Nice to see you again. Follow me, @SydneyOwen. Thanks for being here!
I have been working extremely hard on Sydney 2.0. It is my personal brand and everything that goes with it – this blog, my résumé, and networking my face off. So you can imagine how frustrating it is for me when I run into someone who doesn’t understand my views on PR, who doesn’t understand that Twitter is what you make of it, who doesn’t understand how the focus of everything media is shifting towards the internet.
Not understanding and not wanting to understand are two totally different things. I guess I should clarify – I get frustrated by the people that don’t want to understand. People that just don’t get it are my prime audience – I can educate them about why what I do is so vital to being successful in not only your personal career, but also as a company.
Three years ago, I never would have thought that being a big deal online could make you a big deal in real life. Sure, a lot of the people on Twitter, (okay, almost all) fit into that “early adopter” category I learned about in school. We’re the first ones on the scene with new technology, new concepts, new beliefs. The rest of the categories are increasingly insignificant – eventually dwindling down to the people that never “adopt” because they’re too afraid of the change or they’re always waiting for the next big thing, instead of trying to be the next big thing.
And that’s where I am right now.
For the past four months, I have been consumed by creating my résumé with Penelope. Six (maybe seven?) drafts later, she gave me the thumbs up – saying it was ready for me to send out to potential employers. She also suggested that I create a job description for my dream job. So I did.
With Nick’s help, we edited a handful of ideal jobs that I found online. I was so excited to have this document in my hands, it is something that could land me the job of my dreams. As I read it to my dad, he was really impressed and liked the approach that I was taking on this job hunt for after I graduate (my dad is very forward-thinking and one hell of a writer, by the way).
I sent it out to two people, my mom and one of her coworkers who is a mentor of mine. The response I got back was less than ideal. Prior to this, the people exposed to my strategy (I can count them on two fingers) were ecstatic about what I had produced. Then I got this little gem;
“It’s great for a position proposal, but not really a résumé.”
I freaked out, thinking that I forgot to send the résumé with it. Confirmed: the résumé was the second page of the document.
Is this my first little slice of self-doubt? Possibly. Okay, I definitely came close to tears. I value her opinion a lot, so hearing that rocked my world for a second. But will I let this bring me down? Of course I won’t. I’ve worked way too hard to get to where I am right now, and I’m not stopping. (And though I wouldn’t classify her as a hater, this article is great)
My gut tells me that not everyone will love my work, be it my résumé, my blog, materials I produce, what have you. That’s a given. Much like guys I date don’t like it when I blog about them (I can’t imagine why). You can’t please everyone. So, that being said, I welcome the criticisms. Hearing multiple opinions on my work is only going to make it better.
Maybe I’ll have multiple versions of my résumé – ones for people that don’t want something new and innovative, and ones for people that do. More specifically, ones that don’t have a whole bunch of statistics proving how productive I am in every position that I hold, but rather boring descriptions of what I was supposed to be doing at the time. I guess I’ll have to tailor it to my audience.
What do you do when you’re faced with news, much like this, that totally rocks your world? How do you deal with the brief flash of self-doubt? When you are so sure of something, so confident in your work, how do you react to someone thinking that it’s just not as great as you think?