Staring at a blank resume page after a few years away
Staring at a blank document after years away
I sat down last Sunday to finally update my resume. It’s been three years since I last typed out a professional summary, and honestly, I forgot how much I dread the process. The standard templates you find online—the ones with those clean, symmetrical layouts—always look so clinical. They make you feel like your entire career path was supposed to be a straight, logical line, which mine absolutely wasn’t. I spent about an hour just trying to remember the specific dates for that contract project I did back in early 2022. I had to dig through old emails and cross-reference them with my bank statements just to make sure I wasn’t off by a month. It’s funny how the digital footprint of a job is so thin unless you specifically remember to export everything before the IT department revokes your access.
The strange frustration of gaps and titles
One thing that really bothers me is how to frame those middle periods. When I worked for that research startup, the job title sounded impressive on the internal portal, but my daily reality was mostly just debugging legacy code that nobody else wanted to touch. Do I put the fancy title or the actual reality of the work? I looked up some resume examples and most of them just list the high-level responsibilities. It feels like lying, even though it’s technically accurate. I tried using a writing app to smooth out the phrasing, but it kept suggesting I use words like ‘spearheaded’ or ‘orchestrated.’ I don’t think I’ve ever ‘orchestrated’ anything in my life. I just fixed things that broke. It feels like there’s this specific language you have to adopt just to get past the initial filter, and if you don’t use it, you sound like you aren’t trying.
Digging for documents in an unorganized drive
I realized halfway through that I needed to attach a certificate of employment. I haven’t had to ask for a formal issuance document in forever, and the process to get one from my previous employer is a bit of a headache. You have to submit a request through their internal portal, wait for the HR manager to approve it, and then download a PDF that’s often locked behind some obscure security plugin that never works on my MacBook. It’s ironic that in an era of ‘digital passports’ and carbon tracking for steel production—where we talk about every single ton of CO2—getting a simple proof of work document still feels like navigating a bureaucracy from twenty years ago. It’s a small, annoying friction point that makes the whole task feel like a slog.
The disconnect between hiring notices and reality
I spent a bit of time checking out job postings on Kakao and a few other platforms while I was supposed to be writing my own details. The descriptions for some of these research positions are so vague. They talk about ‘fostering innovation’ and ‘nurturing talent,’ yet you hear stories about researchers in these same institutions who can’t even put a single line of their project experience on their resume because of complex non-disclosure agreements or precarious contract statuses. It makes me wonder if the resume itself is just a performative document we all agree to pretend is accurate. I saw a posting for a position that looked interesting, but the salary range was hidden or listed as ‘negotiable,’ which usually just means ‘we will tell you only after you pass three rounds of interviews.’
Letting the document sit for a day
By around 11:00 PM, I just gave up on the final polish. I have the dates roughly right, and I filled in the project descriptions with enough keywords that it shouldn’t look suspicious to an automated system. I still don’t feel great about how I described my ‘career objectives’ or whatever that section is supposed to be. It sounds stiff and forced. I left the window open on my browser, fully intending to fix it the next morning, but it’s been two days and I haven’t touched it. There’s a certain relief in just having the skeleton of it done, even if I’m not entirely sure I want to send it out yet. Maybe the uncertainty is just part of it. I’ll look at it again when I actually feel like I have the energy to lie about my ‘vision for the future’ one more time.
That certificate of employment saga is so frustrating – the process really does feel like a throwback. I had a similar experience last year, and the level of manual intervention required just highlighted how much things have changed, or haven’t, in many workplaces.
That portal experience sounds incredibly frustrating. I had a similar issue with a freelance client and the delay just made it so much harder to get back into the formal employment conversation.
That feeling of wading through layers of ambiguity to confirm even a single detail is really accurate. I’ve had similar experiences trying to reconstruct past projects – it’s almost like the work itself gets lost in the documentation process.