Old Resume Angst
I was digging around in the back of a closet and came across an old filing box. Inside I found a resume from 2009. It was printed out on “special” resume paper.
Do you remember resume paper? Perhaps I’m dating myself here. Well kids, let me take you back to a time where resumes existed on more than just PDFs and .docx files!
Back in those days, you had to make a special trip to your local office supply store and pay extra for that special paper. You wanted it to say something about you - it was one tiny way to personalize, but it had to be professional too. I remember trying to decide between paper with names like “granite” or “blue marble.” Why was professional paper always named after types of rock, anyway?
Although there are some changes I’d make (*ahem* delete the Objective statement), it was actually pretty good. I even had two separate resumes for the two types of jobs I was looking for at the time: an ESL Teacher resume and an Admin resume. An early form of resume tailoring!
As these resumes were walking me down memory lane I remembered the outcome of that particular job search. It wasn’t great. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get a teaching job or an administrative role. It was a tough period in my life and my previous teaching job had ended unexpectedly.
So I ended up at Starbucks. It was close to my house and I’d worked at an airport Starbucks one summer during university so I knew how to make the huge variety of drinks on the menu.
Honestly, it was embarrassing. I went from a professional role that required a degree and certification to an entry-level one. From making a decent salary to minimum wage. At the time, that was $9.00 per hour. A huge hit to my pride and my bank account.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Starbucks was my Bridge Job. It was tough going for a while.
But a few months in, I was promoted to supervisor and within the next year, I became an assistant manager. While in training there, I learned about hiring and behavioural interview questions using the STAR method.
My next roles after Starbucks were in recruitment, which later led to working in Career Development, which led me to where I am today - a Career and Life Coach.
It’s sort of weird to think, that if I hadn’t ended up at Starbucks making minimum wage, I might be in a different career today. And Starbucks wasn’t my dream role, but it was what I needed at the time. And it got me to where I needed to be.
That’s what a bridge job does - it takes you somewhere.