Burn your resume, build your platform

In today’s Social Sector world, your platform matters more than your resume. Building an online record of your ideas, creations and network is much more valuable than the classic and generic resume.

I remember the care and diligence that went into my Curriculum Vitae (CV) in the early years of my career. Hours crafting the sentences, anticipating the perception of future employers reading the text. My university helped people write their CVs instead of taking time to visualize and understand different work tracks and then build a set of contacts and actions around pursuing that path. They believed that the right sentence structure and sequence would magically unlock your dream life. 

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But as I progressed in my career, the CV soon became an afterthought. This thing that I had cared about and put so much work into was now irrelevant. People wanted to work together based on what I had demonstrated that I knew through actual work outputs, and what I could explain about the future work together on a Social Sector project. The CV was the administrative process that came after a practical demonstration of what I could produce, working with others, consistently over time. My place in a natural network of active professionals was much more valuable than the word-smithed CV. 
Build your platform
We need to forget about our CVs for the moment, and build our platforms. A platform is an online portfolio where you show your work and connect with other people around  shared interests. Everything that is publicly shareable that you create becomes part of your platform. This online space supports your work as you grow. It creates a virtual cycle of showing your work, learning through mistakes and consistent progression to higher levels of understanding. Ryan Holiday defines a platform as the combination of the tools, relationships, access, and audience that you have to spread your ideas—not just once, but over the course of a career. He calls this your most valuable career asset. At a basic level this is some kind of online presence like social media, a simple website and an email list.
In the past, a resume was a personal platform. It summarized your experience in an analog world where self publishing and building your own platform was time consuming and difficult. All that has changed, with accessible online tools from blogs to the ubiquity of LinkedIn as a virtual CV. 
Building a 21st century platform also recognizes this new truth: If you’re not online you don’t exist in the professional sense. The writer and artist Austin Kleon pushes this idea as a way to amplify your ideas and impact. And he means online in a way that is open and connected, rather than living in the time wasting world of the endless email exchange that we struggle with in the Social Sector world. While there is still much joy and benefit from offline activities, connecting the professional sphere brings many advantages. 
Overcoming the fear of showing your work
Building a platform is scary because you have to show other people your work. This process can invite criticism and push-back. But it is only through showing our work that we can find the people that care about the issues that matter to us.  Doing hard things, sharing the work, and making mistakes allows us progress. This progression leads to increasing levels of skill and understanding that allow us to create the next-level of contribution to our Social Sector causes. Overcome fear by using in iterative process, where one small step leads to the next. We try something, learn and then move on to the next level of learning. It is not about a certain number of hits or likes, but rather making something for the world. Then making it incrementally better, over a long period of time.  
Making it work for you
Don't get me wrong: you will still have to have an updated CV as a formality for some professional scenarios. But as Ramit Sethi says, write your CV last. As a supporting idea, check out Ramit’s briefcase technique. This shows that a proactive pitch on how you can accelerate your Social Sector organization or project is much more powerful than a pro forma CV that looks like everyone else who is applying.  Be clear about your vision and career approach. Do research in advance to support your negotiation and understanding about mutual fit for that work project. The CV slots in as one small part of that bigger picture. 
Hiring managers tsk tsk and discard resumes with any mistakes or typos. Conversely, a platform should be a categorization of mistakes and an open learning process where the work and the awareness progress to a higher level over time. Move from offline polished resume perfection toward open, real progressive learning and increasing impact in your Social Sector mission as you grow.