How to make a long term career plan actually work

How to make a long term career plan actually workHow to make a long term career plan actually workWork for you, not your resumeDuring the epicHeros Journeythat is your life - unique to you and only you just like every individual on this planet - you tread across foreign lands in search of a hidden treasure across the world.The journey is as much of a challenge to your mind as it is to your body. There are ups and downs youre riding a never-ending rollercoaster. Sometimes terrain is a plateau and you feel like you cant go much higher and you wonder if other people experience this too. Surely, they do.There are steep hockey-stick shaped mountains that you must climb that once traversed provide a deeper satisfaction and hint that you are moving in the right direction. You crave difficulty and seek meaning along with billions of companions floating through space and time.One day along your magnificent life-journey, amidst treacherous dragons and unchartered territories, you reach into your pocket and pull out a piece of paper and a pen.Hmm, how will this look like on my resume?A resume is amedium of communicationIts a piece of paper and an indicator. You can mold it and form it to emphasize certain parts of your experience. Its highly malleable. Its fluid. It has no meaning by itself until you attach your goals behind it. Otherwise, its just company names and stuff you did.I dont doubt that resumes are useful. As a recruiter Ive seen, analyzed and helped write thousands of them.But when you focus too much on the resume you can get sidetracked. You can lose sight of where youre actually going to add a few extra skills under you belt or to work for a company with good brand recognition.The reason job seekers give weight to resumes is becauseemployersare giving weight to resumes. Through an asymmetrical employee-employer power dynamic people are all trying to look like Peacocks.The schwierigkeit is that the massive tail and beautiful feathers on a Peacock are an evo lutionary adaptation that impairs its speed and mobility, leaving it few options to move swiftly and thus open to get chomped up by predators.Its easy and often rewarded to be the peacock in society - sociable and sexy. It can also be dangerous. When we use attention-seeking and recognition and as metrics for our success, we can easily adapt new incentives and forget what we were doing in the first place.The reason I dont like the resume is because there are dozens, maybe hundreds of paths that you can take to get to your goal. When people try to build their resume or think a skill will look good on their resume, usually (not always, but most of the time) theyre using an external metric that society has made for them. On its own, it does no harm. But when we use the resume as the end, rather than a means to an end, 10 years down the line well be left with a nice-looking piece of paper asking ourselveswhere am I?You dont need a flashy tail to achieve your goalsYou can do what you wa nt and still be agile and on the move. Set your goal. Move towards it. Course-correct along the way. When you stop to ask yourself how it will look to other people then catch yourself. You are effectively thinking about resume. Smile and move on.While you may not think about it this way, you are a superman or superwoman in your own life. To those around you, friends, family, lovers and to your mission at hand. Your mission is too important to allow others to jeopardize it. So forget about your resume.Misha Yurchenko is a Japan-based Tech recruiter helping great companies find great people.This column welches originally published on Quora.