Creative Leap #1: Your Resume is a Joke. No, Really.
How your job search lands has as much to do with luck, as it does with sheer persistence to make it better.
Creative Leap is a new series that covers the ins and outs of a creative career, current market trends, and the business of design. Have a creative leap tip or story to share?
Standup comedians have a saying when a joke doesn’t land. It sounds something like “bombing,” “flopping” and “dying.”
In the moment, it feels pretty bad. It can even sting. In the long run, the reality is that if you’re not bombing, you’re not trying.
All comedians go through it, but good comedians have a way to take that sound of silence in stride. It’s just another day at the office, nah, comedy club.
Instead of seeing those chirping crickets as an indictment on their very being, successful comedians view it as direct feedback, as input to try and tweak the joke, to make it better. It’s part of the job.
One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow setbacks to destroy their morale all at once, like a balloon bursting. You can inoculate yourself against this by explicitly considering setbacks a part of your process. Solving hard problems always involves some backtracking. - Paul Graham
Will the joke work if I said it slightly differently? What if I said it slower? Faster? What if it was longer? Shorter? Omitted a word? And so on…
Most comedians try out new material at small clubs first, tweaking and refining the jokes until they’re ready for prime time. That’s how Kevin Hart, Robin Williams, Trevor Noah, and Jerry Seinfeld do it. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you.
Their curiosity about every reaction becomes the catalyst for more ideas, more discoveries, more humor. In their view, when a joke bombs, what’s off is not them, but rather the joke itself. Examining it from all sides — from the joke’s delivery and timing to its content and subject matter — is the best way to improve upon it. The idea is to play with it so they can decide whether to discard the joke entirely, put it away for another day, or tinker with it to get it right.
Searching for a job works in similar ways. Like in standup, you’re alone on stage, facing a different crowd every time, whose traits and interests change by location and venue. Instead of trying to have a joke connect with an audience, it’s your resume that does the talking.
Standup comedy is all about making a connection. When you get a laugh from an audience, you’re like one with them, you feel completely connected.
- Jerry Seinfeld