A random thought; Your resume should tell a story!

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Harvard Innovation Lab published a video about how our working desks have evolved since 1980s. ​Somehow we took out the clutter on our desks and made it much more portable. The idea made me think that our resumes also need an evolution! If our work spaces needed to be evolved because work has become a lot more virtual and a lot less location-specific, then hasn't our resume that represent our work has evolved too!

I have to confess that I always hated my resume! (it is Scribd here for your viewing pleasure) Why I hated it? because I'm a lot more than my resume. My resume like many others, has always been a carefully drafted 2-page word document . I actually dared to be playful with some color, dots and dashes, but whenever I look at it, I could barely see myself between those lines. 

I always imagined if I hire an expert resume-builder, would she or he create anything different? ​She would know the key words that must be included in the resume of someone with strategic planning background - because that's what the hiring algorithms (being a piece of software or a trained eye of a recruiter) would look for. But then there is nothing unique about that resume? Is it?
In my field, to make their resumes unique, many use the "stamps of approval". If you are an Ivey MBA, or have worked for the big 3 strategy consulting firms, a venture capitalist, an investment banking firm, or the big tech giants, then you have the stamp of approval. You don't need to be unique, you just need to show your skill-set is proven. Having those names on your resume overrides the algorithms and put you on the top of the call list. 

I'm neither an Ivey MBA nor an alumni of the tech/consulting/investment banking/venture capital titans. So, now what? I need a resume that shows my uniqueness. I need to evolve my resume from an algorithm-pleasing document to a story-telling medium. Because what makes me unique is not my MBA or my strategy work history but rather the story of my personal and professional life. I'm a dreamer, a doer, an organizer, an analyst, a planner, a problem-solver, and a strategist and I have tested those skills in multiple countries, companies and context. My story is something like the below one-pager (maybe at some point I add a one-min narration to actually tell the story???)

​So, next time I'm sending a resume to someone, it will tell my unique story, it will not have the bullets and dots of my job description, but rather shows how I evolved as a person and as a professional. Just like what Harvard Innovation Lab said about our desks, my resume has evolved from a generic document to a unique story!