5 Resume Improvements to Land 5x More Interviews

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this insightful session led by Bogden Slatoff, founder of Growth Hack Your Career, job seekers learn innovative ways to enhance their resumes. Bogden emphasizes the importance of standing out by crafting a unique resume summary that breaks formalities and demonstrates personal strengths. He highlights the necessity of tailoring resumes to catch recruiter attention quickly, recognizing that quality applications submitted promptly gain more traction. Additionally, various tactics for condensing resume content and using effective bullet points to convey accomplishment are discussed, alongside strategies for presenting diverse skills and leveraging AI tools efficiently.

Highlights

Understanding how recruiters scan resumes can greatly improve your job application success 🤓
Emphasizing personal achievements over generic qualifications is key 🔑
Bogden Slatoff’s tips help job candidates cut through the competition with tailored resume strategies ✂️
Highlighting the use of job description keywords without overwhelming a resume with fluff 🔍
Innovative use of bullet points and resume formatting increases visibility to recruiters 📈

Key Takeaways

Speed matters! Apply within 24-48 hours to improve your chances 📅
Your resume shouldn't just be a list of qualifications - make it personal 🎨
Recruiters love concise resumes: keep yours between 350-500 words 📝
Use action verbs and concrete results in bullet points to stand out 🏆
Customize your resume's top half for each job application for better results 🎯

Overview

Bogden Slatoff’s session on resume improvements offers a refreshing take on how job seekers can effectively catch a recruiter's eye and land more interviews. By using real-world examples and industry insights, Bogden breaks down common resume misconceptions and provides actionable strategies that anyone can implement.

A key focus of the seminar is the power of personal branding in resumes. Bogden highlights the importance of creating a resume summary that is not just informative but also uniquely you. This approach piques interest and can set a candidate apart in a sea of similar qualifications.

Additionally, Bogden provides a detailed walkthrough of optimizing resume content. This includes keeping resumes concise while covering all relevant skills, strategically using AI tools, and understanding the timing of application submissions to maximize an applicant's chances.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction The chapter talks about the weather conditions, noting a cold winter that's now giving way to melting temperatures as it rises above freezing. The conversation seems to be waiting for more people to join, with individuals from various cities such as New Jersey, Montreal, Boston, Atlanta, and Chicago being mentioned.
01:00 - 02:00: Session Overview The session begins with a mention that it is about to start soon, and the speaker notes that there is an international audience present. Participants from various locations such as Columbus, Ohio, Nigeria, France, Switzerland, London, Seattle, and Pennsylvania are mentioned, highlighting the diverse group gathered for the session.
02:00 - 03:00: Speaker Introduction In this chapter titled "Speaker Introduction," the speaker, Rob Henderson, introduces himself as a team member of Job Scan. The session's focus is on enhancing resumes to secure more interviews. Additionally, all sessions are being recorded and will be available for free viewing later. The speaker briefly mentions his previous residence in South Orange, New Jersey, and engages in light conversation about geographical familiarity before proceeding with the main topic.
03:00 - 04:00: Background Story of Bogden Slatoff The chapter outlines some logistical updates for the audience. It mentions that there will be an email sent with links to recordings in the next few days. Additionally, an offer for Job Scan Premium is highlighted, providing a 20% discount for optimizing resumes and LinkedIn profiles. A URL is also shared where the discount is applied automatically upon signing up.
04:00 - 05:00: Starting Mythbusters The chapter titled 'Starting Mythbusters' features the introduction of the speaker, Bogden Slatoff, who is the founder of 'Growth Hack Your Career' and author of 'The Ultimate Guide to Job Hunting.' He is recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice, having assisted over 167,000 job seekers. The session is poised to provide a wealth of content, starting with Bogden's presentation.
05:00 - 06:00: Resume and Job Search Tips This chapter discusses the author's background and his career transition from working in film and TV to startups. It highlights the challenges he faced during this transition, including a lengthy job search that took 14 months. The chapter is aimed at readers who might be experiencing long job searches and offers tips and insights into resume building and job searching based on the author's personal experiences.
06:00 - 07:00: Resume Summary Importance The chapter discusses the importance of understanding and utilizing key strategies in a resume summary to improve job search outcomes. The speaker shares personal experiences, highlighting that applying these techniques can significantly reduce the job search duration. For instance, after incorporating these lessons, the speaker's subsequent job search was only three weeks long. Furthermore, the speaker mentions the launch of 'Growth Hack Your Career' in 2017, utilizing accumulated knowledge from past job searches.
08:00 - 09:00: Common Resume Mistake: Qualification In this chapter, the speaker shares their experiences assisting numerous job seekers across diverse industries and roles. They reflect on a personal challenging job search period where they felt stagnant due to receiving no responses. This realization prompted them to take a different approach by leveraging their network to consult directly with recruiters and hiring managers. This proactive strategy helped reshape their job search tactics.
10:00 - 11:00: Bullet Points Crafting In this chapter titled 'Bullet Points Crafting,' the speaker discusses the process of seeking feedback and advice on resume building. They recount reaching out to friends for help with resume critique, expressing surprise at the advice received, which was unexpected but valuable. The chapter also touches on the importance of learning from career coaches, particularly those active on LinkedIn, and how the speaker has distilled best practices from these experiences to share with others.
11:00 - 12:00: Resume Length Debate The chapter begins with the speaker referencing previous workshops and setting up an activity called 'Mythbusters'. They ask the audience to participate in an interactive chat by determining whether a statement is a fact or a myth. The statement in question is about the average time a recruiter spends reviewing a resume, suggested to be one to two minutes.
12:00 - 13:00: Balance Experience on Resume The chapter titled "Balance Experience on Resume" addresses the misconception that recruiters spend a substantial amount of time reviewing resumes. Instead, it clarifies that recruiters typically spend only 10 to 30 seconds per resume. This fact underscores the importance of structuring resumes effectively, as this limited time frame is crucial for making a strong impression.
13:00 - 14:00: Major Takeaways The chapter discusses effective resume writing strategies to enhance interview opportunities. It emphasizes the importance of making resumes concise and attention-grabbing, as recruiters spend minimal time (often 20 to 30 seconds) reviewing each resume. The goal is to present information in a way that quickly highlights key qualifications and experiences to increase the chances of landing interviews.
14:00 - 15:00: Conclusion and Offer The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Offer' includes discussion on recruiter habits, specifically how many resumes they review per day. The text mentions a statistic that recruiters typically review about 35 resumes daily, prompting readers to guess if this is a fact or myth. Music is indicated as playing during this interaction, showing a lively and engaging atmosphere. The chapter likely concludes with an offer or call to action following this engaging discussion.
15:00 - 16:00: Q&A Session In the chapter titled 'Q&A Session,' the discussion begins by addressing a commonly held belief that recruiters on average review 100 to 200 resumes daily. This sets the stage for the importance of differentiating oneself from other candidates in such a competitive environment. The speaker emphasizes the necessity of having a 'scanable' resume, which significantly impacts one's chances of standing out. The term 'scanable' is kept intentionally vague, suggesting that its interpretation may vary depending on the context or individual understanding.
16:00 - 17:00: Final Remarks The chapter titled 'Final Remarks' emphasizes the importance of preparing a resume that is compatible with both ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and human recruiters. The speaker highlights a common misconception where job applicants overly focus on making their resumes ATS-friendly while neglecting the needs of human recruiters who also review resumes. It is crucial to strike a balance and ensure the resume is easily scannable by both systems to increase the chances of getting noticed and securing a job interview.

5 Resume Improvements to Land 5x More Interviews Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 very cold winter here and it's actually above freezing now and things are melting um we're not starting just yet we're just waiting for people to come in we'll get started at the top of the hour we got people from New Jersey I used to live in New Jersey in Montreal one of my favorite cities um about three hours away from there Boston Atlanta Chicago
00:30 - 01:00 um we're going to get started soon I just um well let's wait till the top of the hour Columbus Ohio Nigeria welcome France Switzerland very International audience which is great London Seattle Pennsylvania very diverse group
01:00 - 01:30 New Jersey yeah I used to live in South Orange I don't know how close you are to that what my territory Madrid okay so my name is Rob Henderson um I'm a team member job scan and this session is going to be all about how to improve your resume so you can get more interviews now just want to let you know that all these sessions are being recorded and um you can watch them for free uh later we're going to be
01:30 - 02:00 sending you an email sometime in the next couple of days with all the links so that you can watch the recordings um I also want to let you know that we're offering job scan premium at a 20% discount uh job scan is an online tool that helps you optimize your resume uh and your LinkedIn profile uh below me you'll see a URL just go there and get a 20% discount uh the discount will be applied automatically so all you need to do is sign up
02:00 - 02:30 now I'd like to introduce our speaker for this session Bogden slatoff the founder of growth hack your career and author of The Ultimate Guide to job hunting um he is a LinkedIn top Voice who has helped over 167,000 job Seekers so let's get started and welcome bobon take it away thank you so much Rob uh excited to get started I know we have a lot of content here uh to get through um let me jump in into the presentation for you
02:30 - 03:00 guys awesome all right so um quick little 60-second background about myself um for those of you who haven't uh met me yet um I used to work in film and TV um for about five years uh then made the very very very painful transition uh into startups um when I was doing that career pivot it took me 14 months to plan that job so for some of you guys who might be on kind of long job
03:00 - 03:30 searches right now um know that it does get better it can be better um once I learned all the things that I'm going to be sharing here with you guys uh today my next job search right after that was only three weeks long so if you learn this stuff your job search can be much faster and we'll talk about how to make that happen um and lastly in 2017 with all the things that I learned from that job search and other things um I launched growth hack your career um we
03:30 - 04:00 have helped many many uh job Seekers with their job searches in all sorts of Industries all sorts of roles so where did I learn uh the things I'm sharing here today um during that job search when I was feeling so stuck I realized I have to do something different like there's no way that I can just keep you know sending out applications and not you know getting any results so what I did was I went to the source I reached out to every single recruiter or hiring manager who was in my network who was
04:00 - 04:30 kind of like a friend um and just asked them like please please please will you will you look at my resume will you tell me what I'm doing wrong um and the things that they shared were really shocking things that I would never have figured out on my own um since then I've also uh been working with a lot of the amazing career coaches that you guys might have seen on LinkedIn um learning kind of from them best practices trying to distill those down for you guys
04:30 - 05:00 all right so if you guys have been in one of my workshops before you know that I like to start with a little bit of Mythbusters um so if you guys will indulge me in the chat here um let me know if you think this is a fact or a myth so uh this first one that we'll do is um on average a recruiter spends one to two minutes reviewing your resume do you guys think fact or myth let me know
05:00 - 05:30 we have fact fact oh okay interesting it sounds like we have some consensus oh we have a few myths okay we don't have consensus all right I'm G to reveal get your guesses in here we go all right so this is a myth recruiters actually only spend 10 to 30 seconds reviewing a resume um and this is super important this is one of the cornerstones of what will help you make
05:30 - 06:00 changes to your resume so that you actually start Landing more interviews um and interesting thing I heard this directly from a recruiter friend of mine she said I'm pretty Junior right now so I spend about a minute per resume but I hope to bring that down to 20 to 30 seconds as I get more experience so they are literally trying to spend less time looking at your resume so the way that you want to create your resume is so that it is very quick quick to uh uh to
06:00 - 06:30 scan very quick to read Etc all right next one here on average a recruiter will review about 35 rums per day what do you guys think all right fact fact myth all right I'm going to reveal get your guesses in [Music]
06:30 - 07:00 all right here we go so this is a myth on average recruiters review about 100 to 200 rums per day and this is going to be really important when we talk about how do you differentiate yourself from other candidates when they are reviewing all those resumés all right next one here a resume that isn't scanable can reduce your chances by 60% and I left the word scanable kind of vague interpret it how ever you'd
07:00 - 07:30 like all right we have myth myth myth fact fact fact all right get your guesses in here we go all right so this is a fact and this is a pretty important one um your resume has to be both scannable by an ATS system and by the recruiter a lot of people just focus focus on ATS um but
07:30 - 08:00 literally the recruiter is also doing the same thing as what an ATS does which is scan for keywords trying to figure out very quickly should they bring you in for an interview or should they not this is where job skin and tools like it can really be helpful so we'll talk a little bit about that as well all right and here I have my my last one having a high quality application is more important than submitting your application quickly what do you guys think
08:00 - 08:30 well we have quite a few people saying fat a few people saying myth interesting all right put in your guesses and I'm going to reveal all right so this is a really big one you guys right now in this particular job market timing is actually more more important than having a
08:30 - 09:00 perfect resume so there was a study that a company did recently um that found that 95% of the candidates who had landed an interview had applied in the first 24 to 48 hours so you might see when you're applying to jobs on LinkedIn you know 700 people have applied to this job a thousand people have applied to this job a recruiter is not realistically going to look through all 1,000 applications once they found the uh candidates that are good quality a
09:00 - 09:30 recruiter will actually get in trouble if they bring too many candidates to the hiring manager so typically what they do is they'll look for about maybe five maybe 10 really really good candidates and once they found those candidates they'll say okay here here's a good batch and they'll give them to the hiring manager and they'll put the rest on pause so even if you are trying to make your resume you know like the most outstanding resume on the planet um and you have the best qualifications on the Planet if you are you know applicant
09:30 - 10:00 number 450 700 a th000 there is a chance that they might not get to your resume so it's really important that you customize your rume quickly and then submit it as quickly as you can and I'll show you guys kind of how to make it so that you can customize your resume in about 10 minutes 15 minutes uh or so it should not take you more than that all right so thank you for indulging me there um our agenda for today we have a lot to go over first we'll
10:00 - 10:30 talk about resumé summaries then we'll talk about the number one uh mistake people make with recruiters uh then we'll talk about the bullet point formula how to craft your bullet points then we'll talk about cutting the Clutter and balancing your experience and lastly I'll talk about our hiring accelerator that we run um and share also some resources that could help you guys um and we'll do Q&A at the end um that being said if you guys have questions um feel free to ask them you know through out I'll I'll either try
10:30 - 11:00 and take them on the spot or we'll take them at the end all right so there are 11 parts to a resume um today we are going to focus on five of them um that said uh if you guys want more tips you can always visit our website for uh the other parts as well so let's go over the first uh part which is um probably the part that people struggle with the most and also the part that people overlook the most which is the resume summary so
11:00 - 11:30 the big question here is how do you how do you showcase that you are different not just better so I'll paint a scenario for you imagine this it's 9:00 a.m it's a Friday and you want to get yourself a little bit of a treat right um you walk down the street and you see a sign says coffee and you go oh a coffee shop okay like they might have some some pastries they might have some treats for me but right across the street you see another
11:30 - 12:00 sign that says come in enjoy a cup of tea or maybe some coffee we also have a lavender vanilla latte and you go lavender vanilla latte which one are you going to choose but wait you look across the street again there's another coffee shop that says we're open we have coffee we have Bagels we have cupcakes we have cookies we have muffins we have gluten-free options we have tea we have chocolate everything is homemade with love it's
12:00 - 12:30 like o okay that's even better and then you see another coffee shop sign that says Coffee Shop we are open every day 8:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. we have espresso martinis we have pastries we have Specialties everything is 50% off you get the idea the first coffee shop that you saw with that sign might have the pastries that you want it might have that treat that you're looking for but these other these other coffee shops have done a much better job of showing
12:30 - 13:00 how they are different how they H they have what you need Etc as you think about job searching as you're applying to jobs you can't just rely on your qualifications only um you really have to show how you're different right if you're applying say to a project manager role there are going to be 200 other project managers who also have 10 years experience who also have PMP certif ifications who also know agile so it's
13:00 - 13:30 not enough to just say hey I'm a project manager and I I can do what you want you have to Showcase how you're different so how do you do that this is challenge number one is how do you show up as being different uh on paper and it can be a little bit difficult um it's important that you Stand Out Among those 750 applicants that we talked about um but then also it's important to create that human connection because at the end of the day hiring managers don't hire the people who are the most qualified
13:30 - 14:00 they hire people who they want to work with and lastly our resume serves as a two-p purpose document it serves to get us the interview but then during the interview usually they're going to be looking at your resume and asking you questions about it so this is where the resumé summary comes in if you guys aren't aware of what the ré summary is um it is this little statement at the very top of your res write below your name if you don't
14:00 - 14:30 have one totally okay I recommend adding one so when you're writing your resume summary you want to make sure that it has three things you want to make sure one that it's original so meaning not everybody could write this you want to make sure that it's adding some type of value something that the rest of the resume isn't already conveying and lastly you want to kind of like break that formality a little bit right like this is your chance to give a little bit of your personality and show it through paper so first let's look at how most
14:30 - 15:00 people write their resumé summary or their you know their uh professional statement most people write something like this experienced project manager with five years experience self-driven self-starter working in the gaming industry for 10 years don't write these types of resume summaries the reason is this isn't adding value compared to what the rest of the resume is saying and it's also uh saying you know self driven self-starter those can be written by
15:00 - 15:30 anybody right they're they're not um demonstratable skills so what should a resumé summary look like let's do a little quiz so tell me which of these do you think uh is the best resumé summary so a seasoned marketer with five years of experience working in SAS startups and Tech B Mission driven detail oriented engineer working in the petrochemical industry four years of management experience with a love for Rockets C friendly and customer focused
15:30 - 16:00 retail associate detail oriented self-disciplined achieved 95% satisfaction scores year-over-year or D marketer researcher optimization junkie named maretto Allstar in 2019 stepped on Larry Page's toes which of these do you guys think is the best one we have a few people saying d
16:00 - 16:30 some people are gravitating to C interesting oh we have a couple A and B's all right I'm going to reveal get your guesses in all right here we go so if you pick D you are correct the reason that D works best is because it has it breaks that formality and it also creates a little bit of that Intrigue and has um and
16:30 - 17:00 something that pretty much no one else could have written um the other ones focus a little bit too much on those uh skills that aren't you know uh verifiable so like detail oriented you want to show how you're detail oriented not just say it on paper um and also you don't need to talk about how many years of experience you have your resume already shows that so here's an example of what a uh good resume summary looks like this is actually my personal one
17:00 - 17:30 and I can't tell you how many people during the interview process when I was brought in would say okay I have some questions to ask you about you know the job job description Etc but first how did you beat Mark Zuckerberg at hockey I'd love to hear that story and immediately we've breaken that formality uh broken that formality and we've uh and we can start you know on a much more friendly foot um much more personable so uh if you guys want help with creating
17:30 - 18:00 your own resumé summary um I have an article on the website that talks about how to create your your own so I can uh send that to you guys if you want um this is our first takeaway here human beings hire human beings so make sure that you add your personal touch to your resume right it doesn't only have to be such a formal document all right let's move on to the number one mistake which is quick qualification so one of the hardest things that people struggle with is how
18:00 - 18:30 do you get a recruiter to read your resume um we have to think about the recruiter in this sense right what does a recruiter schedule look like so first of all a recruiter doesn't just review resumés right they go to Team meetings they screen candidates for interviews they review resumés they uh meet with hiring managers and then they have a bunch of other things on their plate so they're actually very very busy people like we mentioned earlier a recruiter looks at a 100 to 200 rums per day so after a while those rumes start to all
18:30 - 19:00 blend together and it's hard to um differentiate and lastly they don't read your resume right they're going to scan through it quickly so if you have buried some of your best experience in a ton of words they might not get to it because they're doing a very quick scam so this is our tip number two which is making the recruiter's job easier so in your work experience section there are two things that you need to do uh the first is to focus on what are your actual job
19:00 - 19:30 titles that you're putting for your jobs and then the second one is the description of what the company does so what you want to do here is for the job title you want your job title to match what you did and match what the recruiter might search for in their ATS system what do I mean by that so let's say that at your previous job uh you were a Content marketing junior level three specialist right instead of
19:30 - 20:00 putting that as your job title make it what the standard job title is so you can change it to content marketing manager Don't Be Afraid guys to adjust your job title to reflect what you actually did don't just take exactly the verbiage that your previous employer gave you um it's okay to to change it as long as you're still being accurate to what you did so the reason that this is important is when a recruiter is um
20:00 - 20:30 using their ATS system which is like their big repository of uh applications they will search for things like content marketing manager uh or they'll search I want to find a project manager who knows agile and they'll search for those words and if those words aren't on your resume your resume might not show up in those search results and then the second thing here is making the recruiter's job easier so for the job descriptions you want to tell the recruiter what the
20:30 - 21:00 company does and also make it relevant for them this is something that I learned from uh one of my recruiter friends I said what are your biggest pain points I said like what drives you nuts and she says when people don't describe what the company does that they used to work at when I'm looking at their resume I have to actually Google every single company on their resume go to the website find out if that's relevant and it takes forever and so she
21:00 - 21:30 said literally the people who put these descriptions on their resume she kind of favors them because it saves her a ton of time so this is our uh next takeaway which is this new mindset which is it's not about me my qualifications I'm so qualified Etc it's really about them think about how can I make this recruiter's job as easy as possible for them to call me in for a interview let me know if you have questions again
21:30 - 22:00 uh feel free to drop them in all right next let's talk about bullet points so um this one is pretty simple but I always like to review it because it's really important it's kind of the the meat of your uh resume so how do you write a good bullet point if you're not a good writer so uh there are three components to a bullet point you have your power verb your method or your skill and your result so power verbs are um those uh verbs that start your bullet point with so instead of saying
22:00 - 22:30 responsible for that's not an example of a power verb um you would say improved right or LED so this is what most people write for their bullet points they say improved our SEO strategy through a Content audit but this is missing a very important key if you add this phrase to the end of your bullet points your resume will stand out a lot more than other people's which is resulting in so here's what you did but what did that
22:30 - 23:00 result in and for those of you who are like you know Bogden like I'm not I I don't know what the result was of my work um that's that's should be like a little bit of a red flag for you of okay I need to think about this what did me as a customer service rep actually result in did I improve customer satisfaction for the company right that's that is a very um uh you know
23:00 - 23:30 good result uh and then you can think about all right well how many calls did I do per day uh well I do about a hundred calls per day and then how many people was I not able to help well there were there usually like a couple who I can't help now you can create a uh numbered metric that says with a 98% satisfaction score right so that's kind of how you can find your number numbers and your metrics um without you know
23:30 - 24:00 necessarily having like data for them the other thing about these by the way is you don't have to make all your bullet points this way um you can flip it so you can put the result at the front and sometimes the bullet point can be even stronger I always recommend a a combination of these so this exact same bullet point we can rewrite it as increased website traffic by 23% by improving our SE SEO strategy through a sitewide Content audit so create diversity on your resume so it
24:00 - 24:30 doesn't just have one formula or either all right so this is an example of what your bullet points should look like I just want to put this up here in case you guys um want to read through them during the replay or or grab a screenshot feel free to do that as well all right that brings us to the big one which is every everybody's favorite question um resume
24:30 - 25:00 length should your resume be one page or two pages this is probably the biggest debate that people have on LinkedIn there's a lot of people who say one page is the best no two I need two pages because I have so much experience um I will save you guys a lot of time right now forget about page count page count is irrelevant because you can stuff a lot of words onto one page by making
25:00 - 25:30 fonts smaller changing the margins all of that stuff um instead a much more accurate measurement is what is your word count on your resume so answer uh let me hear your uh thoughts in the um in the comment section what do you think is the ideal number of words for a resume is it 500 600 700 or 800 words
25:30 - 26:00 all right get your guesses in all right we're a little bit mixed on this one I like it we have a few a lot of people are saying A or B A few people are saying D interest interesting very mixed bag this time all
26:00 - 26:30 right I'm going to reveal here we go guys so according to studies the ideal number of uh words on the resume is between 350 to 500 uh words um this is based on an analysis of who of which resumés actually landed interviews um if you have more than 15 years experience I say yes you can stretch it a little bit to 500 to 600 words um but anything more
26:30 - 27:00 than that and chances are you have a lot of fluff in your resume remember that when you add more words you are actually decreasing the probability that that recruiter's eyes are going to land on your best accomplishments when they're doing that very quick 10 to 30 second scan right they're not reading your resume so don't think that oh I'm going to add this and I'm going to add that and I'm going to add this to show it to
27:00 - 27:30 them chances are they're going to miss it so the more words you add the less you're uh you're the probability that they're actually going to see um what you're gonna uh what your best accomplishments are so this brings us to uh our next uh question which people always ask is uh okay my resume is at a thousand words or my resume is at 800 words how do I shorten my resume um I'll show you this first technique here um it's called the am technique and it's
27:30 - 28:00 very simple go to your resume open it up and uh use uh control F or on the Mac command F and look up the word and or Look up the word as well as that will reveal to you where you might be overwriting some of your uh bullet points so the Golden Rule here is you should only have one and per bullet point I'll repeat that only one and per bullet point so the reason that
28:00 - 28:30 you can see that this um these bullet points here feel a little like heavy a little bit difficult to read is because they have a lot of ANS in them okay um you want to reduce this so if you have more than one and in your bullet points the golden rule is basically turn that into two bullet points or eliminate part of it so this is what some uh long- winded uh bullet points look like here is what what uh some better bullet
28:30 - 29:00 points look like so if I run the an test on here just two ANS when you have an entire resume full of bullet points like this it makes it much easier to read much easier to consume and that recruiter who has 200 RS in front of them is going to gravitate to this resume just because it's making their job easier right um and they'll say oh this person's qualified let me bring them in for an interview and they might not get to the more cled uh resume
29:00 - 29:30 all right so new mindset your resume is like a movie trailer it is not the entire movie right so less is more so remember you're not trying to convey your whole experience you're just trying to get those highlights across so that they bring you in for an interview now uh some of you guys might have a lot of experience say more than 10 more than 15 years of experience in which case you might thinking okay well I know I need
29:30 - 30:00 to reduce my resume and I know I need to choose my highlights for my movie trailer um how do I choose between you know this grade accomplishment or that grade accomplishment um this is where our color coding technique comes in so um how do you showcase the diversity of your skills so at the end of the day there are five types of bullet points so you can build something you can lead something you can manage something you can can collaborate on something or you can improve something of course there
30:00 - 30:30 are synonyms to all of these but these are the five types of bullet points um that you can really have on your resume now the interesting thing is rather than looking at all of these like this if we assign a color to each of these we can actually see visually on our resume are we over indexing or under indexing on one of these categories so here is an example of a resume this is a a client who uh we worked with um and
30:30 - 31:00 this person had pretty solid bullet points right if I read any one of these bullet points on their own I go that's a solid bullet point but when I added the color coding technique to hear we can very quickly see that they're kind of overdoing it on the collaboration bullet points and they don't have anything about building or their leadership skills so what we did was we rewrote the bullet points and now we have a little bit of
31:00 - 31:30 management collaboration some improvement building and leading I will turn to another example so on this example if you guys read through take take a moment here read through the bullet points if you read any one of these bullet points you know on its own you'll go oh this is very accomplished person um but when we add our color coding to it
31:30 - 32:00 we see that they are way way way over indexing on the building bullet points um and a little bit on the leadership and the Improvement bullet points but they haven't talked about any of their experience managing and any of their experience collaborating with others which is something that recruiters look for right um you'll see this on job descriptions where it's like ability to collaborate with cross functional stakeholders blah blah blah blah blah um so this person is conveying only their
32:00 - 32:30 ability to create new things and not actually um balancing it so what we did was we uh took away some of those building bullet points and we replaced them to balance it a little bit better and this is what it ended up looking so we have a little bit leadership Improvement uh building we kept some of the the best ones in there but then we also added the collaboration ones and the management ones and this person their interview rate I kid you not like almost doubled just from doing this
32:30 - 33:00 exercise all right so new mindset here you want to show your full range of experience not your entire experience right your resume should not be a summary of everything you have ever done it should really function more like a highlight reel all right so here are our takeaways for today number one human beings beings hire human beings so remember to add
33:00 - 33:30 your personal touch with that resume summary uh takeway number two your resume is like a movie trailer not the entire movie so remember we're just trying to show highlights and finally takeway number three make sure that you're balancing all of the things that you're bringing to the table not just sharing everything that you've ever done at your previous roles so today we covered five aspects of a resume like I mentioned there are are 11 different uh pieces to a a resume
33:30 - 34:00 um the other thing is the resume is only one piece of the job search puzzle so um in addition to the resume there's also LinkedIn there's also cover letter um yes cover letters still matter I'm I'm happy to debate that in the comments with you guys uh here in the Q&A in a second um but there's also all these other things that you need to be doing for a successful job search so right now the average job search is taking six to n months um for the clients that we work with
34:00 - 34:30 where we're helping with all five of these aspects um we uh typically place a client within two to four months in whatever job that they uh want to get um and so if you guys are interested in learning a little bit about our coaching program um we're actually taking on free strategy calls um for with people to help you guys out with whatever you you may need help with in your job search um you can sign up for them um we we do fill up pretty quickly so I recommend
34:30 - 35:00 doing so um earlier rather than later and I put the little QR code here and the uh URL um if you guys would like um to sign up for a free strategy call basically on that call we will ask you a bunch of questions about your job search we'll uh take a look at your resume if you want us to take a look at your resume um and then also we will um you know talk about like networking LinkedIn profile interviewing all of that stuff and either we'll try to um uh point you
35:00 - 35:30 to some resources that might be able to help or to someone else who might be able to help or if we can help solve some of those uh problems we can tell you about our six-month coaching program um where we help with all those so um if we could drop the URL in the chat um Rob um so that people can uh sign up for those that would be great our next cohort is opening up March 10th so this is great timing for you guys um we do only work with us Canada EU and
35:30 - 36:00 UK uh um job Seekers only um and then the minimum salary that we work with is 120k um if you guys don't fit those uh particular parameters um on our website we do have free resume course free interviewing course free cover leather course a bunch of free materials that can help you guys um so with that I will uh turn to our takeaways um and I think think we can jump into some
36:00 - 36:30 Q&A okay great um I just want to remind everybody that um all the sessions are being recorded so you're going to be receiving an email um sometime in the next couple days and that will have all the links to um all the recordings so you can watch this again um also just want to quickly remind everybody that we're running a special promotion on job scan premium and um below me you'll see a URL and
36:30 - 37:00 that will take you to a page the discount will be applied um automatically so all you need to do is sign up okay let's get to some questions um one thing that I saw a lot of people talking asking about was what if the job description is like war in peace you know a super long job description how do you take that and put that into five 500 words on your resume uh great I love this uh question um yes job descriptions do get really
37:00 - 37:30 big by the way um I know some people are saying in the comments like the link isn't working just give it like a couple minutes when everybody clicks on it it can it can go down but it'll be back in a minute or two um if if you're if you see a job description that's super super long the way to dissect it is pay attention to the things that keep showing up over and over again so the way that job descriptions get written and I've been a hir Hing manager I've been part of these um like committees
37:30 - 38:00 that where we write the job descriptions um is first the hiring manager will will kind of like make their requirements they'll go oh I need a person who can do X Y and Z but then when they open it up to the rest of the team the rest of the team will go well we should also get them to do a and b and c and d and it just keeps getting piled on more and more and more the things that get repeated the most often are usually the things that are like the absolute most important and the things that you just
38:00 - 38:30 see mentioned once is probably someone's like wishlist item so I always uh tell people kind of a good um barometer for whether you should apply or not is do you meet 70% of the things on the job description right you don't have to meet 100% of them but about 70% still put your name in there um to uh possibly have that opportunity and again you shouldn't be spending more than 10 to 15 minutes doing a customized resume and cover lettera to do that application so
38:30 - 39:00 it'll only cost you about 10 minutes put your name in there if you meet 70% of the job description right and job scan helps with that it points out the most important keywords the ones that you really want to focus on you don't you don't need to have a perfectly optimized resume in fact that can even be a red flag sometimes to recruiters I think if you're just fitting every single keyword in there and also if you actually have all those qualifications that can raise a red flag because you might be they might think you're overqualified so you don't need to optimize it perfectly yeah
39:00 - 39:30 exactly and I actually tell people when they're using uh job scan I have our clients use job scan um I tell them like don't try to get a 100% score on job scan right like like aim for what what would you recommend Rob like 60 70% something exactly yeah something like that yeah right the main thing is to hit the most important keywords I think yeah exactly um one question that uh often comes up when we're talking about coming up with numbers quantifiable accomplishments a lot of people say well I don't have numbers um are there other
39:30 - 40:00 ways to quantify your accomplishments than just having hard numbers yeah so it really goes back to that example that I talked about which is um if you do for example a customer success role right like you might not have exact numbers right you might not know the exact number of calls that you do per day per week per month um but you can still uh guesstimate it by how many of those calls like were you not able to
40:00 - 40:30 uh solve and you had to escalate to someone else usually if you're good at your job it's like two or three right so then you can kind of ballpark a number of like 95% you know success rate um same with like if you're a project manager how many of those projects went over the timeline that you guys had dedicated to it um that that were you know kind of your fault for not um being able to do it correct correctly um and you would go well you know like there was like one
40:30 - 41:00 out of my 20 projects that went a little bit you know over the deadline and so you can actually add that number as as a success metric so your success metrics don't have to be exact right the reason that you're adding those metrics is just to add a little bit more clarity a little bit more granularity to those bullet points because a lot of people who aren't successful at their job will write a bullet point that says managed many projects right like it'll be very
41:00 - 41:30 vague because they're not actually that experienced so when you can put numbers it just signals to that recruiter saying like hey like I I actually have a reasonable success rate at my job I'm actually pretty well qualified for this right and providing some context as well as opposed to just throwing a number out there is is also helpful um a lot of people are asking um let's say I am changing careers or I'm a recent grad graduate and I don't have that job title yet how would I sort of put the job
41:30 - 42:00 title that recruiters are looking for on my resume but I don't have it yet what should they do this is a very good question um career pivots is actually something that we specialize in um so I've helped on many many career pivots and many different career pivots um they're always my favorite because they're really interesting um I have found that basically especially in this market you you cannot land that new job unless you have some type of experience
42:00 - 42:30 in the new career so the way to get that experience is you can volunteer you can get a little job at a nonprofit um you can uh get some freelance work say like on upwork on some other project site um you could uh help like a family friend out but you need you you absolutely must have something that is that new job job uh to put on your resume if you don't
42:30 - 43:00 have that you're competing against a 100 people who have done that job for 10 years already right so um you're just you're not going to be competitive in this market so in this particular Market try to think about how you can get the that experience um if you want some ideas and some websites that can help you with with that um if you go to our website grck your career.com uh go to um the blog and think it's like the fifth article down talks about how do you get
43:00 - 43:30 a job with zero experience in that field um and I put some resources uh there so happy to share those with you guys great another topic that comes up a lot is AI I mean people say should I use Ai and well what would you say to them for asking that a lot of people are using AI right now so uh the answer to this is yes you can use AI but don't don't just use AI right um it's helpful right like
43:30 - 44:00 for example like with things like job scan being able to write your uh bullet points and things like that or if you're using something as simple as chat GPT um it is a good starting point do not just go into chat GPT ask it to write you some bullet points and then copy and paste those bullet points into your resume because most people are doing that right you have to add that differentiation uh if there's one takeaway from this entire top it's it's not good enough to just be good enough
44:00 - 44:30 like you have to be different so you have to think about like okay what are most people going to write for their bullet points who are a project manager and how should my bullet points be a little bit different and stand out from them right yeah I think it's interesting that as AI becomes more prevalent the need for human creativity and critical thinking and social authenticity are becoming more important and if you're just using AI I think there's a term that I read you know for every if it's called AI obesity where you're just sort
44:30 - 45:00 of indulging too much in Ai and that's not going to help you stand out um let's see what other questions do I have here people asking how can I tailor my resume in 15 minutes it seems like that's too short a time for a lot of people yeah so um the uh the big thing about when you're struggling a lot of people struggle to tailor their resume quickly and usually there are two um symptoms uh two things causing this
45:00 - 45:30 it's because you have too many words on your resume so if you have 800 or a thousand words yes it's going to be really hard to customize that resume because there's so much material there your bullet points are two or three lines long so they're really hard to you know uh manage and change um so that is one thing the other thing is you don't need to customize your entire resume um this is something that we teach um uh all of our clients but basically it's called Uh above the fold meaning the top
45:30 - 46:00 half of your resume is the part that you should be customizing so skill section resumé summary Target job title and then only the first uh experience on your resume right the the most recent job the reason that I found that this is the best way to do this is because most recruiters won't be reading in detail your second or third or fourth or fifth job so it's okay if those are you know ballpark pretty good for that role um but they will definitely read those first bullet
46:00 - 46:30 points so those first bullet points should be spaed on exactly tailored to that job description and if those bullet points are short then it makes it much easier for you to actually tailor them so reduce word count and you'll see how everything opens up great okay we're out of time uh thanks bton that was great just want to remind people that our next session uh will be with Chris uh stolas and it's it's going to be about um decoding how recruiters are actually
46:30 - 47:00 using LinkedIn so that should be a great session um and tune in later all right thanks bye