Let’s focus on summarizing your “select career achievements” – your top hits and highlights of your work journey to date. When it comes to the resume, oftentimes the “heat map” of where recruiters physically look focuses on the top third of the page – or “top of the fold”. That’s why it’s important to learn how to communicate your most important achievements right then and there. These “baseball card stats”, if you will, are a quick summarized snapshot of your value to the market. Good for the resume, but mostly good for your own knowledge.
Baseball cards serve as a way for fans to collect the cards of their favorite players…often with a quick snapshot of the player’s performance stats and highlights. Of course, there’s a lot more to the player than the bite sized information captured on the card. Is the player great with teammates? Good energy in the dugout? A sore loser? Coachable? A prima donna? A presence on the field? Of course there is more to the player, and more to the person, than the few lines on the back of a card. A baseball card is a tangible item that can be rare, which makes them worth collecting. Can you imagine if there were equivalent cards for the world of work? Imagine others wanting to collect a card of you! The point of the analogy here though is that while we work to become known by our good name and reputation only, we often have to learn how to communicate our “career highlights” succinctly and powerfully – and half the battle is knowing them.
What would your baseball card stats be?
Activity
Write 5-6 bullets that succinctly describe your career highlights and most notable work related points to date. Imagine these stats are what would show up on a “corporate baseball card” of yourself.