Yes, I Can Do It, But I Don’t Want To!

No one likes their job 100% of the time. There are things that we love about our jobs, and then there are things that we despise. Although we loathe certain things we can still be good at them, for example, you may dislike giving presentations at meetings, but you are excellent at it, so everyone volunteers you when the office meetings come around. There isn’t much one can do in their current role to eliminate the duties and responsibilities that they don’t particularly care for, but there is something one can do when pursuing a new position or a new job. It’s simple really if you don’t want to do it don’t put it on your resume. Yes, it may have been an essential part of your duties and responsibilities in your previous position, but if you don’t want to do it in your new role, don’t put it on your resume.

I come from a background of employment that was always customer facing, and I wanted something that was more behind the scenes, but I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting callbacks from jobs that wanted me to interact with consumers and clients all day. I had an objective that clearly stated that I wanted to move into a more administrative role I even highlighted my clerical and administrative expertise so why are all these companies contacting me about positions or roles that I do not want. Then it dawned on me, although I had what I was looking for on my resume, I also had what I did in the past and the two were contradicting one another.

I stated in my objective that I wanted a more back office type of role, but in my previous positions, I described my work with clients and consumers. Once I changed my resume only to reflect the kind of work that I wanted to do I began to get callbacks from companies offering the type of positions I was interested in. This is one of the reasons I like functional resumes because it allows one to highlight the skills and qualifications they possess to obtain the position they want. So if you are always getting offers for jobs that you have done in the past but are not looking to do it in the future, change the wording to reflect what you WANT to do, not what you HAVE DONE.