3 Questions That Ended a Dark Period

She later succeeded in a career change by taking on business development at Job Korea.

Kim Mi-jun stated, "I graduated from high school and started as a call center agent, then was hired in general affairs, and recently worked in business development at Job Korea. I am Kim Mi-jun."

She began rewriting her resume, pulling out even the experiences of failure and gaps she wanted to erase from her career. The resumes written through this process totaled 34 pages.

"One day, I started rewriting my resume, taking out even the experiences I wanted to erase. And the resumes I wrote that way totaled 34 pages," said Kim Mi-jun. This task was not just about listing her experiences but became an opportunity to reconstruct her career around her own narrative.

While working as a consultant at Blizzard Korea, Kim Mi-jun observed the methods of high-performing consultants at the team leader's suggestion. She imitated their way of speaking, listening attitude, and information verification order, developing them into her own style.

These efforts led to results, and Kim Mi-jun eventually ranked first among all Blizzard consultants worldwide. She recalled, "I followed high-performing consultants and tried to imitate their way of speaking, listening attitude, and even the order of verifying information. ... Then, I started seeing results, and when I added my existing methods, I ended up being the number one Blizzard consultant worldwide."

After moving to the marketing team, Kim Mi-jun felt isolated because she was not assigned any tasks. To overcome this situation, she eventually sought out the CEO of Blizzard directly.

"No one gave me any work," Kim Mi-jun expressed her difficulties, adding, "I caught the Blizzard CEO as he was passing by. I told him I wanted to learn marketing, but the team wasn't giving me any work. Then he told me to attend all the meetings he was going to from then on." She created an opportunity by taking an active approach to create opportunities herself, overcoming difficulties.

With the CEO's suggestion, Kim Mi-jun began attending all meetings and started making practical contributions by connecting her experiences as a call center agent to marketing strategies. In a meeting discussing user churn, she pointed out issues in the tutorial process.

Kim Mi-jun stated, "During a meeting discussing user churn, I wondered if there was a problem with the tutorial process and offered my opinion on user reactions to tutorials that I had encountered while consulting customers." This became an opportunity for her to directly participate in tasks beyond mere observation.

Kim Mi-jun actively engaged in tasks, finding and proposing necessary work, but the feedback she received was unexpected. She was evaluated as "the working type, so you might not be a good fit for our company."

This caused her great confusion. Kim Mi-jun confessed her identity confusion and self-blame due to conflicting reactions, saying, "One company wouldn't give me work even when I asked for it, and another company said I was too proactive when I found work myself."

Kim Mi-jun was advised to rewrite her resume. This meant not just listing company names and responsibilities, but writing down everything she had experienced in her life, what she thought at the time, and why she acted the way she did, like an essay.

This advice redefined the meaning of a resume. It emphasized the importance of a record that included her narrative and thought process, rather than just a list of experiences.

In this process, she discovered common behavioral patterns in her customer service and marketing work.

Kim Mi-jun stated, "I realized that a career isn't about adding flashy job titles to make a more splendid name tag, but about discovering recurring patterns of myself within my past experiences and carrying that into the next experience." She found a turning point in redefining her career not as a flashy name tag but as a continuity of past experiences.

Kim Mi-jun, who applied for a customer service position at Vingle, was offered a general affairs role by the CEO after reviewing her documents. This was because her customer service (CS) experience, marketing experience, and proactive attitude in creating opportunities within those roles were comprehensively evaluated.

Kim Mi-jun explained, "They saw all my CS experience, my marketing experience, and my experience of directly creating opportunities within those roles," illustrating how the connection of diverse experiences generated new opportunities.

At her new company, Kim Mi-jun faced the problem of high interview dropout rates and final hire attrition rates. She attempted an innovation by benchmarking the hospital's administrative treatment system and applying it to recruitment tasks.

Kim Mi-jun explained, "I made interviewers directly provide technical feedback on interviews to applicants, and like the administrative office discusses the next appointment and money, I discussed future schedules or money with applicants." By dividing roles so that interviewers handled job feedback and recruiters handled conditions and schedule information, they successfully increased the final onboarding rate from 20% to 80%.

She confessed her past perception, saying, "Before, I thought my career was my name tag. It was about showing how valuable I was, why people should seek me out, so I thought I should only keep the good, shining things." This led to the realization, after experiencing unemployment, that it was not an end to her career but another beginning.

Kim Mi-jun presented three questions to ask for growth. First, 'What did I learn from this experience?' Second, 'How did I act then?' Third, 'Can that aspect be used in other experiences?' These questions help one deeply reflect on their experiences and discover hidden potential.

She emphasized, "What did I learn from this experience? How did I act then? Can that aspect be used in other experiences?" explaining that through these questions, one can find their own strengths and patterns to move to the next stage.