CV’s are history. Look forward instead.
The CV is a way of looking back at what you did. These days, sharing insights into ‘how’ and ‘why’ you do things is far more valuable, and a Manual of Me aims to help with that.
I have two children, who are long out of nappies and being bottle-fed, but if I cast my memory back to before the birth of my eldest, we used to go to NCT classes. I’m sure these classes exist globally, perhaps under different names, but basically it is to get you ready for the birth of your child. They teach you birthing techniques, explain the process, support you on your journey up to this momentous life-changing event.
What they don’t do, however, is prepare you at all for the child itself. Their focus is purely on pre-natal and the delivery itself. The rest is up to you to figure out. Massively useful, hugely important and beneficial, but effectively stops being useful on day one.
I see a parallel here to new jobs and CVs.
CVs are a story of your work so far. The things you’ve done, achieved, accomplished. They’re (supposedly) factual records of your past, and are accurate up until the moment you get a new job. Then… they are of no further use until you resign. They don’t help your team understand how you worked in those roles, they don’t help your manager develop a career plan for you, they don’t help your clients understand why you’re approaching something in a particular way. The CV only looks backwards objectively, and when you’re starting in a new role — what you need to share is not what you’ve done, but how you’re going to do.
Equally, in job interviews themselves, long before the offer of a contract is made, a great deal of the conversation is often about unpicking the CV, lots of ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions about each accomplishment. The actual specifics of the CV are almost less important, the interviewer is keen to hear how you approached each project, how you dealt with particular situations, or indeed, what how you’d approach them again in the future, or how you’d look to starting a new challenge.
They’re ‘how’ questions, rarely ‘what’ questions.
This is what a Manual of Me aims to help with.
Sharing your Manual of Me with a prospective employer or new team helps your colleagues to rapidly understand how you approach projects, the preferences around how you work, why you get up in the morning and the tips and tricks to get the very best out of you. It looks forward, into the coming projects and challenges and asks not what you do, but how you do.
With a recognition of the important of emotional intelligence in the workplace, that there is no longer one appropriate way of working, and that team-dynamics and environment are massively impactful on the quality of work done, and the quality of working-life for the team, having a tool which helps a group of people understand each other better accelerates getting to great work being done.
The Manual of Me is a tool which helps gather insights about how you work, and supports you in creating an easily readable guide to share with people you want to work with. You’ll be taken through a number of guided exercises and activities to help you reflect and gather information over the course of a few weeks, from which you can structure and build out a document ready to share. It’s free for individuals — and developed by a community group who people who are taking an active control over the future of their work, called Leapers.
You can create your own Manual of Me for free at https://manualofme.leapers.co/
