Every week I talk with people who are looking for work. Some are recent graduates wondering why no one is calling them back. Others have twenty or thirty years of experience and suddenly find themselves navigating a job market they barely recognize. They all have one thing in common: somewhere along the way, they begin to question their own value.
I get it. When your resume disappears into an applicant tracking system, and rejection emails start flowing, or you never even hear back, it's easy to believe you're the problem. Most of the time, you aren't.
The hiring process has changed dramatically over the past decade. Technology made it easier to apply for jobs and harder to be seen as a human being. Employers are swamped with applications. Candidates are overwhelmed with uncertainty and self-doubt. Everyone is frustrated.
As someone who's spent years coaching professionals through career transitions and working alongside HR leaders, I think we're missing an important conversation. A resume simply tells us where someone has been.
It doesn't tell us how they learn, how they solve problems, how they support teammates, or how they respond when things don't go according to plan. Those are often the qualities that determine whether someone succeeds.
The skills you've built, the relationships you've nurtured, the curiosity you've shown, and the resilience you've developed all matter, even if they don't fit neatly into a job description.
Hiring managers and HR professionals know that potential is easy to miss when we're rushing to fill a position. Skills can be taught. Character, curiosity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence are much harder to develop, yet they might be the difference between someone who simply fills a role and someone who helps a team thrive.
The current job market is challenging, especially for new graduates and experienced professionals making unexpected career transitions. That makes it even more important that we don't reduce people to a list of qualifications or a resume score.
The best careers I've seen, including my own, rarely followed a straight line. I went to school to become a veterinarian and somehow found myself working in retail, hospitality, technology, marketing, and now coaching and conscious business management. None of those experiences were wasted. Together they created a perspective I couldn't have planned (and certainly didn't).
Maybe that's the point. We don't always end up where we planned, and that's not necessarily a failure. Sometimes it's where we discover our greatest strengths, learn new ways to pivot, learn, and grow.
I wrote a more personal reflection on this idea, especially for graduates, parents, and anyone wondering what comes next. You can read it on Substack: You Might Not End Up Where You Planned.
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