Recently I shared my career autobiography on LinkedIn, with all its ups and downs. Many said you want to try it for yourself. Here’s why it’s helpful to reframe your career failures as valuable experience. Followed by a simple guide how to write your mini career bio. And finally, my own as an example…
How to reframe failures as valuable experience
Whether you’re 35 like me, 50 and peaking in your career, or an ambitious 20-something, you’ve probably experienced self-doubt about your career. It happens to me all the time, and to most people if they’re being honest. Many struggles and much effort are hidden beneath the surface of an “impressive” CV or LinkedIn profile.
When insecurity creeps in, I try to reframe things. Not: what have I achieved in my career? Rather: what have I experienced in my career? Because every experience is a learning opportunity, whether it’s a “success” or a “failure”. By the way, it’s enlightening to write a mini autobiography of your career. I’d recommend it.
Writing a mini career bio in 5 simple steps
- Allow yourself some distraction-free time, as little as 30 minutes.
- Divide your career into chunks, which could be split by company, role, or in my case time periods.
- Relive your experience, writing in brief, stream of consciousness style, in the first-person present-tense, one chunk at a time.
- Focus on your experience, not only your achievements. What did you enjoy? What didn’t you enjoy? How did you feel?
- Take a break, reflect on what you wrote, come back to it and add detail as necessary, reflect some more, write some more, repeat.
My mini career bio: successes and failures
On reflection, since I’ve been old enough to choose, I’ve lived life 5 years at a time. Below is what I experienced in the first (nearly) 20 years of my career, full disclosure, warts and all.
Career preparation
Last year of school, focus solely on getting grades I need for uni, stress a lot. Turn up at Oxford shy and awkward, having spent teens studying and playing guitar in bedroom. Don’t love content of languages course. Drink far too much to cope. Learn some hard social lessons. Make great friends, but feel inadequate surrounded by high achievers. Push myself to take up rowing, ambitious choice of sport for a non-athlete! Start in college’s 2nd boat, cough up lungs twice daily, we lose every race for a year. Offer to sub into 1st boat when they need, finally asked to join, made vice-captain. Weakest guy in crew, chosen because I’m consistent and reliable, we do OK. Live in Russia through winter. Intern as a translator in Paris, not successfully. Final year, quit rowing to focus on exams, regret it, get respectable 2:1 degree, no idea what to do with it. Find confidence, revisit childhood dream to become Royal Marine, eyesight too bad, fortunately just good enough for Army.
Military
Selected for Army officer training. Backpack across Central America. Move back with parents. Assemble miners’ lamps in dad’s factory, run, deliver Domino’s pizzas, lift weights, repeat for a year. Road trip through California. Hike across Corsica. Attend Royal Military Academy Sandhurst for a year, struggle mentally, pass OK. Attend infantry training in Wales, instructors tough, carrying injury, scrape through. Brief respite of fun training in Dorset, perform well. Soul-destroying training in Canada, perform poorly, think about quitting. More enjoyable training in UK, perform OK. Cut from Afghanistan deployment last minute, for political reasons, devastated beyond belief. Eventually deploy as reserve, command 50 soldiers in armoured vehicles, best performance to date, career highlight. Back to Wiltshire, promote, responsible for 150 soldiers’ training, challenging but unexciting. Resign commission. Sent to Wales to run training, dread it, find satisfaction in the end.
Startup > scale-up
Move to London with no job. Apply to work at Deliveroo, have no business experience, get rejected. Help my brother with his pre-revenue business, teach myself everything, burn through my savings. Apply for ops manager role at Deliveroo, hired as employee number 15ish, don’t yet understand my value, start at half my previous salary. Culture shock, drink 6 double espressos a day, always on. Negotiate share options and pay rise, promoted twice in 2 years, build and lead a team of 80. Moved out of beloved ops department in shock restructure, boss and mentor sent to Hong Kong. Consider leaving, instead take opportunity to run projects across 13 countries for 300 employees and 60,000 couriers. Experiment with electric vehicles and micro-mobility solutions, can’t make anything stick long term. Culture turns corporate, big hitters hired from outside for senior roles, reach promotion ceiling. Ultimately help grow ops 500x in 5 years before leaving.
Portfolio career
Quit Deliveroo. Backpack across South East Asia. Road trip from UK to Portugal and back, go over budget, need cash quickly, start freelancing. Move to Antigua with few savings. Go into business with local company, choose wrong product, can’t align with owner, venture fails. Pandemic hits, nearly out of money, visa delayed, consider retreating to UK. Quickly pivot, double down on remote freelancing, win UK contract. Deliveroo IPO tanks. Start making decent income, win more UK business through referrals. Pandemic worsens, business slows, best UK client folds. Antiguan economy crippled, 18 month curfew, lose only local client. Several UK clients come through at once, nothing for months, repeat. Second local venture falls through. Get great testimonials, build book of repeat UK clients. Global economy tanks, cost of living rises. Still testing and adjusting portfolio career…
What I learnt from my mini career bio
So, you see, I’ve had more than a few setbacks and missteps in my career so far. But I’ve learnt so much that, when I’m thinking rationally, I really have nothing to regret. If I keep this up, working to retirement age, I have another 6 mini careers to come. That’s exciting, and it encourages me to take calculated risks.
Next time you worry you’ve not achieved more, pause and reflect. Ask yourself not what you’ve achieved in your career, but what have you experienced? If you can look back and honestly say you consistently showed up, did your best, and learnt from your struggles, you’ve already achieved something to be proud of.
What to do with your mini career bio
You may want to keep your learnings to yourself. You may wish to share your bio for others to learn from. Either way, I guarantee you’ll find the exercise cathartic and enlightening. It certainly helped me let some bad stuff go, relearn some important lessons, and celebrate some career highlights I’d long since forgotten about.
What are you waiting for? Get writing! And if you want to go further and take the next step in your career, give me a shout.