If you're anything like me, crafting your resume is a challenge. You have overlapping jobs that make the chronological format confusing. You have so many different and seemingly unrelated skill sets that the document could go on for four pages and lacks coherence. In the case of a drastic career change, the job you want may call for a set of abilities for which you have no track record.

Most resume writing books and Web sites offer guidelines to help you overcome common issues such as gaps in employment and too many short stints. Even those instructions fail to help; your record shows too many "problems" at the same time. You contemplate using a LinkedIn profile, personal bio, or other tool for introducing yourself, but the prospective employer, client, or the person who's kindly offered to refer you wants a resume. Now what?

A critical look at the rhetoric of the resume may help: Most resume advice is geared toward generating a document that reassures the reader that you are indeed a round peg suitable for round holes.

The old-fashioned chronological resume, the one you probably learned to write in high school, chronicles how you have spent your professional time for the past ten years. Its promise: "I am predictable and meet expectations."

Skills resumes are often recommended for people who want to change domains or whose work histories reflect some egregious deviation from the path of one job after another, each held for a year or longer, each representing an upward trend from the last, with few long gaps. Its purpose is to rebut the concern about steadiness: "Forgive the mess. Despite all that, here's what I can do."

Then there's the combination resume. The current emphasis on the resume as "a marketing piece" has pushed this format into prominence. It is most effective for mid-career workers who want to traverse a threshold from an officially lower-level position where they have done high-level work to a role with recognized higher stature. What the combination resume says is, "I'm all grown up now, and ready for the mantle."

As a square peg, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is step out from behind these facades, drop the defensive stance, and communicate what you honestly have to offer - your ability to sustain the unique perspectives that may provide extraordinary value in the reader's situation.

The standard resume forms are here to stay for a while, in part because they are visually familiar. Try on these alternative messages for size:

Chronological: "I bring an encyclopedia of experience to bear on the work at hand."

Skills: "I have a rage to learn and can do it quickly. What do you need? My toolkit overflows."

Combination: "Let me loose, and I will solve the problems you haven't even found yet."

Convey what you truly have to offer and you may locate that elusive job or role that feels substantial.

Since graduating from Stanford, writer/editor Barbara Saunders, http://www.barbararuthsaunders.com has been a chemical dependency counselor, a technical editor, a personal trainer, a discourse analyst, a recruiter, a book author, an entrepreneurship coach, and the manager of a pet acupuncture clinic.