Ep #171: My Loving Review of Your Resume

Welcome to the Get a Six-Figure Job You Love and Thrive podcast. This is episode 171, my loving review of your resume. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Get a Six-Figure Job You Love and Thrive podcast, where I, Natalie Fisher, am teaching you weekly how to land your premium role that you love and thrive in it. Let's go. Hello. I had to jump on and record a podcast about resumes so that I could direct you here when you have just asked me to review your resume. So I get so many people on LinkedIn and inside my paid program asking, can you please give me resume feedback? Can you please review my resume? And so I'm going to talk to you about that and give you some tools to empower you to feel a little bit differently about the resume. And how we can adjust the expectations of what you need to actually do for your resume and then everything else that needs to be done for you to be successful in the end goal. So first of all, the resume has way more importance, I think, than really it needs to have. So lots of people get jobs without the resume, or it's just a formality. That being said, yes, there are some things that the resume can do, and it could be a tool, a document that helps you get in the door somewhere. And there are some things that can be done to help with that. And I'm going to talk to you all about them here. So you won't need me to actually look at the resume itself. Because here's the thing, I'm not the one hiring you. If I was the one hiring you, then my opinion of the resume would count. But I can tell you that I care about 1,000 other things beyond the resume more than I care about the resume. So, here's the analogy I like to use is people think that the resume is the first thing we need to look at. Right. And I ask, and there's another podcast episode, which I'll reference here, Which I believe is called like the resume challenge, how to get more responses from your resume. I have a few podcast episodes on resume, but one of them is the test and I'll send you that. It's like a little test to see what you need to do to your resume. And I'll even expand on that in this episode. But basically the resume is like the headlights on a vehicle. Okay. So yes, the headlights can be brighter. They can be more effective. But if the engine isn't running properly, if when we look under the hood, there's something wrong with the transmission, fluids are missing, oil is low, the engine's burning oil, something's gone wrong in the engine, the brightness of the headlights won't matter. Or like the battery's low, or the battery's not working, it needs a new battery, whatever. The brightness of the headlights isn't going to change that. It isn't going to actually change the the vehicle's ability to move, right? And so this is how it is with the job search. You can have the most amazing resume. You could have been told you had the most amazing resume by a lot of different people. And a lot of people out there are still struggling with amazing resumes. And also keep in mind when you're listening to this, that literally I have hundreds of requests to review resumes. And so I can't do that. I believe that my time is much better spent coaching inside my community, preparing content, doing my CEO tasks for the big picture for people, and not reviewing individual people's resumes. So, I prepare resources and we just did a workshop inside my program to talk about how you can check off some of these boxes to make sure that your resume isn't really, really bad. But something else that reminds me of this was when I was writing emails out, or I was writing copy. Copy is the text that you write in emails, on your website, on any marketing document. That's referred to as copy in marketing speak, for those of you who don't know that. And I was in a mastermind, and lots of people were like, can you give me feedback on this copy? Can you give me feedback on this copy? Right? And the coach said to me, she's like, look, I can give you feedback, but I'm not your ideal client who's going to hire you. Therefore, it doesn't matter what I think of this with this copy because really you need to go test it. You need to go put it out there to your people and see how they respond. Are they resonating with this? Is that working right? And I stopped asking for feedback on my copy and I just started trusting myself and testing it myself and it changed everything. Also, it changed my need to keep getting validation from someone else to say, oh, is this good enough? Right? So you wanna watch for that trap, right? The validation trap, because That's something that people will do a lot is they'll use the resume to get validation, right? Like, is this good enough? So, a few things you can do, and these have been mentioned before, but there's probably a few that I'm adding here. First thing you want to check on your resume is when you look at it, and this is something you can get an opinion from, like you get opinions from people, but people can tell you, one person can say it's amazing and that's great and they would hire you right away. And another person will say, oh, I don't like it. Right. But really, It doesn't matter because they need to meet you. They need to interview you. So the job of the resume is to get the interview, right? So first of all, the way you're submitting it, are you submitting it through job boards? Are you submitting it through a pile of resumes altogether where people are just throwing resumes in and you're not getting a response? That doesn't count. We need to make sure someone's actually seen it. Someone who's going to hire you has seen it. Okay? That's the only opinion of the person we care about is somebody who's going to hire you, who's in the potential to hire you. someone who's in your industry who wants to help you get hired, who's been hired successfully into that role, their opinions count more, more than anyone else's, more than your friends, more than a resume writer's. Their opinions actually count more because we're living in a world where we need those people to pay attention to us to get the result, the actual result that we want. So that's the first thing. How many of those people have actually seen your resume? Okay. And that is, if you think it's pretty good already, but it's not getting results, how many of those people have seen it? Okay. Secondly, if you look at it, is it a big block of text that's not easy to dive into? Right. So, studies have— there are studies that say our brain wants to shy away from anything that's really big and difficult to to dive into. So if it's a big block of text, and I know this is true for me, if there's a big block of text, there's no spacing, maybe you're trying to cram a bunch of stuff onto the page, maybe you're really trying to fit in a lot of detailed information. So you feel like you have to, because maybe someone told you it can only be one page or something. So you're trying to cram it all on one page. If it's a big block of text, that is going to be less likely to be read. And it is true that you don't have a lot of time to catch someone's attention on your resume. So big blocks of text, like space them out and cut down the amount of words you're using. So don't say something in 7 words if it can be said in 5 words. Okay. So that's the first thing, make it pleasing to the eye, make it so that there is white space. So this is what we talked about on our workshop inside the curriculum. And that was one of the main things when we did the resume reviews that kept coming up is like, there's no white space. It's kind of an eyesore. It's hard to look at it. It's hard for the eye to decide where they're going to dive in. And it's intimidating. It's this big block. So clear white space with bullet points. I love bullet points. Make it really easy to dive in for the person to see and for their attention to be caught by the first few things that you've got on there. Secondly, the resume is a good place to put results with numbers. So if you can, Then you want to put results with numbers. So instead of saying, I managed a database with 500 people, you want to give it the so what test. So it's like, so what? Does it matter that you managed this database? Did it even work? Did anybody use it? What was the result that came from that? So those are the first things we want to look at is they don't want to know about how you did work, quote unquote. They want to know about the result you want. So nobody's hiring you to do work. You might think they are. They might think they are. Really, they're hiring you for a result that you get. So the resume is a good place to talk about concrete results with numbers, and then you dive in and tell stories about that in the interview. That's what that's for. Okay? So if you can quantify, quantify, that's the best. You can conservatively guess at numbers if you feel the need, or if you can, conservatively guessing is a good idea because then you don't feel like you're overshooting. But you do have a number on there to talk about. So that's a good idea and you can do that. And that statistically will catch more people's attention when you have those numbers on there. Okay, so that's the second thing. The third thing is the amount of pages. So people have different things. Like I wouldn't say that the resume should be 9 pages long. I don't think anyone will read a 9-page resume. I would say it's not too big of a deal if it's 1 or 2 pages, even 3 pages. So the 6-figure example resume that I have inside my program, I believe it's 3 pages. Number 4, the resume is going to be different depending on where you're at in your career and how much experience you have, what you want to highlight, what's important. And also it's going to be more successful. Like, so if you have, say you're transferring, you're moving from finance to another finance position. Okay. Let's say you're an accountant and you've got accounting experience. Say you have 7 years of accounting experience, you're moving to another accounting position that's higher level, then that resume, you'll probably have more success submitting it the conventional way through job boards. If you do that, you probably have more success with that. And you can list your experience right at the top. And then you can start listing the things that— the results that you've done in your financial career. And you'll probably have some success with that because that's the the textbook thing. It's like, oh, we're looking for someone with this many experience. If you have the things on the job description that would check the boxes, you'll have different success doing it different ways. If you're switching industries altogether and you're like, actually, I'm switching from finance completely to HR, when you try to submit a resume without that financial experience that checks all the boxes, you're going to have a problem. They're immediately going to disqualify you and they'll say, oh, well, you don't have all that experience. You don't have that. You don't have that. But that doesn't mean And that doesn't mean you don't get to have the career, and that doesn't mean you don't get to switch careers to HR because you totally can. It's just that particular method isn't going to work the same way as it works for someone just switching from finance to finance, right? So, or like moving their way up in the same kind of situation. So, and also the amount, the time you have, the amount of years of experience you have is going to be different, right? So if you have a lot of experience, you can list that. And if you don't, then you have to find a different way to do it, right? So I have a statement at the— sometimes I recommend people do a statement at the top, which is just kind of a statement that explains them in a unique way that stands out. But I also wouldn't recommend that if you're doing a switch, and I have another podcast episode on this, it's like looking for a career in a new industry or switching industries or whatever, you're not going to have that success submitting through job boards. It's just very low likelihood that you would. And this is from hundreds and hundreds of people of me working with them and them just continuing to insist on submitting through job boards and not having the results. And it's like, well, don't keep doing that. So that is another thing. It's just your resume's going to be different depending on where you are in your career, depend on how you're switching, depend on what movement you're making. You have to figure out how your resume works and how it fits in. But it's not the thing that normally is even the problem. It astounds me. Everyone's like, let's start with my resume. Can you review my resume? I'm like, so honestly, I don't really care about your resume. I want to know you as a person. I want to know where you came from, why you decided to switch. What is it that you really want to achieve? What impact do you want to make and why? What is it that lights you up? The resume can't really even give you that. It can't give somebody that on a piece of paper. So I think I enjoy cover letters a lot more. And I got to say, like, you don't have to write a cover letter. Sometimes they're irrelevant too, but I love them because it gives you more creative writing ability. Because the resume is basically just bullet points. It's like a quick history of your results, where you got the results, a brief description of where you went to school and your years of experience. And it should be put in the most clear, concise, quickly to digest, easy to understand manner possible. But even when that's done like that, it's only a very small sliver of the pie. Because what people think is, is like it's the whole pie and then there's a little tiny sliver that's the rest of it. And it's like, no, the resume is actually a tiny little sliver and the rest of the pie is what matters. Right. And like, I have a diagram for this. I'm going to post it, but it's like the resume is a tiny sliver. The rest of it is how you're submitting it, who you're speaking to, how many people have seen it that are going to hire you? How many conversations have you had? Where have you submitted it already that hasn't worked? What didn't work about that? Are you getting interviews? How is the energy in your interviews? How's your VCVC? That's my value creation, value communication formula. How is that? Are you— confident in? Do you know the value that you've created? Can you identify it, speak about it confidently, relevantly, and specifically to someone so it matters? Because it's like, even if you got a bunch of interviews using this amazing resume that was great, if you can't close the interviews, then it's kind of a waste. It's like putting more water in a bucket with holes in it, right? So it's like a tiny piece of this puzzle. So I love you. I understand we're conditioned to believe the resume is the big be-all and end-all thing. Inside my program, we do have all the— we have the examples of the 6-figure resumes that have landed the jobs. We have a brilliant workshop from my friend and client Colleen, who transitioned from teaching to UX design, and she's landed several roles in UX, and she's doing another transition now. She's really good with resumes. She understands them. She's done a workshop on them. We have lots of material inside the program on them. So we do cover them. They are a portion of this job hunt. But we have one module on resumes, OK? And then we have 5 core modules on the other parts of the job search, OK? So the resume is tiny. And when people want to come to me with it, I just think to myself, I can't really fully help you if all I do is review this resume. I need to help you with all of it. I need to know more about you. I need to dive into who you are as a person. What is it that lights you up? How is it that you're communicating your value? All that, okay? That needs to be priority because like I said, the resume is such a small piece and we can sit there and we can adjust the brightness on the headlights of your car all day long, but if we don't know what's going going on under the hood and the car's not running, you're not going anywhere. You're not moving. So as much as I have come to terms with the fact that resumes are important to a point, they do serve a purpose when someone asks you for it. Like if you're having a great conversation and someone says, send me your resume, you want to have a great resume that you feel proud of, that you can hand over and you can know depicts the results you've created in your past. And that you can know that when someone asks you about one of those line items, you can excitedly talk about it and share a relevant story that's going to land and have them thinking, oh yeah, this person's going to get me these results too. I can picture exactly where I want to put them. We want that, but so many people are losing the whole big picture by just coming back to the resume. And I know this because people tell me, they're like, I spent 10 hours tweaking it. It takes me so long to change everything to apply for the specific jobs. I need to tailor it and tweak it and change it. I've gotten it reviewed now by 20 people. I don't know if 20, but like a lot of people. I paid to get it reviewed by so many people, but I still don't have the job. And it's like, this is what I'm like, feel like I'm getting up on a soapbox to talk about is, yes, that isn't the only thing you needed to do. The resume isn't the thing, the place where you needed to focus and put all your hours and energy. So, There's other, so many other things. So that's what I've made my whole mission and my whole impact in life about was to helping you put those things together and helping you identify for you what are the pieces you actually need to work on, right? And so maybe a little bit of it is your resume. Maybe you need to have some more bullets with some better numbers, with some better results, and maybe you need some more white space. Maybe you need some more, like maybe you need to reduce the heavy amounts of blocks of text you have. Maybe you need to change what's at the top because maybe this is another one. People put what they can do, what they have done, even though they don't want to do that in the future. So they're kind of bringing in the wrong people by putting stuff they don't want to do on their resume because they think that's what they have to do to get an interview. But if that's not what you want to do, then you don't want to attract people through that lens. I could go on forever about this, I swear. But it's like, the resume is not your thing to start with, right? It's like very, very rarely your thing to start with. Okay. So that's it for today. It was a little ranty. I had to get on and do it. I couldn't help myself. So if you have asked me to review your resume, if you have either messaged me on LinkedIn and asked me to do that, I'm going to send you to this episode. And if you are inside the Six Figure Curriculum and you've asked me to review it, then Please post it in the group because our group can give you some opinions. They can point out things like, this block of text is too big, these bullets could be improved. They can help you and we can all help you collectively with the opinions about that, and we will happily do so. But remember, it is not the be-all and end-all or the reason why you get hired. And lots of people get hired every day with crappy resumes. Okay? I'm proof of that. And lots of people get hired every day because The resume isn't the most important thing, but we can help you with opinions. We can help you to make sure that all those boxes are checked, that the most impactful things are being done on your resume. And we'll be happy to help you with that. But if you're inside my program, you probably already know this because we've already gone over it. So you already know that there's a lot of other reasons why people aren't getting the job, and it's not because of the resume. All right, well, that's it for today, and I will talk to you next week. Hey, have you left me a review yet? If not, leaving me one now comes with an awesome bonus perk. I'm gonna give you access to my $97 course. It's titled 8 Reasons Why You Get Interviews But No Job Offers. This course is normally $97, but when you leave me a review as a thank you, I will give you access to it for free. And it's helped many professionals like you land their premium job offers and make more money just by simply going through this 4-day training that I did. I received so much feedback on so many of the results just from this $97 training, and I'd love to gift you that for free. So all you have to do is leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform, preferably iTunes, screenshot the review, email it to me. The details are in the show notes of the episode, and I can't wait to read your reviews and send you access to that course. Thank you so much.