Sometimes the company job description may describe your job pretty well.<\/p>\n
Other times, it may only describe the bare minimum of what the company needed.<\/p>\n
Once you’re actually doing a job, things happen. Responsibilities change. Somebody discovers you’re good at something and starts giving you more of it. A problem lands in your lap that wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the original job posting.<\/p>\n
That’s part of your work history too.<\/p>\n
What \u201cCashier\u201d Doesn’t Tell You<\/h2>\n
Years ago, I worked at Walmart.<\/p>\n
I started on the front end as a cashier.<\/p>\n
If I wrote down cashier<\/strong>, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the basic job involved.<\/p>\n I ran a register and helped customers.<\/p>\n But that doesn’t tell you very much about how I actually did the job.<\/p>\n Cashiers were measured on scans per minute because the company wanted customers moving through the line. I consistently scored high.<\/p>\n Then there was the money in the register. I was very good about not coming up over or short, and I never once got caught by someone trying to trick me out of money.<\/p>\n None of that is something I would necessarily have thought to tell someone years later.<\/p>\n It was just part of doing my job.<\/p>\n There was something else management noticed.<\/p>\n When there was a lull at the register, I wasn’t very good at standing around doing nothing.<\/p>\n They would see me emptying the garbage, putting hangers away, straightening the front end or finding something else that needed to be done.<\/p>\n Eventually, management realized they couldn’t keep me busy enough at the register.<\/p>\n So I moved.<\/p>\n Eventually, I became the department head in Health and Beauty Aids.<\/p>\n When I took over that department, there were more than twenty pallets of overstock.<\/p>\n More than twenty pallets.<\/p>\n I had to figure out what the department actually needed to keep the shelves full without having all that excess inventory sitting there.<\/p>\n Some merchandise could be transferred to another store. Some could be sold through. Where we could, merchandise could be returned to the manufacturer.<\/p>\n Eventually, I got the overstock down to about four pallets while maintaining very few outs on the shelves.<\/p>\n After that, they sent me over to Toys to basically do the same darn thing.<\/p>\n Now look at the title again.<\/p>\n Department Head.<\/strong><\/p>\n The company job description matters because it tells you what Walmart expected a department head to do.<\/p>\n But the title and description alone don’t tell you that I inherited more than twenty pallets of excess inventory and got it down to about four while still keeping merchandise on the shelves.<\/p>\n That’s why we need both.<\/p>\n What was I hired to do, and what did I actually do once I got there?<\/strong><\/p>\n This is something else I want you to look for.<\/p>\n Sometimes there are actual numbers.<\/p>\n My scans per minute were measured.<\/p>\n My register either balanced or it didn’t.<\/p>\n When I was in Health and Beauty Aids, I could see what happened to the inventory.<\/p>\n Your job may not have had numbers attached to everything you did.<\/p>\n That’s okay.<\/p>\n But think about how you knew you were doing a good job.<\/p>\n Maybe you were given more responsibility over time. Maybe customers started asking for you. Perhaps your boss kept handing you certain problems because you had shown that you could handle them.<\/p>\n Don’t just write, \u201cI was good at this.\u201d<\/p>\n Ask yourself:<\/p>\n How do I know?<\/strong><\/p>\n That answer may be important later.<\/p>\n When I moved into Health and Beauty Aids, people were always comparing their numbers with the other departments.<\/p>\n Someone once asked me why I didn’t do that.<\/p>\n My answer was that my objective was to improve on the day before.<\/p>\n My competition was with myself.<\/p>\n I’ve always believed that if you compete against yourself, you can win. You’re looking at what you did yesterday and figuring out whether you can do it better today.<\/p>\n The objective is to be better than you were yesterday.<\/p>\n That wasn’t in my job description.<\/p>\n It was who I was.<\/p>\n It is still who I am.<\/p>\n I was also brought up in an era where we were taught to leave a place better than we found it.<\/p>\n That followed me into my work.<\/p>\n At the time, I probably wouldn’t have thought to put any of that on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or an application.<\/p>\n Looking back now, I can see that it mattered.<\/p>\n That’s part of what I want you to look for in your own history.<\/p>\n Don’t just look at the jobs you think were important.<\/p>\n That little job you had when you were young may tell you something about yourself.<\/p>\n Let’s say you worked as a janitor.<\/p>\n Maybe you didn’t particularly enjoy cleaning restrooms, but you liked working in a school.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Maybe it was something about being around the people there. Maybe you liked coming to work knowing what needed to be done instead of having to figure out your own priorities.<\/p>\n Another person could have the same janitorial job and feel completely differently about it.<\/p>\n That’s useful information.<\/p>\n If you’ve had a lot of short jobs that were basically the same, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Group them if that makes sense.<\/p>\n But if you stayed with one employer and your responsibilities changed substantially, look at those positions separately.<\/p>\n I was a cashier at Walmart.<\/p>\n I was also a department head.<\/p>\n Those weren’t the same job just because Walmart was printed on both paychecks.<\/p>\n For every job or substantially different role, think about what you actually did.<\/p>\n Then think about what you enjoyed about it.<\/p>\n Give yourself room for several answers, but don’t make things up just because there are blank lines on a worksheet.<\/p>\n Now think about what you didn’t like.<\/p>\n And be specific.<\/p>\n \u201cI hated this job\u201d doesn’t tell us very much.<\/p>\n What did you hate about it?<\/p>\n Maybe you liked the actual work but hated the schedule. Maybe you liked being around customers but didn’t like something else about the position.<\/p>\n You may even discover that you were extremely good at something you don’t particularly enjoy doing.<\/p>\n That’s useful too.<\/p>\n We’re not deciding what your next job should be yet.<\/p>\n We’re trying to understand the jobs you’ve already had.<\/p>\n I’m going to give you a worksheet to help you do this.<\/p>\n If you like sitting down with paper and thinking things through, use it.<\/p>\n But maybe you’d rather talk.<\/p>\n Today we have another option.<\/p>\n We can use AI.<\/p>\n Start with one job.<\/p>\n Give AI the company job description if you can find it. Then tell it what you remember actually doing.<\/p>\n Let the two pieces work together.<\/p>\n The job description may remind you of something you’ve forgotten. Your own memories may show that the job became considerably larger than the description.<\/p>\n You can start with this:<\/p>\n I want to examine one of my past jobs because I am trying to understand my work history better.<\/p>\n Here is the company’s job description for the position I held. I am also going to tell you what I remember actually doing.<\/p>\n Do not recommend careers to me yet.<\/p>\n Help me compare the company’s description with my actual experience. Ask me about responsibilities in the description that I haven’t mentioned so I can determine whether I performed them.<\/p>\n I also want you to ask about responsibilities I took on that went beyond the written description, problems I solved, and results I achieved.<\/p>\n Ask me what I liked and didn’t like about the work. Help me remember how my performance was measured, if it was measured, and what evidence I have that I was good at particular parts of the job.<\/p>\n If I tell you something that seems to reveal how I approached my work, ask me about it instead of immediately telling me what it means.<\/p>\n Don’t flatter me or decide what career I should pursue.<\/p>\n Help me dig deeper into this job first. When you think we’ve covered it well, summarize what I’ve told you and ask me whether you’ve understood it correctly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then talk.<\/p>\n Or write.<\/p>\n Whatever works better for you.<\/p>\n If AI asks something that makes you remember something from twenty years ago, tell it.<\/p>\n That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.<\/p>\n I think this is one of the things I missed when I was unemployed.<\/p>\n I looked at my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 because I needed another job.<\/p>\n I wasn’t looking at it and asking what all those years of working had taught me about myself.<\/p>\n I also wasn’t thinking very much about the things I had accomplished that weren’t obvious from the job description.<\/p>\n Those are different questions.<\/p>\n Maybe you solved a problem that had been sitting there long before you arrived.<\/p>\n Maybe your job grew because people discovered what you could handle.<\/p>\n Maybe you approached the work differently from everybody around you.<\/p>\n Maybe none of those things ever made it onto your r\u00e9sum\u00e9 because you thought:<\/p>\nThen I Went to Health and Beauty Aids<\/h2>\n
How Do You Know You Were Good at It?<\/h2>\n
There Are Things the Job Description Will Never Tell You<\/h2>\n
Look at All the Jobs<\/h2>\n
What Did You Like About the Work?<\/h2>\n
You Can Write It Down or Talk It Through<\/h2>\n
We’re Looking for What Never Made It Onto the R\u00e9sum\u00e9<\/h2>\n
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