Alex is a successful lawyer with 12-year experience practicing law. A year ago, she took a 12-month sabbatical to recover from burnout and to travel the world. During this time, she volunteered to teach English at a women’s training center in Burma. She picked up her camera and took stunningly beautiful photos throughout her travel – something she always loved since she was a teenager. She met many interesting people and learned yoga and meditation while in India and Bali. In the process, she rediscovered her love for arts and music. More importantly, she realized there is so much more to life than a high paying job that comes with insane workload and endless legal cases.
She is contemplating a new career path that gives her opportunities to meet interesting people, do creative work, learn and explore the world. When the 12 months is over, instead of reporting back to the law firm, she handed in her resignation letter. It is time to reinvent herself.
The first challenge is to find a career that leverages her existing skills while expanding into new territories. The second challenge is to present herself to future hiring managers. While many of her basic skills are transferrable, such as, organizational skills, logical thinking, planning skills, she felt like a blank sheet of paper, trying to compete with candidates, 15 years younger, for a minimum wage.
She decided to create 2-3 versions of CVs in order to tailor her qualifications to different possible jobs. However, all of these versions feel incomplete in expressing who she really is and what she can offer. Again, it feels like a round peg trying to fit in a square hole, something she has experienced all of her life.
Unfortunately, this is the reality of the current job market. We put on different masks in order to be accepted by hiring managers who look for specific industry knowledge and functional experiences. It is a rather outdated way of recruiting. It overlooks the power of a whole person when the candidate brings not only her intellect and knowledge but also her wisdom, curiosity, kindness, and passion for what she does.
We live in a time and era where no single job can give us all the experience, learning and self-expression we want. We need a dynamic work structure that not only accept but embrace who we are.
This is what Teal Village is for.
Teal Village is designed to support its members’ personal growth and business growth. In order to find the right match between projects and talents, a member must know who she is, what her strengths and interests are and why she wants to do what she does. In other words, each of us needs a holistic and authentic CV that is a full expression of who we are, not a CV tailored for a specific job. This way, projects exist in service of the individual’s needs, not the other way around. We call this CV – the Teal CV, designed for people, not for jobs.
At Teal Village, a Teal CV is your business card of authenticity. In the future, whether you are looking for talents for your business ventures, crowdfunding from other members, searching for a project to participate in or simply meeting other members for social purposes, you enjoy instant transparency, trust, and connection.
We encourage you to create your own Teal CV. The first step is to understand yourself by creating a well-articulated personal profile, which serves as the raw material for your Teal CV. It gives others a clear picture of who you are, what makes you unique and how you can contribute to potential projects.
For those, who have done self-work, this is easier. For others, this is a new journey that requires dedication and persistence. However, you are not alone, throughout your journey, Teal Village will provide guidance, tools and community support.
Many people are tempted to skip this step and go directly to projects. Keep in mind, every single struggle we experience at work is only a reflection of our inner struggle at a personal level. A wise person once said: “If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 of those hours sharpening my axe.” Self-discovery and personal growth are about sharpening YOU.
If interested, you can access the exercises here. For now, please save your own answers. In the near future, a secure platform will be offered to give 3 levels of content sharing: public view, team member view and private only.
