I recently had the pleasure of speaking with an entrepreneurial professional about the challenges and opportunities of stepping away from the structured corporate career ladder to an existence that is totally foreign to me.  One of the tactics she suggested is to completely re-do my curriculum vitae from one that is past-focused to one that shifts the point to "what-I-can-do-for-you-in-the-future". For those of you in the business, a functional rather than a chronological approach.

So I am going to do this (while still keeping the historic version in my back pocket), but I am also going to focus on anticipating the behavior-based thinking processes that dominate the middle market and large corporate approaches to hiring. For example, how do I craft a resume element that deals with this question: Tell me about the riskiest management decision you have made.   How long did it take you to gather the information to make the decision?  How long after that to make the decision?  What were the results?

It's almost as though I need to create a library of functional and behavioral components that I can draw on to fit the situation: one from column A, two from column B, etc. I'm going to work on this over the next several weeks and share my results as appropriate. 

I'm also taking up a new hobby which for me is really a rebirth of a very old one: fly-fishing. I've already recalled some techniques which apply to the travelogue: keep your hooks sharp, match your fly to what the fish are currently feeding on, practice your cast to make the best presentation possible, move from place to place to find likely targets, keep a hooked fish's head up, expect to spend a lot of time without a bite, talk to the locals to find the best spots, catch and release...the analogies continue....