A certificate for every failure

“Wait, tell me again why you want to include so many participation certificates in your CV?”

It was one of those early days of my second year at business school when juniors came to me for CV advice. Most of these juniors had the same fears and the same insecurities and so most of their questions were also typical.

What to include,
what to leave out,
what to show at the top,
what to highlight with bold letters,
how to show that they can take on the world, and
how to write points that would give the reader an orgasm.
Basically, stuff that seems very very important at that point in life, but is actually inconsequential in the grand scheme of everyday things.

However, the person in front of me that day didn’t fit this typecast. She had brought me two versions of her CV: one which followed the same pattern that everyone else followed, and one more which had more participation certificates than top-rank achievements.

So, I was curious and asked her why she wanted to make such a CV.

“You didn’t like it?” she asked.

“It’s not that,” I said, though I wasn’t being very honest. “It’s just not something I have ever come across.”

“Yeah. It’s not very conventional.”

“So why? You have so many achievements to show off.”

“Ah…never mind, Minakhi. I just wanted to see your reaction. It was probably just a bad idea. Forget I ever showed you that.”

“No, no. Wait. This CV is full click-bait. Imagine I am the hiring manager and I shortlisted this CV and you’re in the interview room with me. Tell me why you made a CV like this.”

“Ohh…you think I can get shortlisted with this CV?”

“Well, no. But imagine that the manager is someone like me who wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to talk to someone this eccentric.”

She started beaming now. I always like her when she smiles that wide.

“Then, it serves its purpose, right, Minakhi? That is exactly the kind of person I want to attract through the CV.”

She did that playful thing with her eyebrows that got me laughing instantly.

“But, but, but…,” I recovered, “are you willing to lose out on every other person who might otherwise have been interested in offering you a job?”

“Haan, that’s what I am not sure about. Which is why I have made both variants.”

“Hmm…anyway, let’s just assume that you do get someone’s attention.” And here I did the playful thing with my eyebrow. “The question still stands: why a list of participation certificates?”

“Okay, so…” she started, suddenly bubbling with new found enthu in life. “So, look at your position now. You are faced with the choice of picking 3–4 people out of, let’s say, 20 who you have shortlisted. Now, more or less, all these 20 people will be similar in loads of ways: all overachievers, all very intelligent and hard-working, all with a lot of potential. So, choosing one vs another is actually tough. Right?”

“I am following, yes…”

“Haan, so… if you have only the achievements to compare and all of them have similar achievements, what will you next look at?”

“Several things…do I like this person, does he/she fit into the kind of systems we have built, etc.”

“Haan, that’s true, but skill-wise how will you differentiate further?”

“Looking at their experience, the breadth and depth of projects this person has done, things of that nature, I guess.”

“But that will also be similar, right? The CV is a leveller that way, we had assumed.”

“Yeah…you are correct there.”

“So, how will you choose?”

“Why don’t you tell me…”

“Haha…okay. Would you prefer someone who has never failed at anything, or someone who has failed a number of times before succeeding?”

“Boss, so you are playing that game here, is it?”

“Yeah. I am a tinkerer” she said with air quotes around the last word. “Someone who has poked enough boxes and failed and then found the few really good things she did great at. I am not afraid of failures. I embrace them and I go forward. Someone who has never failed will just be too afraid to take any risk at all. And that’s what the participation certificates are for — to show that I sucked at so many things, but I still went ahead and took part. Because the alternative was to sit back and do nothing.”

Although I still thought this idea was ridiculously over-idealistic, I knew deep down I was very impressed with her answer. But something was bothering me still.

“Oye oye. All this high funda philosophy you can put only if you get asked this question, no? How will the shortlisting guy know you are as good as the other people they want if you don’t highlight your achievements outright?”

She sat up full of energy and started pointing a finger at my chest to indicate that I had somehow stumbled upon the greatest revelations in the world. Her entire face was one large source of light now — the smile in her eyes wider than the happy-happy grin on her face.

“That’s exactly the point, right? That’s what I am risking with this CV. That’s how I am setting myself up for a very high stakes game. The upside is very high and the downside is very low. If I don’t get shortlisted, I lose out on this completely. But if I do, I am pretty sure I will get hired. It’s the fear of failure that is resisting me now. I want to overcome this resistance.”

“Hmm…fair point. So, you’re a big fan of Seth Godin, hunh?”

“Wait. You know him too? Of course you do. Stupid me.”

“You have been using all the terms that come up in his books Linchpin and Poke the Box.”

“Yeah, I guess I have been, no? Do you think I should rephrase it when I am in the real interview?”

“I don’t know…that up to you, actually. Just say it the way you say it to yourself. That’s the most honest way of saying anything really.”

“Hmm…but then the interviewer might think that I am not very original in my thoughts…”

I pounced on that.

“Ahh…and there comes your fear of failure. Trapped in our own twines, are we?”

“Haha…yeah.”

There was then the awkward silence that always creeps in at times like these. She started looking at the one-page CV in her hands and I started appreciating the exquisite beauty of the cracks in my room’s walls.

“You do realise,” I said after a few moments, “that I am going to steal your lines and put them in some story someday?”

“Sure sure. They aren’t my lines anyway.”

“Actually, yeah. To make them yours, I have to recreate this exact dialogue. Maybe I will do that.”

“Ehhhh….don’t do that here, okay? Don’t tell other people about this. I don’t want to be teased about this ever.”

“Is that so? Why?”

“Eh. Just don’t use my name, okay?”

“Cool cool. But people might guess who you are anyway.”

“How is that? You don’t have to describe me, no?”

“No, but I have a feeling that we are going to be friends and we are going to have a lot of these discussions. And when I write about this, there will be someone, at least, who will figure out it’s you.”

“Well, that can’t be helped then. I’ll just have to embrace this fear of failure and still go ahead with giving you permission for using this episode somewhere.”

“Permission, it seems. I was simply telling you. Chumma, permission and all…”

“Haha…Okay.”

We did go on to have several such discussions in the future, but I was a little disappointed when she finally decided to scrap her CV of failures and go ahead with the safe achievement-decked, bold-lettered, I-am-so-awesome variant. And the day after she got her job, I told her about my disappointment too.

“Well, what to do? The stakes were too high for me to handle, yaar.”

“Hmm…I guess I can’t fault you for that.”

“But, Minakhi, to be honest, I am glad I did have that discussion with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you seem to have learned a thing or two about taking risks.”

If you have a friend with whom you have random discussions like these, do share this piece with them.