid a little less and keep the job).
What’s important for the revolutionary is not physical skill and titles (things that look good on resume`s) as much as it is: personality, uniqueness, imagination, relevance, artistry, passion, personal connection, fearlessness, and problem solving. These are things that can’t be replicated; things that make you an individual and not a commodity.
It’s also a list of things that are impossible to communicate on a resume`.
Your personal blog is going to tell your real story. It’s not the story of physical skills and titles. It’s the story of getting things done. It’s the story of being invaluable. It’s the story of doing what nobody else has done, solving problems nobody else could solve, and not just having ideas, but consistently acting-on and shipping them (getting your idea to the public).
The revolutionary doesn’t have a resume`. The revolutionary has a story that is digitally recorded, spread across the globe, talked about, shared, commented on, revered, admired, hated, and loved. It’s uniqueness translates into scarcity, which translates into value in the marketplace.
Your personal blog is a chance to tell who you are and show what you do (beyond skills and titles) in a way that makes you irresistible. It’s the way you’re going to land the job you really want. It’s the way you’re going to make an absolute fortune.
This is where you expect the list.
There is no list. There can’t be. If there was a step by step process to creating a blog that accomplishes what we just talked about, everyone would have one.
There’s only step one: get started. Use what you’ve learned here from Darren to get everything set up. Then think about answering the following questions:
- Who are you, really?
- Why are you different?
- How are you relevant?
- What have you accomplished (not ideas, but actual accomplishments in your industry)?
- What do you think?
- Who will recommend you?
- What have they said about you?
- What are your ideas?
- What problems have you solved?
There are many more, but I think you get the point. These are all things a company should ask, but doesn’t. This is how you change the rules. This is how you win.
The revolution is new, but the revolution is real. I invite you to leave the confines of the box everyone lives in and be a revolutionary. You’re important. We need you.
