Coming Out in the Professional World

By Blaize Stewart

March 09, 2021

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Photo credit: Unsplash/You X Ventures

For ambitious young professionals like myself, there is perhaps no document more important than the resume. Crafting the perfect summary of all that you bring to the professional table is an art unto itself; you want to be creatively informative, subtly captivating, and humbly accomplished, among many other things. It is a delicate process where the expectations of the recipients vary wildly, which means you must dedicate a good chunk of time to perfecting your resume if you want it to catch the eyes of potential employers.

A multi ethnic woman smiles as she talks to a colleague at a table alongside co workers.
Bigstock/Rido81

As a small-town kid with big-city dreams, I spent countless hours working on my resume and its many iterations as I came to the end of my college career. I sent copies out to family, friends, professors, and industry professionals; virtually anyone I could think of who could help me refine my resume got one. Luckily, I received an incredible amount of constructive feedback and was able to implement many changes to my original document, which have no doubt helped me land many interviews.

However, out of all those responses, there is only one proposed change that remains clear in my mind today: the recommendation that I remove my LGBT work — which also clearly identified me as a member of the LGBT community — from my resume for the sake of marketability. At the time, this comment, which I do not believe was shared from a hateful place, cut me to my core. I had only been out for a few short months and was still learning how to navigate the world as an openly bi man. Reading that statement shattered the fragile confidence I had as both a newly out individual and a young professional.

I would be lying if I said I did not consider following this advice but ultimately, I decided against removing these items. I understood that keeping them on my resume could potentially hurt me in terms of getting a job, but would I really want to work somewhere which had an issue with LGBT people? There was another issue as well: physically, I just could not do it.

A man with a beard holds his hands on his temples stressed out while working on his computer.
Bigstock/Milkos

My finger did not have the strength to hold down the delete key to erase not only my work but also part of my identity, an identity that I struggled to accept for years. While I am proud that I did not listen to that specific recommendation at the time, sadly, I cannot say it has had zero impact on my professional journey.

In my personal life, there is no denying my passion is using my voice and platform to advocate for members of the bi community and, to a larger extent, the LGBT community. Over the course of the past several years, I've written articles, spoken on panels and at conferences, and been fortunate to have many other opportunities to raise my voice to fight for my community.

However, I do not think I have brought this same level of intensity to my full-time work experiences, thanks to the residual effects of that comment. Even though I've spent years sharing personal insights on what it is like to live as a bi man, I have rarely broached the topic of what it is like being a bi man in the professional space with members of my professional network.

It’s not to say I hide at work; I have small bi and rainbow flags on my desk, gladly help with diversity and inclusion projects whenever I can, and, of course, have LGBT experiences listed on my resume. But compared to the bi firebrand I am in my personal life, the work version of me is incredibly watered down. In the past, I dedicated a significant amount of time and energy — an energy that would have been better spent focused on work — to editing out the most trivial bi aspects of my life from my professional conversations, simply out of fear.

For example, as a bi man, I could feasibly have a male or female partner. So, rather than saying, “I have a date with my boyfriend,” or “I’m grabbing drinks with a girl I have been seeing,” I would always default to, “I’m grabbing a drink with an old college friend” whenever I had after-work plans. I thought it was a brilliant workaround, as it kept me from outing myself and reduced the likelihood of me having to answer qualitative and quantitative questions about my experiences as a bi man. It was eerily similar to the tactic I employed during the closeted days of my personal life in order to avoid arousing suspicion.

Despite that clear parallel, it took me a surprisingly long time to realize what I was doing: I was keeping myself in the professional closet. I was scared to be as open and proud as I am in my personal life because I worried it could negatively impact my career, a career I worked hard to build up from scratch. Though this was an incredibly unpleasant epiphany, it made me feel embarrassed, ashamed, and a plethora of other not-so-pleasant emotions. I am glad I finally recognized what I was doing because it gave me the opportunity to reevaluate what kind of professional I wanted to be.

A middle eastern man works on a laptop smiling while his colleagues observe his work and point while smiling.
Unsplash/Jud Mackrill

Though I am still not at the level of bi-boldness that I am in my personal life, I am grateful to have taken those first few steps out of the professional closet. It is these little steps, like leaving LGBT experiences on a resume, that help us get to the more monumental moments. Today, I am thrilled to find myself happily employed at an organization that, incidentally, hired me with a resume featuring numerous LGBT items and regularly demonstrates how much it values diversity and inclusion.

Seeing empowered leaders, coworkers and peers thrive as LGBT professionals has inspired me to push myself further in this space and to test the waters outside of my comfort zone. I have learned that it’s only by proudly being myself that I can grow into the kind of professional I want to be, and I look forward to the day when I can be unabashedly proud of who I am in every arena of my life.

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