Once we had spoken about the interview process, Paloma advised me to rewrite my resume in a non-chronological transferable skills format.
“Oh no, not again,” I thought. I had reformatted my resume countless times before.
“All my skills are transferable,” I told Paloma, “but nobody seems to understand that. They want people with the exact experience and skill set for the job description.”
“That is exactly why you have to make a non-chronological transferable skills resume,” she responded.
I was initially resistant but Paloma was insistent. She said it would help me find a job—and did not stop telling me so.
I spent several days on the first draft of my transferable skills resume and by time I was finished, I was transformed. It was my a-ha moment when my resume, job search, career management and self-perception in general turned from black-and-white to color.
If I had been reluctant to take my self-appointed career coach’s advice before, after writing my new non-chronological transferable skills resume, I was hooked by Paloma’s charisma, intelligence and determination—and by what I quickly coined as the Paloma Method.
What would I have done without my coach? Would I have gotten my job at a midtown accounting firm? Would I have ended up somewhere else? Would I still be unemployed?
When I asked Paloma why she had reached out to me, she did not hesitate to answer, “I followed your story and could not believe that after all your publicity, you could still not find a job. I could not believe that no one was helping you. This is America! I knew that I could help you, so I contacted you.”
She also told me that if my integrity had not shined through my sign board story and had not been reaffirmed by her conversations with me, she would not have given me fifteen seconds of her time.
“Character is not something that can be taught,” she said.
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