Chad Lemke

Chad Lemke

Chief Operating Officer, Array Services Group

I was a first career executive and had spent all or most of the previous twelve years expanding my responsibility and furthering the careers of those around me.  Sometime after the third ownership change, I found myself negotiating the terms of my release from the VP role that had been my pinnacle accomplishment.  It was the end of an amazing run.

The concept of finding a new career was completely foreign.  You don’t exactly look in the classified section of the local newspaper for your next executive level position.  The prospect of finding my next opportunity was as much exciting as it was scary.  OK, more scary than exciting.  I just wanted to get back to work.

I dusted off my contact list and started thinking of how many people within my network could offer me an opportunity equal or greater than I had in the past.

After a couple months of what I thought was active job searching, I came to the sobering reality that if I relied on applying only for posted positions, job boards and my existing network, I might be unemployed forever…or at the very least a long time.  I had spent significant time preparing my resume and I was proud of the decorations and accomplishments it encapsulated.  However, I also knew that it couldn’t talk and it wasn’t evident to the reader why those accomplishments followed me.  In my mind, my resume, would never be able to tell the story, but was rather just a table of contents.  I needed to get in front of people and be my own resume and tell my own stories.

READ CHAD’S STORY HERE