I was having an argument with a recruiter about my resume a while back. It wasn’t a serious argument, at least in my mind, but let’s call it a slight disagreement about the way my resume looked. Not the format, but the number of positions.
This is a common theme in my work life.
Let me go back eight or nine years and give you some history. I was in between positions and looking for the next opportunity, when I got a chance to sit down with a very wellknown recruiter. He had very rudely pointed out that I had several jumps in my career and said he wouldn’t represent me. Mostly, he said that he only represented friends or people who had more stable careers.
I argued that I had reached the pinnacle of Information Technology because of those jumps from property to property. I had been a CIO for a company with ten properties. I had been the Western Region Territory Manager and Project Manager for a gaming company. I had opened five properties operationally, one of them well over a billion dollars and became their CIO. I had been involved in the opening of more than 25 properties in total. But he wouldn’t represent me because I had moved from company to company too often.
Really?
Needless to say, I was screaming credentials at someone who wasn’t going to listen. Why?
Because I forgot to add the one thing I didn’t realize at the time.
I’m a builder.
Builders are rare, but I didn’t know that then. I thought, “Hey, I just need to conform to what recruiters and everyone else expect of me. That will make everyone happy, and my career will thrive.”
You know who wasn’t happy and thriving?
Me.
Builders are not caretakers. We pretend to be good caretakers. But we are builders. I’ve gotten better at being a caretaker over the years, and there is a trick to that, which I’ll explain as I go along. But first, let me explain what a builder actually is.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY JOHN CASH FILIPPE IN THE SUMMER 2026 EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.