Maybe you’re managing a team while being a caregiver or breaking sales records while working remotely as a single parent. Each challenge leaves a mark on your journey toward growth, purpose and legacy, and earns a spot on your resume.
A resume of challenges is not a list of defeats, but a record of victories: the battles you have fought, the lessons you have learned, and the resilience that will carry you forward. Having awareness and understanding of your summary of challenges helps you understand your own strengths and your ability to improve yourself.
Being able to talk about your honest (not made up or misrepresented) summary of challenges before and/or during a job interview can be an authentic way to highlight what you bring to the table, which may not be visible in the submitted summary.
Benefits of having a challenge resume
1. Provides evidence of critical intangible traits and skills.
Challenges don’t just show what you’ve been through. They show their resilience, adaptability, determination and problem-solving ability. A summary of the challenges highlights strength of character. You can demonstrate your integrity, as well as your ability to be honest and truthful and uphold ethical principles, even when it is difficult or personally harmful. It allows you to demonstrate your growth by talking about the lessons, skills, and wisdom that each challenge leaves behind. Additionally, your summary of challenges may be proof that you can thrive in uncertain environments.
2. Demonstrate credibility
Sharing and discussing your summary of challenges and what you have learned from them provides transparency. It makes you more relatable and earns you more respect. Demonstrate authenticity. Plus, being authentic (and having faced adversity and learned from it) makes you a better leader and someone people trust.
3. Increases self-confidence, promotes good mental health
Reviewing your challenge summary can help you remember what you are capable of accomplishing when faced with new obstacles. This will fuel and foster your confidence and personal empowerment. It also prepares you to face new obstacles without unjustified fears. And perhaps, above all, it helps you recognize your personal value, beyond titles or job descriptions.
4. Reframe setbacks as assets
Your challenge summary gives you the opportunity to explain how your failures were used as springboards to further growth and development. It can help you transform pain into purpose, showing courage in your lived experiences.
5. Inspire others, leave a legacy
Sharing your summary of challenges normalizes struggle as part of success. It creates a ripple effect that motivates others to keep going. And finally, your resume of challenges is part of your legacy. It is a history of strength that you can pass on to the next generation. Your story will tell them: This is what I endured. here it is what I learned. This is how you too can rise. In many ways, that resume becomes the most valuable document of your life, because it tells the truth about who you are at your core.
Here is my challenge resume
As an example, here are some things in my challenge summary. I was the first woman, the first Black person, and/or the first Black woman to serve in white male-dominated industries in corporate America. Because of this, I had to navigate the daily realities of sexism, racism, sexual harassment, and classism.
During my engineering days, I often had to spend time in environments that did not have basic bathrooms or sleeping places for women. I also had to face many personal challenges while continuing to perform and grow in my career, such as the loss of many loved ones, caring for my husband during his battle with colon cancer, and multiple health issues.
Persevering through all of these adversities, while maintaining my integrity, was a test of my resilience and character, earned me respect and confidence, and transformed me into a person and leader who values diversity and inclusion, knows how to build high-performing teams, and strives to make everyone feel valued and appreciated.
The next time you update your professional summary, take a moment to update your challenge summary as well. Write down the obstacles you’ve overcome, the moments you thought you wouldn’t survive but you did, and the lessons that changed you. Because in the end, it is not the titles we have that define us, but the challenges we have overcome to get there.
And when you know and understand your challenge brief, you’ll never doubt your ability to move up again.