For the first time in years, I’m unemployed and looking for my next job. I kickstarted my jobseeking efforts by reactivating my profiles on Linkedin, Jobstreet, and Hiredly (any other jobseeking platforms I’ve missed?) These platforms’ CV upload feature couldn’t immediately figure out how to absorb all my Work Experiences, etc. from my “master CV” .PDF file…
So, I manually copy/paste my info into them, and discovered something different about each of them:
- Linkedin: cares about the length of time, and geographic locality, of my work experiences & volunteering; as well as whether it was full/part-time, contract, etc. on-site / hybrid / remote.
- Hirely: for each work experience entry, they ask what the Specialisation & Industry was. It’ was difficult to categorize my past with their limited options. It’s difficult to narrow down my incredibly varied work experiences into their tiny pigeonholes.
- Jobstreet: Confusingly merged my Work Experiences with my Volunteering work… I guess this speaks to the kind of jobs available, and the reputation of the kinds of applicants on the platform: early-career, fresh, and inexperienced.
After completing their forms, I exported a CV.PDF from each of them, uploaded it into Google’s Notebook LM, prompted it to merge them, and requested it export a new “master CV” for me… it failed. Some of my naysayers will ask me to summarize my entire work experience (more than two decades of working experience, even though I graduated a little more than a decade ago.)
The different between local jobhunting websites/systems,
and a career-oriented networking platform
Jobstreet doesn’t care what extracurricular activities you did (this speaks to my experience of hearing other Malaysians saying they didn’t want to join any student societies, for fear of not being able to focus on their exams,) and Hirely immediately asks if we’re interested in working for Singapore (weirdly optimizes the applicant’s life experiences into a narrow set of categories, which seems to align with the suffocatingly small variety of jobs available on that tiny island.)
Most of my job titles never matched my work experience.
These local platforms forced me to look back at my career so far, and realize my job titles were sometimes incredibly mismatched…
- I was once a social media specialist, who also handled web analytics, SEO, content copywriting, multimedia production planning, reconnoitering venues, etc.
- I was once an Analyst/Strategist, because my managers couldn’t figure out what to call a generalist who has the skillset of several types of Specialists.
- I’ve worked for SMEs, MNCs, academic institutions, and the government*
- I’ve worked as an unskilled* blue collar worker, and a manager of several white collar specialists.
- I’ve consulted for consultants on a freelance basis in the past, only to come face-to-face with my a copy of my own work, as instructions from my employer’s latest consultants.
Recently, an interviewer accused me of spraying and praying…
…in this economy, can you blame me? Expats wouldn’t understand.
With a career like mine, I’ve proven to be able to adapt my transferable skills to many roles and industries.
Aren’t we all tired of working with, or being the client of, incredibly narrow-minded, people? Haven’t we been plagued by disjoined work from selfishly siloed departments? Aren’t we all starting to see the Dunning–Kruger effect from AI* enabling simpletons to subvert the hard work of actually skilled workers?
I refuse to have my light dimmed for your comfort.
Comb through my life’s experiences, in all it’s glory: http://gray.my/cv