The Writers Coin

If your answer is “one,” then you’re missing out.

Having one resume means that you’re most likely to apply to just one type of job, and going to limit how many open jobs you apply to. Which means you probably won’t find a job as quickly as someone who has four or five.

The reason is obvious: you’ll have more options if you have several different types of skills so you can apply to different types of jobs.

So can you just fire up a word processor and create five different versions of your existing resume? Nope, that would be pointless.

Instead, try to get more experience at your current work. Freelance on the side. Blog. Get “another job” in the sense that you’re still with your current company but you wear different hats and see what you’re good at. You’ll make yourself a more valuable employee and you’ll get the experience you need to open up all kinds of different jobs when you decide to move on.

Take myself, for example. I was hired to do one thing and one thing only.

That was over a year and a half ago and now I’m not even doing that original job. Things have changed and because I was able to wear many different types of hats, I’m now doing several different things. Which is good because my time isn’t spent doing just one thing (a little variety is always nice) and I’m expanding my skill set even further by adding experience.

Right now I could probably create at least four completely unique resumes. Almost like four totally different people.

So I don’t have five or six…but I’m working on it.

Having several resumes is a good way to make sure you’re expanding your skills and it will also help you when you go job hunting. You won’t ever have to feel like you “have” to get a job in just one specific field. You’ll have your choice as long as you have the skills to apply to several different types of jobs.

Image by woodleywonderworks

M and I want to buy our first place. Why? We want to build equity some equity, we want to take that “next” step, and we want that feeling of ownership that you can’t get anywhere else.

It’s been very stressful going out to see different places because we’re starting to see that what we want and what we can afford aren’t jiving as well as we’d like. Which makes us think that maybe it’s not our time yet. Or that we should wait. Or that we should compromise some things. Or that we’re going crazy talking about it and should rent for the rest of our lives.

But right now there are three really good reasons to take the plunge:

1. Prices are down: Not too much, but a lot of nice stuff that we couldn’t afford last year is starting to get down to our price level. In a year we may not be able to afford them, which means the time to act is now.
2. Rates are low: Not as low as they were a few months ago (sub 5%), but still historically low. This is a pretty big deal.
3. The Obama first-time homebuyer’s credit: We’d get an $8,000 tax credit as first-time buyers if we buy before December 1. Is that enough of a reason to go out and buy a home? No, but it sure makes it tempting…

But we also have some reasons not to buy:

1. We don’t have 20% to put down: Putting 20% down is the responsible thing to do, but what we’re looking at now has us closer to 13%. Also, putting down less means your rate isn’t as good and you can get dinged with other fees.
2. We like our big pile of cash: It feels really nice to have a big pile of cash sitting in the bank making us some interest. We aren’t stressed out about what could happen because we know we have the money to get through any kind of rough patch.
3. We’ll feel pinched: This is the problem with being frugal—we already feel tight. Throw in a mortgage payment and the liability that comes with owning all the appliances and things can get real dicey real quick. Broken A/C unit?  That’ll cost you. A lot. A kid at some point? It’ll cost us.

What do all the current homeowners out there have to say? I need some words of encouragement to help us through this whole process.

Help!

Image by judepics

I’m going to be MIA quite a bit this week because there is some writing that absolutely needs to be done. I have an actual deadline looming so I can’t just push it back the way I’ve been doing lately.

In the meantime, I leave you with Michael Lewis’s latest piece on the AIG collapse. As usual, it’s fantastic stuff.

Let’s face it: Ninjas are awesome. They can pretty much do whatever they want, whenever they want to. And they look cool doing it. But the best part about Ninjas is that they are kind of like McGyver: they can do it all. There isn’t one specific thing they do—they’re good at everything.

Think about what kind of an employee you are for a second. Do you have one specific skill set or do you do a lot of different things at work?

The reason I ask is because some good friends of mine were recently let go from their jobs and none of them were Ninjas. They were really good at what they did, but because of some restructuring, the organizations they worked for decided to let them (and their specific skill) go.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on Wisebread titled Getting Ahead At Work: Are You A Hammer Or A Swiss Army Knife? It’s the same idea as being a Ninja at work: if you can learn a lot of different skills and help out in a bunch of different ways, you will become more valuable to the organization you work for.

On that Wisebread post, a lot of people argued in the comments about what’s preferable between being really good at something and being pretty good at lots of different things.

I’m convinced that, while you still need to have a specific skill that you do better than others, it’s imperative that you broaden what you do for your company to as many different areas as possible.

The more you do, the more valuable you become across the board.

Image by jhritz