We spend our entire careers learning how to make a résumé look better.
We polish the accomplishments. We quantify the wins. We find stronger words for what we did. We make two difficult years fit neatly into three impressive bullet points.
And then we quietly remove almost everything that went wrong.
That struck me this week. What if we did the opposite? What if I created an Anti-Résumé? Not a résumé of accomplishments, promotions, awards, and successes. A résumé of failures. Bad decisions. Jobs that didn't work out. Times I wasn't ready. Times I thought I knew more than I did. Times somebody gave me an opportunity and I didn't do enough with it. Times life outside of work affected the person who showed up for work. Times I learned something about myself that I probably would have preferred to learn another way.
So I actually made one.
And I'll tell you something. It may be one of the most honest professional exercises I've ever done. Because my regular résumé can tell you where I've worked.
My Anti-Résumé can tell you who those places helped me become.
That distinction matters. Especially in recruiting. We look at résumés every day and naturally try to connect the dots.
Why did this person leave? Why were they only there a year? Why did they change industries? Why is there a gap? Why did their career seem to move backward here?
We see the decision. We rarely see what created it.
And sometimes the real explanation is much deeper than "left for another opportunity," "terminated," "relocated," or whatever clean little explanation eventually makes its way into an applicant tracking system.
There are choices people have made that changed their lives. Choices that affected their spouse.
Their children. Their finances. Their friendships. Their health. Their confidence. Their entire circle of influence.
There are also mistakes people have made once and have absolutely no intention of ever making again. A résumé doesn't tell you that. It can't.
A résumé is designed to show us someone's professional highlight reel. And there is nothing wrong with that.
But I've started wondering how often we mistake an incomplete document for a complete person, because the failures define us far greater, and a resume intentionally leaves those out.
This connects almost everything I've been thinking about this week.
First impressions. The stories we create about people. The assumptions we make when we don't have enough information. The things that look obvious from the outside until a conversation gives us a completely different view.
I've spent years in recruiting trying to get better at reading résumés. Maybe the more important skill is recognizing what isn't written on them.
Because the person sitting across from us is more than the collection of accomplishments that got them there.
They are also everything they learned because of those decisions. Some of my greatest professional lessons would never make it onto my résumé. Some of the moments that changed me the most probably aren't things I would lead with in an interview. But remove the failures, wrong turns, difficult seasons, consequences, second chances, and uncomfortable self-reflection from my story, and you don't actually understand my story.
You understand the polished version of it. Maybe that is what the Anti-Résumé showed me. A résumé records where you've been. An Anti-Résumé helps explain why you'll never make some of those choices again.
And maybe Better Hiring Conversations begin when we're willing to become a little less impressed by the perfect résumé and a little more interested in the imperfect person who created it.
I wonder what would be on yours.