Live Resume Roast with a Senior Tech Recruiter

Send out a couple announcements. Let me verify that we are also shown on LinkedIn.

Cool, no worries. Before we, uh, we go live, did you see those— did you happen to take a look at those notes that I sent you?

I did. I did. Yeah, a lot of the resumes are— there are a lot, and they all kind of have like a general amount of, uh, like the same stuff happening. So I think we have a good set.

Awesome.

And, uh, okay, so we are showing— that's good. Okay, and you guys coming in, David is here. Please, uh, Shout out where y'all are watching from. We are back with your favorite tech recruiter, Pedro, everyone's favorite tech recruiter. Let me send an email notification to remind folks as well. All right, LinkedIn is here. LinkedIn's good to go. YouTube's good to go, looks like. Where's everyone watching from? Shout out where you are watching from. Post that in the chat. Richmond, Virginia is in the house. All right. All right. Also Richmond, Virginia. Canada is in the house. New York City, Bellingham.

Washington.

Phoenix, Arizona. All right.

Phoenix.

All right. Houston, Texas is in the house. Okay, Houston. All right. All right, this is gonna be a fun night. All right. Pedro is back. Everyone's favorite tech recruiter. And we're gonna have a good— it's gonna be good, it's gonna be good, it's gonna be good stuff. All right, Canada. All right, 2 folks from Canada, nice, nice, nice. Okay, Lagos, Nigeria is in the house. All right, okay, all right, all right, okay, perfect. Okay, so Today, for those who've never seen me before, my name is Kedeisha Bryan. I am a data scientist during the day, and outside of that, I am a data career coach, and I help career changers launch their data careers without going back to school in under 6 months. New York City's in the house. We are back with everyone's favorite tech recruiter, Pedro. Pedro, you want to give a brief intro for those seeing you for the first time?

Absolutely. So, Kedisha, I appreciate it again for the chance to be on, you know, this, this wonderful call. And I'm currently a senior tech recruiter for an organization that's headquartered out of Knoxville, Tennessee. I work remote for them in Texas, looking to establish a presence here. Prior to joining this organization, I retired from the Marine Corps, did some project management While in the Marines, I did close to about 17 years on recruiting duty. So helping professionals is not a strange thing to me and, you know, giving them guidance and some mentorship. And one of the things that I'm looking to do as far as moving forward is I'm a candidate advocate. So whether you're new to the game or you're making a shift and a U-turn in your career, I'm somebody that's here to support. And whether it's through me or somebody else, I'm just looking to provide some new keys to open new doors, and that's why I'm here.

Okay, perfect. All right, so before we get started on the resumes, so to, to, uh, I guess to pretty much share your resume for feedback, there was just a little couple questions just to gather some data. I pretty much asked, hey, what are— what kind of challenges are you dealing with? And what have you done to fix those or address those challenges? Pretty much everyone who submitted their resume, for the most part, pretty much majority are going to be career changers. And overall, the majority are also folks who they've already feel like they got all the skills, you know, they don't need any more schooling, they don't need anything else. They are in the job market not getting any interviews. And so that is why they are here. So most common challenges, right? Not getting callbacks even when feeling qualified. So in their minds, they feel like they're qualified, they got everything on paper, so why aren't they getting any callbacks? Repeated ghosting with no feedback, not getting shortlisted despite— they, they feel like they're aligned with the job descriptions.

Okay.

They feel like they're, they're tweaking the resumes for each role and still not getting traction. They're feeling the— they feel like they have experience gaps, uh, like job gaps, for example. That usually gets addressed. Um, lack of relevant experience for portfolio projects, underemployment, or no current exposure to needed tools like SQL. Um, this is a big thing too, and I think this actually encompasses most people struggling to break in without, like, from a general or non-technical background, which is something I help with, and I'm pretty sure Pedro helps with too. We specialize in that. Difficulty networking due to imposter syndrome, just lacking strategy, trouble positioning oneself online with LinkedIn, etc. No clear way to engage with target companies, struggling to land remote roles in general, and just no experience with job searching and just not really clear where to start. So when you look at these, you know, Pedro, what do you, what are you getting?

So, you know, those are all— they're all valid, just like common things. And it sucks that a lot of, a lot of professionals experience that. One of the big ones that sticks out to me right now is the tweaking the resumes for each role, but still no traction, right? Mm-hmm. So without looking at your resume or knowing what type of tweaking that you're doing, there's more to it than tailoring or adding a bullet here and there to kind of connect to a job description, right? You could do that, and it could be something that is— you're describing a skill set that aligns with the needed skill for a role. Things that fall into that is the, the response that you provide. Is it solution? Are you talking about a solution that's tying into a need for that organization? And with that solution, when you talk about it, is there a quantifiable achievement or experience that you have in it that can describe how you're bringing the right solution for the needs of that role, right? The other one on here is the— and I would imagine this is the one that a lot of people deal with, especially if you're making the current— the career transition, is no experience or small experience in that field. And you're looking to kind of get that breakthrough. You're looking to, you know, walk into a new opportunity, right? And you're wanting someone who's willing to take a chance on you, or really just to kind of invest in you. I like better the invest piece because they know that they're gonna— you're gonna bring experience. You got some life skills. You have things that necessarily someone who is brand new, maybe just a real novice that has limited experience in any type of professional setting. You don't have that because you're making a career change. In those notions, it's really about understanding what type of company you're targeting. If you're talking— if you're targeting a big organization, and sometimes the big organizations, they're, they're not looking to do that, right? They have a different way of how they're going to approach looking to bring someone on the team. If it's a new organization and they're smaller and it's possibly a startup, 9 times out of 10, you know, there's a high percentage that they're going to want to give you an opportunity because they are still new in trying to understand what they need as an organization. And something that they value is experience. And a lot of times it's the experience that can be brought from another side of a skill set or a type of, you know, industry that can help them kind of mold into where they want to go. But each of those on there, those are pretty valid. Now the one that sticks out the most is SQL. And I know last week I mentioned about needing some strong skill sets in SQL. And, you know, I made a post today on LinkedIn and it was kind of a little, you know, thought I'd drop some stuff from Ice Cube back in the day, you know. I didn't even have to use my AK. Today was a good day. And one, uh, one of the gentlemen that I was helping, a candidate, uh, did well, has some awesome SQL skills, and he got hired today. He got a job offer, offer accepted. So he's going to be starting next week on Monday. But a lot of it is to his SQL skills. But we can get into more of that about like why SQL stood out the most. But each of those on there, like I said, the one about Just, you know, tweaking your resume. Are you doing the right things? Have you sought guidance on how to do it? Have you reached out to someone who's already done it before? Is it the right type of information that you're using to tweak? And then also the portion about looking to break into a new type of career path or industry company— looking at the company, what style, how big, is there a history of them investing in somebody new? Or are they— did they have a history of only wanting people who have so many years of experience in it, right? There's some homework that has to be done prior to turning in your resume so that you can kind of set yourself up for success in those situations.

Perfect, perfect. Hope y'all are taking some notes here. Um, all right, uh, so actions taken so far. This is what folks have done. Um, so regularly updating and tailoring the resumes. Um, following career advisor feedback and optimizing for ATS. Um, you know what, this is one thing too. Some of these resume scoring websites, they're traps. Some of them are traps. You upload them, they tell them, oh, you gotta score like 40, this is what you gotta do, and if you pay us about $80, we'll fix it for you. Traps.

Oh no. No, no. Yep, definite. Don't, don't, don't, don't do it. Stay away from those ones.

Uh, yeah, so revamping resumes to reflect more technical experience or remove irrelevant content. All right. Uh, building and improving project portfolios to demonstrate skills. Okay. Taking courses or certifications— the IBM BI certificate, Data in Motion, Power BI, or Python. And I'll say, I've heard from through the grapevine, Data in Motion has some pretty darn good certifications. That's what I've heard. Continuing to study and master key tools like SQL. Perfect. Joining WhatsApp groups for remote job leads. That sounds a little sketch to me. Connecting with industry professionals for resume help. Attempting to learn networking strategies, especially for imposter— sorry, especially for introverts and those with imposter syndrome. Fun fact, I'm also an introvert, so I know what that is like. Starting to shadow, volunteer, intern, taking adjacent jobs like accounting and tax roles to gain relevant analytics exposure, and exploring freelance platforms and gigs or contract gigs. What are your thoughts on these actions so far, Pedro? What are your thoughts?

They're all good. They're, they're good. They're the steps in the right direction, especially the ones with taking courses or certifications. And the reason taking courses and certifications is a major plus is for all of the professionals, all the, the everybody making the U-turn, right? One of the, one of the things that pops out the most is, can you learn something new? Are you willing to upskill yourself if nobody's telling you? So when you start to account the fact that you are getting certifications, you're learning new technologies, right? Because it's ever-evolving. When you're showing that you're doing that and you can add that to your resume, update your LinkedIn profile with it, there are tons of professionals who constantly just celebrate themselves, which is not bad, right? And a lot of us— I'm a humble guy, I don't like to do it. But on LinkedIn, guess what? It's not a bad thing. You need to actually go out there and show everyone that you're taking steps towards professional development. So the taking courses piece is big. It's a huge one. And obviously, I said SQL. I know Kedisha and I know you said SQL. I mentioned a guy right now who just knocked it out the park and got a job offer because he's strong in SQL. SQL is It's not an if, it's yes, you have to. So everything you got to do to be able to strengthen those SQL skills, got to do it. Now the other part about shadowing or volunteering to gain experience. So when, when a professional is like, for example, I want to target the health industry, however you haven't worked for a health organization. It is a great idea to step into that world so that you can learn about the industry, especially because when you have knowledge of how it operates, what's important, what helps them drive decisions, and really what they're using to measure for gathering data to do the analytics necessary— if you don't have knowledge of the industry, take a step back and ask yourself, if someone was looking to join your team, but they didn't know anything about your team. And even though they had all the great fire and energy of wanting to do well, would you pick them? Or would you pick the person who may not have all the energy— excuse me, may not have all the knowledge but has all the energy, but is willing to step into your world at a cost, not to them, but more of an investment? But they're not requesting you to do it, you're doing it on your own. And then after that, they give you an opportunity to go ahead and showcase your skills. Organizations are more willing to grab somebody like that and bring them on the team, vice versa, the one who's just sitting around waiting for the opportunity to land at their feet. So taking action and learning about our organization, the industry, and how they operate, that's a huge plus as well.

I also wanted to mention, uh, just some pretty free game when it comes down to getting a good experience on your resume. Um, local nonprofits

Oh yeah.

Contact your local nonprofits. Like, once you learn your skills, once you learn Excel, Tableau, Power BI, whatever, and let's say you don't have experience on your resume, you know, exact experience, contact your local nonprofits and say, you know, you want to do— be a data analyst consultant for them. They have most likely Excel sheets that you can do analytics for, do some pivot tables, and do some visualizations, do a slide deck presentation and just say in return, you put it on your resume and you're most likely not going to get paid for it, but that's not the point. And you do that while you're— that's definitely going to strengthen your resume by the time you start applying. And guess what? Now that's free game on what a lot of the top master's in business analytics programs do anyways. Right? The students graduate, have like a 3-month or so, you know, half a semester or a whole semester project with actual companies. Just do the same thing on your own and just, you know, contact your local nonprofits. Then in return, you do them for like, oh, 5 hours a week. You don't have to do them like, you know, it's not like 40 hours. And you can always probably do multiple, right? That's free because I know there's some folks in here who've been on the job market for a while.

Can

you imagine had you had that on your experience on your resume? I'm telling you, you would have— you— that's— listen, that's free. That's free advice right there. Also, second thing, there's a difference between certifications and certificates, right? Mm-hmm. If you get the Databricks certification or, uh, you know, Microsoft has a bunch of them, right? Usually you have to pay some money to take a test. That's different than, you know, going to like Udemy or taking these like, uh, you know, you know, courses that are like for completion. Those are 2 different things. But if you kind of stack like certifications like from AWS, etc., where you have to actually take a test, um, and those are more— those are difficult, right? Snowflake or whatever. Understand the difference, but those are good. Um, okay, I just want to make that point. All right, let's, let's, let's get started. Let's get to the meat and potatoes. Right. All right, let's get into the meat and potatoes. Um, let me zoom in. I'm not sure if— can y'all see that? Let me see if I gotta zoom in a little bit. Can y'all see that? I'll start from the top. Let's start from the top in our first, uh, our first resume, right? So anyways, this is, this is the first section that we'll see anyways. But

yeah,

also I just want to note some of the formatting may seem a little off, maybe some of the bullets, just because I uploaded these in Canva, um, and so some of that may be off, but generally this, this is it. So Pedro, go, your first, first impression.

Uh, well, I love that the skills are at the top. So for everyone on here, you do want to have your skills at the top of your resume and not at the bottom because you want to highlight your strengths, okay? An area immediately for improvement on here is there's no professional summary. So there is nothing on here that tells me the history summarized of the skills, the experience, and the desires of where this professional would want to go. So Batman, I might have to try to write my own story and read into the entire resume to try to figure out who Batman is, and more importantly What he's great at and where he wants to go. And so right off the bat, if I'm a, if I'm a hiring manager or I'm the recruiting guy looking at this resume, I'm already knocking them because it's like they want me to do the work for them. And now that I have to take some more time to do the work for them, that's just going to slow down the ability of really recognizing, okay, who this person is. So that's a missed opportunity already on the top is There's no professional summary inside this resume. Now, skill sets. As we go through the skill sets, you got SQL at the top. Fantastic. Got, you know, Microsoft SQL Server. All right, that's awesome. Have that at the very top. So now I'm like, okay, if this guy— if this person is claiming they're so great at SQL, I'm gonna have to— I'm gonna ask them some questions. How proficient are you? What are the most complicated projects that you've worked on with SQL. Tell me about one of them, you know, what was it about? Then I'm listening for at that point, is this person going to use a SMART concept, the whole 9, you know, the STAR, everything? But this resume right on top, no professional summary, it's already knocking me. It's gonna already take away some time that I could probably save if it was already there. Now when we get to the next portion, when we're talking about relevant work experience, okay, fine. So I got tax analyst. It's a remote opportunity and it's temporary and it's contract. Okay, contract roles are not bad. They are not a bad thing. So anytime you've had a contract role, by all means, yes, please put it on there and label it. The fact that it's labeled— now that I've recognized, okay, that short stint, the next little one, May through July, if it wasn't labeled as a contract role, then what I would be doing while I'm reviewing this resume is saying, wow, this person was only there a few months, they must have got let go or they quit. So the resume, since it's telling me it's a contract role, I don't have to wonder about that answer. They're helping me out. So this is a, this is a plus on this resume right here. Now it's got some quantifiable things. The first bullet: developed, evaluated, and analyzed tax forms ensuring 100% accuracy in tax calculations and user input. I like it. Cool. Next bullet though, research tax laws to make necessary updates to tax forms for the current year. Now if that next bullet was something that would tell me research current tax laws to make necessary updates to improve the speed of performance or the speed of actually XYZ and shorten the gap on being able to complete— like, if it told me a number and it was describing how it impacted the current year, and you're just telling me you're making necessary updates, that's kind of a— that's a vague thing to have there, right? So now I lose interest right after that second— that first bullet, because everything else is just— you're just telling me about the role. Your resume is not the— it's not the time to tell me about the role, like the responsibilities. It's the time to tell us about What did you do? What was achieved? How did it impact the organization? How did it improve, uh, any type of needs that they have? Because then what that'll show is that you're a person who's all about delivering results. Okay, we get down to the next one. Okay, another tax analyst, accounts receivable. Here we go. Number of people, that's great. But here's the, here's the next part, right? So if you scroll back up a little bit, Kedisha, the first, the first, uh, first job experience has 5— 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 bullets. The next one has 4, and then the next one has 3. I'm trying to figure out, okay, well, if you have less in each role, is— did you not accomplish a lot? Was there not a lot expected from you? Um, so now, now I'm trying to figure out what's actually going on, but also it's not a standardized format. If, if I was to look through and everybody had 3 bullets, okay, good. I'm knowing that all the most important pieces of the resume are captured in those 3 bullets quantifiably with results and solutions delivered. But now since it's 5, now it's 4, then it's 3. Um, you know, you're talking about money, that's all, that's great, that's awesome. But I'm, I'm like getting lost now because I'm having to try to figure out how much work was actually accomplished at each of these places. But here's the other portion. January through April is remote and seasonal. Okay, the next one was a temporary contract. Prior to that, right before it, you see that Smartsheet and remote June through August. Now that wasn't a contract. It doesn't— it's not labeled as contract, it's labeled as an intern. I got it. But now between August 2022 to January 2024, I'm gonna have to figure out what was taking place and what was going on. So now that I have to ask myself the question, what was this professional doing? Maybe they were a student. We'll find out as we go to the bottom if we see education, if education was completed during that time. And I get it. Or maybe there was work that wasn't associated with the career field this person wanted to be in. They might have done like Uber or anything else. Those jobs are not bad. They're not bad at all, okay? But instead of trying to figure out whether or not you could keep a job or you didn't want to work, what it just— if you hear me rambling on, that's what happens in somebody's head. I have to try to figure out the answer. And on your resume, you don't want to make someone figure out And answer. You want to tell a story. This is your way of being able to paint your story of experience in an organized, efficient, easy-to-read manner where you brag about yourself. So now I'm just asking stories, okay? Then we go through, and on the bottom I see United States Navy, okay? That was for 4 years. Hospital corpsman, general surgery clinic, okay? Now through all of here, I see one, one thing highlighted in bold, and that's the KPIs. So that must have been really important. But now the formatting is all— is there some— it's not organized at all, right? It's just a lot of things in different places. Is there any more to the bottom? Is there any education or anything? Is this a 2-pager? Okay, okay, I got projects. LA crime trend— crime trends analysis. Okay, highlighted the tools that were used. All right. Now, if you're going to do it for one, for a couple, why not do it for all? And if you were able to, if you wanted to highlight that in those ones, you could have also highlighted who's there. Let's just say if this was an actual resume, why not highlight it in other experiences to showcase the tools and the products you were leveraging in those roles? Utilize Microsoft SQL Server. Query the data using it. Okay, Master of Exercise Science, bachelor's. Well, those, those 2 actual— let's say those 2 lines of education, from the bachelor's to the, to the master's, they're kind of conjoined. They're in the same career, they're in the same education path, right? But none of that has anything to do when it comes to analysis, and that's fine. This might have been a career move, this might have been a shift, um, but just from the beginning now to the end, there's a— there's just a lot of questions that if this was somebody's resume, I'd have to ask. And you know, when, when it comes to now, it's starting to have to ask so many questions to find answers. Or to try to peel away layers to get what was achieved and what you were successful with inside those roles. More time than what needs to be spent on this has already been spent just trying to figure out what some of the— what some of the holes would be for some of the answers. So that's, that's, that's, that's what I get right now from this resume. So this is now maybe what, 4 or 5 minutes me talking about one resume, and if there's about 30 resumes turned in for a position, If it's taken this long, and maybe this is the first one after this, if this was the first resume in the stack and I took, I just took my time to read it. If I got to another one in the stack and it was showing the same thing, I probably wouldn't even go through the whole thing. I said, you know what? I've already seen one just like this. It's not formatted correctly. It's missing a professional summary. They're not highlighting anything. They're just kind of telling me exactly what the roles and responsibilities were, like it feels from the job description that they received when they got hired. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna associate time with them. Let's move to the side. I'm sure they're a great person. Sure, I'm sure I'd want to have lunch with them, but not tonight. I got to get through a lot more, so let me move it to the side, move on.

Okay, interesting. So when it comes down to, say, uh, job gaps, um, what if, let's say, the person is— they're upskilling You know, they're, they're not working, they're out of work. Is that something where they should put in their resume that, hey, upskilling from this date till this date?

Yes. So I have encouraged candidates when they— when I've seen their resume, and because I don't want to make it seem like I'm not going to call you, I'm still going to— I'm— if there's— if the resume's Uh, submission that has been received on my end is not large, I'm going to call every person. But the more— the larger the stack grows, then the less calls that I'll make if I'm having trouble. I'm trying to figure things out, right? Because it's just— it's about speed and it's about getting, you know, finding, um, just finding all the good resumes. Now, when I have come across and I've then jumped on a call, asked the professional the question, you know, during this period There's a gap, you know, share with me, you know, what happened. And so some of them have shared, you know, I've had, I've had some share, well, I took a break because I wanted to make a career shift, so I went back to school. Awesome, cool. What did you do? Well, and then they'll share it, I'll take notes, and then I can include that when I do the submission for this resume to the client, right? I'll do that in preparation and let them know, like, listen, Your resume is great. You're going to see this gap here, and because of this gap, it was because of professional development. They went to school, they took a break. This is where they were attending. Matter of fact, here was the GPA. You'll see that on the bottom of the resume. All the— I know I'll help stretch the, uh, explanation not to like paint— I'm not trying to give them like a whole page story, but just really the key highlights for it, talking about what was done. Now if there was nothing done, then that's the bad part. Now, I've also seen where, um, I've helped candidates get in front of clients that have been out of work now for about a year or 2. Okay, some that actually were helping take care of, like, they were the caregivers for close family members. And so they stepped away from being a professional in the IT industry, and they're looking to get back into, into the game and try to get a job. All it is is just a conversation piece. What happened? Let me help you. Okay, we can, we can work that route, no problem. Skills— your skills are there, right? Probably gonna take a little bit getting used to, but then in that point they'll say, well, during that period I also was studying, I was taking some classes, they're here on my resume. I don't have them all there. What I would like you to do is put an entry to state professional development, list the things that you were completed, then It doesn't have to be at the top, it can be at the bottom, but it's answering the question of the gap. Okay, awesome, I can do that. Cool. And we have placed those on resumes and submitted them and got candidates interviews with, uh, with jobs even though there was a gap on the resume. So there's a way to approach it, um, if, if there's, if there's a, a spot where, you know, there's like a year or two I mean, sometimes even 3 years. It's not a bad thing, but you need to have a good reason why.

Okay, perfect. I know we spent a little time on this resume, but I wanted to mention something. So one of the— I'm not a resume expert by no means, but one of the first glaring things that I saw was that there wasn't a lot of quantitative stuff. It was like one in each role. I actually was watching this YouTube video the other day. Uh, it was some like principal software engineer and he was saying that companies don't care about tasks, they care about impact. Yes. And so that's something that I realized, like, okay, because when people are first writing their resume and they hear, oh, you gotta do quantifiable impact, they really, like, honestly, people don't really understand like the difference between like what that means. So when I see researched current tax laws to make necessary updates to tax forms for the current year, to me that's a task. Right. To me, like, that's just a task that one of the many 2,000 tasks you do during the day, but ensuring 100% accuracy, like, that's the impact. So like every bullet should have something like that for those who may be wondering, but that's really the difference. Like, think of task and, and, um, and impact. Most, like, no one cares about the tasks really. Um, but all right, that, that was good. That was good, good stuff. All right, let's move on to the next. But generally speaking, this would go into the, the no pile, basically.

Uh, I'd say if it was a job that was posted on ZipRecruiter, this would— they're on ZipRecruiter. And look, if you have not turned in a resume on ZipRecruiter, I wanna— I'm gonna school you on it. When, uh, when a company is reviewing the resumes that have been turned in for a position and you're going through and reviewing them, right? They give us like a little bar that we can go through and review: contacted, phone screen, interviewed, um, no fit, and then offer out, right? This one would go into the maybe file, right? Like, it's okay, it's, it's not bad. I see some great things on here, but it's taking me too long. So if I'm looking at it on ZipRecruiter, anything more than about a minute, I'm like, oh, it's a lot, but it's got some great things. I love what they're saying about SQL. They got it, but let me put them in the maybe. So I come back to the maybe after I call everybody who was a thumbs up, that already had all that information in there. So in that notion, you're still going to get a call, but you won't be the first ones. So, um, there you go. That's, that's that answer on that.

All right. Okay. No one— you shouldn't— we don't want to be maybes. All right, we don't want to be maybes. All right, we got Homer Simpson in the house. Okay, and let me say this, this person actually had their photo, so I, I replaced it with a photo of Homer. Okay, their photo was there.

Um, well, first and foremost, right, like, I love Homer. Okay, that's a good one, that's a good one. Got contact email, good. Portfolio, cool. LinkedIn, okay, that would look— that looks like that would be a full LinkedIn address. I didn't check the first one because I was already looking at all this other stuff that wasn't there, but when you put your LinkedIn on your resume, make sure it's the full LinkedIn. Quick story, I had used a resume in the past that I was like, oh yeah, they're going to be able to go to my LinkedIn. When I went to click on the LinkedIn I had on the resume, it was a completely different person inside LinkedIn. And I was like, oh, that sucks. They've been looking at the wrong person. So when you share your LinkedIn on there, make sure it's the one that's actually to your actual LinkedIn page. But this style of a resume, believe it or not, if, if you're using this style of resume, this is an outdated version. So using this brand right here automatically shows it that probably built this a while back, or you went to get some help from someone, um, or you just downloaded it off, you know, one of the sites that you're able to use, like Resume Builder. It's not bad, okay? I'm gonna tell you that it's not bad. It's just an outdated version. It's not the modern versions that a lot of professionals are using for their resumes. It's great that it has a, you know, it says profile, but it's like an executive summary, almost like a professional summary of themselves. You know, data scientist expertise in predictive modeling, love it. Machine learning, data visualization, proficient in Python, good. SQL, money, Power BI, those are some big ones. Excel experience, passionate about transforming data into actionable business insights to drive strategic decision-making, love it. Well, would have been even better if you'd have told me what kind of roles you were targeting. So if you'd have been like, you know, strategic decision-making as a data, you know, a data analyst or, um, business intelligence analyst— and most of that you can do when it's like the job description. So for example, if this— if you're going to use this resume and you're— I want to submit it for a business intelligence analyst, you can just add that little piece on the end saying you're driving— that drives strategic decision-making as a business intelligence analyst. And what that would tell someone like myself or a hiring manager is that, okay, I'm looking at the right resume because this is for the position that's open. So that's just the nugget to drop into your professional summary in the beginning, is who you are, what you're great at, and what you're shooting for— what, who you like, where you want to take your skills. So you include that in the professional summary, it's going to go a long way. Um, education, awesome. You got the years you attended. You don't necessarily need to put the years. I mean, you can if you want to, um, but university, cool. If you put your— you put your GPA, some organizations do care about you putting your GPA, so that's, that's a, that's a hit or miss. Um, it's not wrong if you don't put it on there. If you do, it's not even 100% correct if you do. Just keep into account, um, GPA, yes. Years of attendance doesn't matter. But how it has your university you've been and then your, your degrees kind of down like in a bullet point, no need to do that. That all needs to be one thing. It needs to be like, it needs to be formatted in a different fashion. Um, yeah, so just that education, education section would just need to be fixed. Small things play big when you're reviewing resumes because it's about looking at it. And when we turn it in to the hiring manager right now, for me, I see a resume, I'm always going to ask the professional, this is what I've noticed, this is the feedback I have for you. I'm going to leave it in your hands because I'm going to, I'm going to submit the resume that you bless. I'm just going to give you this feedback and do with it what you will. If you desire to update your resume, by all means, I will then use that one to get to the hiring manager. So it's not me trying to say that I don't want to use the one that you have, just encouraging you. At the end of the day, it's all on the candidate as far as what resume they would like for us to send and deliver to the hiring manager. But that's, that's that on that piece, the customer segmentation enhancing marketing and business strategy. Now for your jobs, um, you want to have And there's those you want to have dates. So these are projects. Say again?

These are projects.

These are projects. Okay, projects. My bad, I didn't see that right there. Projects. Okay, perform data cleaning. I like that. Engineering. Now I wonder if these are personal projects or if these are projects they did for somebody.

Personal projects.

Okay, skills. Time series analysis. Nobody wants to know about time series analysis. They want to know about what tools and products you use. Data analysis. Yes, you you should you should know how to do data analysis. Skills is all about tools and products. Tools you use and you're proficient with. Products you're proficient with because certain organizations have niches on what. Products and tools that they use. If you're not proficient in those and you're afraid of like putting them on there, which I don't think anybody is, but maybe this person just doesn't understand skills as tools and products. Okay, but all right, language, um, fluent. All right, uh, I think the language section you should probably put it if it's for, um If it would, if it would enhance your ability to be bilingual. So if you speak a different language and you're, you're wanting to emphasize that the company that you're turning in your resume for has a history of working with Spanish customers, you want to highlight that you speak fluent Spanish. You don't want to highlight that you just speak English fluent. Okay, um, now this would also lead me to believe that maybe this is an international professional and they want to let the the company know they speak fluent English because of their name? Maybe, maybe not, right? But I like— I'm glad they have projects. That's great.

Okay, good. Um, I have a thing. So even people with experience, sometimes when they, they'll like to put their projects at the top, for me, I don't like— to me, that just screams you don't have experience. Whenever I see projects above experience, I typically like to say put it below. Now obviously this is someone who's, uh, it says 2025, so it's probably someone either fresh out of school this year, right? So you don't have experience. But let's say this was like what I see a lot, a transitioning professional. They put their projects at the top. Does that— is that scream something? Like when you talk about like you only have so much time and their experience is like down low, is that like— Would you recommend that or no?

In my opinion, I want to see them at the bottom now, which is, if you notice, like immediately when you're like, let's look at resumes, I didn't even look at it, said projects, I just automatically assumed, okay, it's experience just because that's how it flows. So then you're like, oh, it's projects. I'm like, oh yeah, it is projects. Okay, all right, now I gotta stop. I'm like, all right, now let me look at everything else. Um, but I would encourage whoever this person is, or, or anybody who would have to turn in a resume like this because they're new to the industry, and let's say you don't have a lot of experience, and but you want to highlight that you're passionate and you've done some work to try to grow your knowledge base so that you can serve, serve an organization and join a team and make an impact. Still put the projects on the bottom, put professional experience prior to that. You know, you could, you could work at a, in the retail department of our organization, but I guarantee you there are, there are great bullets you could include in your resume that tie into quantifiable impacts and reveal soft skills that had an impact And those things will— those are looked upon in a favorable manner because everybody's going to have skills. But all the other pieces, as far as like customer service, those things, um, they still need to be noted on the resume. Now, if this person has no work experience and they were just a student, then what I have seen is when we come into entry-level, entry-level positions, this is perfectly fine. Because I know that they're trying to build their, their, uh, their experience base for a position. So if this was the entry level, no worries, I'm still good. I'd still love to see some type of professional experience, right? Because it's hard to believe that you went through that many years of school and that many years of life and didn't have one job or volunteer in one place to get some type of professional experience aside from a project. So, and you brought up some great things earlier, Kadeesho, as far as like Reaching out to nonprofit organizations, that's like an internship. You go in there and you're able to knock that out. Those are valuable pieces, and I'm glad you brought it up because I'm gonna put that in my pocket and use that for later when I speak to somebody. But, um, yeah, now professional experience and the projects on the bottom.

Okay, perfect. So everyone watching this, and in the future when you're watching, no more— there's no more, uh, the excuse of I don't have experience is out the window. Okay, I just gave you the— I just gave you the gem. Reach out to your local nonprofits. There's plenty of them with plenty of data. Okay, you're not going to be doing fancy AWS, etc., but it's something good for your resume, and you will— that'll set you apart, especially if you're in school. Internships are hard to get come by, so create it yourself. All right, um, okay, perfect, perfect, perfect. Alrighty, homework. Time to go.

And look, while you're doing that, I'm gonna toss you another nugget. So I was on recruiting for the Marine Corps for a long time, and we do a ton of analysis. And listen, no, no Marine and no military recruiting office will ever turn you away with being able to help them analyze results that they achieve, especially because they have to continually report on it every week and every month. And they do semiannual and yearly reports. If you can help those, I would have loved to have had a professional come in and help me. It, uh, it taught me a lot. It would have made me faster and better at what I do so that I could seek guidance on visualizations, you know, tools like Power BI, Tableau. If I'd have known those things when I was in the Marine Corps, it would have saved me a ton of time doing the analysis and gathering all that information. So stop by recruiting office. You can even tell them, hey, Pedro sent me. You could get my— you could send me a message. I'll jump on a call with you. We'll do a FaceTime. Um, because there's no way, there's no way in H-E-double hockey sticks that they love doing all that by themselves, because I didn't.

And listen, if y'all are in Texas especially, ask Pedro if he knows folks who are recruiting like that. like make an introduction or something like that. So hey, another free gem, reach out to your local recruiting office. Um, they may say, are you ready to sign up? No, but I have a different opportunity to talk to you about. Yeah. Okay, okay. Um, okay, so before that though, someone asked, do you, you know, want to know an example of what's a modern resume? Um, so you talked about the last one was obviously not a modern resume. But that's usually what you see on like Canva, etc. Is there like a general description of what a modern resume looks like?

So give me a second. I know I sent you those, uh, I sent you some in, um, uh, an email, or well, not even email, I dropped them in our chat.

Okay,

but, uh, give me a moment. I don't know if I can drop one into this. If it gives me an error,

you can send it to me on LinkedIn and I can just share the screen.

Yeah, let me see if I could do that right, right now.

And in between there, Pierre wrote a good comment. Since so many data analysis projects are hosted on GitHub these days, should projects be a highlight? Should projects be a highlight of those projects, or should a candidate be ready for the HR team? Okay, so this is a good one. So for me, number one, I don't like for people to put their projects or whatever. Or, like, if you think of the, you know, funnel of resume and portfolio, in my opinion, I don't think GitHub should be where you lead them. Because people, like Pierre mentioned, folks are not GitHub savvy. And most people don't even have an organized GitHub to send people. So, so when it comes down to the fact that there's so many are listed on GitHub, and I know there's some people who will have like a link on their resume that goes to it. First of all, are— would you say you are the— like, the recruiters are the ones looking at the— or clicking on the portfolios? Clicking on the portfolios, Pedro, or is that something that usually, you know, probably most recruiters don't even know what they're looking at? Um, that's something that the hiring manager usually does.

So I do it.

Okay,

I do it when I see GitHub on a resume. Um, number one, those things are awesome. I'll tell you that right now. Just putting your project on there and walking, uh, Walking a professional through. So I've been on interviews where it's on a person's resume. Like, the first time it ever happened, um, I had a— I had an analyst say, listen, I have projects, um, would you like to see them? Like, sure. And so they clicked— they said click on this portion of my resume, and it was GitHub. And we jumped on there and they were able to walk me through a project. And it was really a, a better understanding of how to utilize Tableau. And I'm gonna tell you, for me, that was such an amazing experience because I know how to spell the name. So when they walked me through it, it was phenomenal. It's fantastic. Now, whether a hiring manager, when you sit in front of them, will want to click on it, that is a great question. And I will get some feedback on that so that I can give you an answer on it. I might even do a post on it. No matter of fact, I'm gonna do a post on it on LinkedIn to talk about getting GitHub and label it on resumes and the possibility of somebody, either a recruiter— I'll do it just 100%— but if the hiring manager, what's the, what's the rate of chance of somebody doing it? So to answer your question though, GitHub, I think it's phenomenal. If you put it on your resume, cool. If it's with a staffing and recruiting agency, so when we have interviews and we're meeting candidates, those are more on a casual You know, relaxed level. In those moments, I would be— if it was me and I had it, I would show it. And me as a recruiter, I would invite you to do it because we want to see what your skill set is. And if you've already accomplished something like that and you are confident enough to show it, if you can do it with a recruiter and you can do it with a hiring manager, you'll be able to do it in front of a room full of stakeholders and executives. So I would encourage you to do it.

Yes, but make sure it is organized, right? Yeah, it's, it's not like, oh, let me just post something on and people seem to— you'll send them to some unorganized GitHub and you don't know where to click. That, that's not it either. Like, that's not it. Um, so, you know, maybe, maybe we'll do a portfolio review or something like that, audit, because there are some, there are some really nice GitHubs to do. And then there's some that are not. And then maybe, maybe that'd be a good one. Oh, somebody has a really nice one here. My 2 cents is that when I'm looking for people with certain experience, I like to see what keywords come out of their resume and how often and how they use it within their resume as well. Ideally, I would like to see professional experience before projects. Then it comes down to the technical screening of how well they can speak to it. Listen, Yeah, listen, y'all need it. Y'all need to put that on your wall, okay? This is it right here. Like, that's—

Hey, look, and Peter is a seasoned, seasoned vet in the game when it comes to resume, resume review, interviewing, working with candidates. Uh, so I'm— Peter, man, you dropped here, bro. I'm gonna tell you right now, I already feel a little bit special because you stopped by to drop in those nuggets. But that is a fantastic, uh, Fantastic drop in there to, to this conversation and to the, to this visual. So yeah, please save it, put it up like Kadeisha said, put it on your mirror inside the room, do something. But that is fantastic to keep inside that, uh, that knowledge bank right there so that you can prep for the next, uh, resume, resume up or whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, we'll probably do another one of these. Oh, you know, we could probably have like a, a roundtable discussion, you know, if you've got some more folks, Paige, let's have a roundtable discussion. Right? Um, German asked, should GitHub Project URL supersede LinkedIn URL? In my opinion, it does not have to, because if you look at our current example, it should just go at the top in your, in your, in your, uh, you know, header, right? Every— you should have an URL for your LinkedIn, you should have a URL for your portfolio. Uh, it's not one or the other. Um, but all right, we're— listen, we We're going— we might have to have a part 2. We're coming out of time, but let's, let's do this last one for tonight. Um, and I tell you what, the best name of all— this is the best name yet. The best.

Hope he's better than LeBron. Hey, Kadeesha, I like you already, man. This is even more— okay, um Upgraded Toronto portfolio skills, skills and certifications. Lovely, man. Oh, I can't. Um, and you know what, I'm probably gonna jump. I'm gonna reach out to Peter and see what his thoughts are. But if he's still on here, Peter, what's your thoughts on somebody not having a professional summary on their resume? You've seen a lot of them. Or did he roll out? I want to see what he has to say because I'm already looking at it and I'm like, Kobe better than LeBron? I love you. No professional summary? Why'd you have to do me like that? Now I'm— now I'm trying to figure out what do you want to do with yourself. Um, but nonetheless, IT operations analyst. Okay. I get why there's so many bullets for that one. That was a long time, 10 since, uh, 2020 till now, so about 5 years going on 5. Better, better impact on there, like you said, Khadijah. Okay, financial analyst volunteer. Okay, all right, more volunteer work. Okay, 2 bullets, another one, one, 3 bullets. All right, we can scroll down now. Business Support Coordinator, 2012. That was a long time. Projects. Okay, tell me the projects. 10 years TCC. Okay, it's not bad, it's pretty good. Keep scrolling down. I think this is it. This is a one-pager, right? Yeah. This is probably— well, this is the best one out of all of them, tell you that. Um, this is, this is a good resume. It's fantastic. Got impact on there. Um, you know, it's— there's no— there's not a lot of guessing. I'm assuming that this person is turning it in for to be a data analyst. Um, I'm not— if you scroll back up to the top, is what there was, because their ending job, their, their last job that they're in right now, they're still currently in, is the IT operations analyst. Okay, cool. I love the fact that they've been with, uh, this company for a good minute. I mean, that shows longevity. Obviously they've put it to where they did different things for the organization, so they, they've separated each of those different responsibilities for different time frames. Um, the one in, uh, I'm not familiar with where Oakville or Milton is. I'd imagine they're close by. If not, one of them was probably remote for some volunteer work if you didn't have to go on site. Nonetheless, this is a good resume if it had a professional summary and you told me who you were, what you're really good at. Now I could figure out what you're good at because it's there, but who you were, a summary of skills and experience, and then where you want to go, who you are looking to become, what roles you are targeting. That would make this resume, in my opinion, better, because then it's like, man, all right, I don't got to do any guessing. I could just read down. I already know Kobe's better than LeBron. LeBron ain't— you know, Seth Curry's better than LeBron. Um, but, uh, now this is a great resume. This— I, I— that'd be the first one that I call. I'll tell you that even though they didn't have the summary on there, I still call them first.

Listen, I love to hear it. Uh, this is a Data In Motion student, so I, I expected it to be, be top of the line. Um, but now let's talk about, you know, professional summaries, because I've seen some that are like essays and I've seen some that are short. So when I hear you say professional summary, it sounds like you're saying like an elevator pitch, so to speak. So what are you saying, like a 2-sentence type of thing, or like some kind of drawn out? Like, how long should it be?

I can show you. I sent you that actual, uh,

you know

what, modern format in there.

It ain't popping up. It's— I don't know if it's— if I ain't got enough, uh, RAM happening for me. I don't know why it's not loading up. Can you show it up on your— maybe you can share your screen, show it up.

Let me see.

And in the meantime, I'll show up some questions.

Okay.

Mike asks, what's something most people include on their resume that actually hurts their chances even though they think it helps?

Something else they put on their resume that hurts their chances?

Their photo?

So, oh, look at Mike. There you go. Mike's another— that's another recruiting expert right there. Okay, Mike, I see you.

Let's— me, I have a roundtable, right?

Yeah, I'm gonna have to hit up Mike and, and Peter. So Peter's like my cousin from another mother, right? Pedro and Peter are the same ones, just English and Spanish. But Mike, most people include on the resume that actually hurts their chances even though they think it helps. Well, picture. Yeah, I mean, but then again, providing your LinkedIn on there, they're going to see your picture eventually. So pictures are not a bad thing unless it's a horrible picture. I'll tell you that. Don't put it on there. Other things that are— and this is a debate. This is probably a great question to even drop, drop a little nugget onto LinkedIn for debate amongst everybody on the platform. Hobbies, right? Your hobbies, you know, the, um, what you do in your off time. Like, listen, so I, I know this isn't, this isn't the Fast and Furious family, right? No, it ain't family, man. It's professional. So some, some people I've seen in the debate is like, they don't mind and they actually love it when someone puts their hobbies on their actual resume. Because if the person looking at your resume or the hiring manager is like, oh, they like football, I like football. Okay, cool. Or if they like basketball, I like basketball, or whatever. But on the other side, if they don't like it and that's your hobby and they're looking to grow their team, in my opinion, and I've seen it happen, um, I've had, I've had 2 hiring managers. One was all about, uh, culture, the other one was all about skill sets. And one loved to play video games and the other one liked to lift weights. And they did not get along with each other, but they were the the resumes were being floated through both. One had more power, obviously, and that was the one that liked video games. So anybody who seemed like they weren't that type of they weren't that type of person that liked the same things. Listen, these are people doing the interviews for you. It's not a machine. They can be biased a little bit. And if they don't feel like they can work with you because you don't like some of the same stuff when you're gonna have to work with them— I don't, um, I'm not a rocket scientist and I'm not a mind reader, but I can tell you that people want to work with people that they can get along with. And sometimes someone will just go to someone that they feel like they can connect with if they like the same things. So in my opinion, I wouldn't put any hobbies on your resume. Save that for the interview. Save that for the conversation when you're using emotional intelligence in the room and you're getting a feel for that person that's doing the interview, or when you do an on-site visit. They want— they want to— they want to know about your hobbies, then tell them. Don't put it on your resume. Save that for later. So that's what I have to offer. That's one of the things that I wouldn't do on there.

I, I did not know that was a thing. Um, okay. Um, one thing that I, I've seen too that I wanted There are some people who say they don't— when it comes down to the skills at the top, to not put like those kind of softball skills of like team player, good listener. They want the hard stuff. What would you say to that?

Uh, um, Skills are— skills are tools and products, man. That's, that's what I got to say. Skills are tools and products, okay? The rest of it, uh, just, you know, save that for— save that for the conversation, the, the, the virtual interview with coffee. Save that for that, that talk, okay? The rest of it, no. Skills and products.

Perfect.

I'm just one person. You might talk to somebody and they say, no, please put it on there. Please tell me that you're a team player. All right, man, if that was working— and that's it from the resumes I've turned in— anybody who's got those things on there, they're not doing well with it. Okay, tools and products.

Perfect. Uh, Naeem had a good question. Should graduation date be listed if it's not recent? This is actually something that I like. For me personally, I, I graduated high school in 2012. I didn't get my bachelor's degree until 2022. I typically did not like to put my even bachelor's Graduation, because I didn't want to make it seem like I'm like young and just like with no experience. So is this something that graduation date, like, should it even be on there, period?

I feel like graduation is one of those things that could be tied to ageism. Too junior or too senior, right? Don't put it on there. University, And, and, um, an actual education studied, right? Like whatever, whatever you studied and got your degree in, put it on there. GPA, fantastic. Time frame, save it for the conversation. Save it for when you're building rapport and you're actually in the interview.

Perfect. Okay.

And that's if it even comes up. If it doesn't come up, then don't say nothing about it.

Perfect. Um, okay, Wizard Kelly. Uh, what would be the best way to structure bullets on your resume if you spent 3 years at one place and 1 year at another place?

I believe that everyone on here takes Kadeisha's, um, Kadeisha's nugget that was way better than mine. Impact. Just put bullets on there that show impact. Now, if it's a long stay, a long tenure at an organization, you're probably going to have more to talk about with impact because you were there longer. Now, that's not to say you should have like 15 bullets, okay? But the high-level ones that can connect to the needs of the organization you're submitting the resume for, those are the ones you want to, you want to stretch for the impact. Because let's, let's just talk about it. Everybody who's submitting a resume You reading the job description and you feel like what you have to offer can, can suffice for what that company needs. So tie your bullets and your impact to those needs of the organization. If it's a longer tenure, if you want to drop more than 5, that's fine. You start going way heavy, like to double digits, then I mean, people are going to stop reading after the first couple bullets, I'll tell you that.

So, you know, this is one of the reasons why, like, when it comes to me working, I love taking on those high-impact projects. I don't care how long they're there. It's about impact. Like, want to do high impact, high visible— like, high visibility projects where it— whether you're there for a year, 2 years, it doesn't matter. You'll have the impact bullets already, right? So wherever you're at, you should just be trying to, trying to do high impact projects so that it really doesn't matter how long you've been there. Um, like I just said, it's like, no, you know, no need to have like 20 bullets. All right, we got a whole bunch of— all right, Taryn says, what can newcomers do to make their resume better? People who are new to industry who does not have much experience in that particular field. Okay, so that's like career change. So like most people, especially my following, career changers could be teachers, HR, just non-technical experience. How can we translate that into these new technical industries?

While your experience may not be with the organization that you want to shoot for, I draw back to, you know, the projects that are related to the field in the industry that you want to head into. And once again, Kadeisha earlier dropped a phenomenal nugget. Go to a nonprofit organization and do it as some volunteer work. There's— I mean, the internet has so much information and there's so many people out there that are looking for services that many professionals on, on this call right here can, can bring. Um, so it shouldn't stop at the fact that I haven't gotten a job working for a financial institution, so therefore I don't have any financial experience or analyzation in my background, and I'm trying to, trying to get my foot in the door so I can get it here. Go to, go to a nonprofit, go somewhere to get the experience. Um, I just, I just, I can't highlight it enough because the people are doing it right now. If you haven't done it, maybe you just didn't know about it, right? It's, it's okay. But now that you know about it and you know better, you do better. Go get that on your resume and, um, get that experience that's necessary to make you more marketable. If you don't want to and you think it's too much work, then, you know, that's, that's another, okay? But there's, there's opportunities out there available for you to gain that experience even though you haven't professionally and, you know, worked for an organization that, uh, that gave you the chance to operate and utilize those tools and skills.

And, you know, one of the reasons why, and one of the many reasons why I feel like a data analyst is the one of the best roles for career changers can transition to transition into, is because people do data analysis all the time, no matter what your role is. Unlike software engineering or like, like those stuff, like there was a lot of other tech, like site, like, you know, you can't really say, yeah, I've been doing cybersecurity while I was, you know, working the front desk. No, you weren't, right? But if you got spreadsheets, you've been tracking stuff, you can extract. You gotta sit down, right? If you're doing this by yourself, you gotta sit down and just be able to literally think about what are the data analysis tasks that are responsibilities that's being asked for, and really think about times where, hmm, I've actually done that. Not with Tableau or SQL, but I've actually done that.

Mm-hmm.

And just do that. It's not, it's not, it's not one of those, it's not one of those things that's gonna take like a minute. Like, that's one of those exercises that's gonna take like, you know, 30 minutes, 30 minutes for a day, for like a few days. And then you realize you have more experience than you think. But on top of that, again, go to a nonprofit right now after this call and get some additional experience while you're in the job market. All right. And I think that that'll answer Donnelly's question as well, Right? If you're talking about cashier, helper clerk, physical therapy aide, like, you can definitely do all those things. All right, all right. So Miss Fox— Miss Flax says, uh, thoughts on having a core competency section? Um, what is that? Any different than skills and certifications, or are those like maybe like specialties? Um, what are your thoughts on that?

I don't In my opinion, there is there's nothing bad about having a core competencies section. Just make sure you have the rest of this stuff. And so I do I I do have it up right now, Kadisha. So I believe I could probably show my screen and then I can show that modern just example of a resume. Give me a second. Let me see present.

Okay, I'm gonna remove myself from the stage. Listen, this is the most— listen, folks are still— folks are still flooding in, man. You, you, you— folks still here. You, you draw a crowd, Pedro. Folks are here to see you.

Okay, can you see my screen?

Uh, all right, I'm about to add to the stage. Okay, let me see if, uh— okay, perfect. So this is—

there you go—

the modern resume. And if you can zoom in just a little bit.

Sure. Yeah.

And all right, let's talk through it.

So look, a good amount of your, your question you asked me that sparked this was professional summary. How much information or how big should it be, right? Well, here you go. 2 to 4 lines. Okay. There's an example right there. Now, this is just 2 to 4 lines of key skills, kind of roles, You could add a little bit more to this. This is just a basic example, but a professional summary doesn't need to be a whole nother port— like a whole nother capture of every single thing in your experience. Just needs to be what you see on the screen.

Okay, very, very clean. Um, I like the idea of a professional summary as well, and even like a core competencies, because You know, especially for folks who put like, you know, 20 bullets or 20, you know, skills, but like, what, what do you do well a little bit more than the others? So like, for me, I'm always going to say data storytelling, data visualization, and stuff like that, because I do that more above the rest than just a lot of the general skills that I have, especially like the T-skill type of thing, right? When you talk about the T-skill. Mm-hmm. Anyone knows what that means. Whatever that— those ones that you specialize in more than the general ones, you definitely want to highlight those so you don't look like the generic vanilla analyst that everyone else looks like. Um, but this looks like— this looks very clean. Looks nice. This reminds me actually of, uh, like a consulting, um, those consulting, uh, company resumes you have to use. This looks good.

All right, I think— am I the one scrolling up and down, or is this you? Did I give you—

No, that's you. It's your screen.

All right, so here, technical skills, right? And, and I knew there was something I was missing out when it said languages, right? There was a language earlier. It was talking about English fluent. Cool. Well, um, I was trying to think about it, and I was like, I'm not gonna waste everybody's time. This is what languages should really mean on your resume. Right? What languages are you proficient in? Python, JavaScript, those things. Frameworks and libraries. I mean, tools and products, right? Tools and products.

Perfect. Not, not team player, not a good listener. All right, this is not— this ain't a dating app. Nope.

And professional experience, look, those 3 bullets there, but it's to give you pretty much an example of like, okay, what should I put in here? And look, there's the, there's the word. Kadeesha said it— impact.

Impact. Perfect.

And so the other ones, you know, this second one right here talking about using the STAR So using STAR is more than just utilizing it inside the conversation in an interview. It's also utilizing it on your resume. And so you can actually translate those items into the bullets. Then we got education, month and year. That's a, that's a choice. Recommendation for me, I wouldn't put on there, but don't worry about it. It's a degree, it's a GPA, it's your, uh, your field. Just make sure you put that information: university, where it's located at, what you studied, and then, you know, GPA and other pieces. Certifications. I love what you said earlier in our call, Kedisha, about certifications, the difference between a certificate and a certification. And then down the bottom we have projects, right? You see GitHub. And then here it is, this big one down here, volunteer leadership, right? This structure and this right here, this is a pretty simple format to follow. And the biggest plus about this is it will streamline what you do for your— there you go, see? Oh, Peter, hey, he jumped back in. Good. hurt you more than help you from his experience. And I agree with him, okay? But this resume, this template right here, streamlined, it's easy to read, it keeps everything in a steady flow of telling your story, right? And that's what you want when you turn in a resume. Now, if you're turning in a resume for an executive position, where there are different formats to utilize for executive resumes or a CV, right? But for a standard modern resume, this is just a suggestion. You can do it with whatever you want, right? And we can share this and, you know, send it in an email, whatever. I could turn it into a Word doc for you. You can add your own flavor and touch to it. You could see— you could message me. We can jump on another call some other time. It doesn't matter. But this right here, standardized modern format, easy to read. If it's easy for me to follow through all the key elements and the impact places that I want to see about your skills and experience, and you label it this way, when I then deliver it through a submission to a hiring manager and I'm giving them resumes just like this, if it's easy for me, it's going to be easier for them because now I can input in the bullet where to find this information and they'll go right to that section and they'll find it. And it just, it makes the process very seamless. So this is the modern, modern, uh, resume template format.

Perfect, perfect. And then I also want to remind folks, like, hiring is expensive and it's risky. Uh, it's risky on the companies. So when Pedro was talking about when we were looking at the first resume, he's like, there's just so much question— so many questions, right? So many questions. You want to position your resume, position your LinkedIn, whatever it is, your portfolio, so you reduce the risk where people are like, okay, yeah, like you want to invoke that type of trust. And if you're, if you're just provoked, or you're, I guess, providing or invoke— it invokes more questions than answers, then it's not going to move forward. Um, Tao had a good question about putting the, uh, the GPA on, on your resume. I know for me personally, I, I did not have a 3.0 in college. So I, I would never put mine on there. But for Teo asking, that's a good question. Like, you know, graduated, you know, 10 or so years ago, is a GPA as important as, say, like a new— for a new, a new graduate that just got, you know?

No. And so like I said earlier, it's kind of— it's optional for, for a professional who sends me their resume and they're going to interview for a job that I'm going to help them with, right? If I know that the hiring team and the hiring manager looking at the resume is also wanting to know your GPA, if it's not on there, I will let you know. But if I also know that this person, it's not— it doesn't matter to them, they're just looking at like, do you have— is your degree in a relevant field that may associate with the needs of this role? And you have your GPA on there, if you like it, cool. If not, I'll be like, look, don't even put it on there, just take that off. Just school, field of study, good, we're moving on. So that's also the, the, a benefit of working with a recruiting firm or staffing organization because they can help guide you when delivering that resume by you just submitting it into a portal like an Easy Apply on LinkedIn or to the, to the company's direct website. It's just always good, good to get feedback prior to submitting the resume. But no, that's a great question though.

Perfect. Rosemary asks, is it okay to tell these nonprofits that you're just gaining experience and are starting as a data analyst? I personally would not be presenting myself as someone who is like, again, when you don't want a position. Okay, so here's the thing, right? MBA programs, just like I said before, these graduate programs, real— they connect with local, uh, companies, you know, in that local area and have students do consulting projects. My very first semester at Emory for my MBA, we did a consulting project in marketing, and that's the first time we all learned marketing professionally, like academically. So don't position yourself as someone who is like— has like no experience. Right? Even though it's going to be free, you don't want to position yourself like that. Just like if you're transitioning in, you don't want to position yourself as like you don't have experience in general, right? Definitely don't position yourself like that. But just, you know, like say you want to provide some consulting, um, uh, don't just say you're— like I said, don't, don't come off as like, you know, uh, you know, I'm, I'm just learning here, you know, give me your data. So you're like, no one's gonna— no one's gonna do that.

Yeah, don't do that.

Okay. Yeah. Can we include internships? Of course, right? We should.

Kobe did it.

Yeah, Kobe did do that.

Yeah,

Kobe has some great— Kobe has some great experience. She had volunteer experience on there. Some of that volunteer experience looked better than some of y'all's professional experience. Let's be real. Okay. Let's be real. Um, all right, listen, we're getting— we're over time. We're almost at 90 minutes. Um, like I said, we probably got to do a part 2. Uh, we didn't get through a lot of them. Um, all right, uh, let's see any more questions coming in. Let me just address this. Listen, great session. I just want to say Kobe carried by Shaq. Gasol is a better name. Listen, Naeem— Naeem's probably the biggest hater Okay, listen, I want everybody to connect with Naeem and, and just DM him hater. Okay, just DM him. He's the biggest hater around here. Okay, Kobe's— anything Kobe slander will not be tolerated here. Um, okay, so yeah, we're— listen, we're over time again. Obviously Pedro is everyone's favorite technical recruiter. Um, we gotta get a roundtable discussion It's coming up soon. Um, but otherwise, like, again, let's, um, any last kind of final words, um, Pedro, as far as, uh, you know, what you saw? I know I shared also the deck before, like, you've seen the resumes, like, yeah, any kind of final words or discussion?

Um, there's a lot of people out here to to help guide you and mentor you when you're putting your resume together. There's also a lot of tools that are available that you don't have to pay for to be able to put your resume together. Um, now you take that for what it's worth, right? Um, I'm not even saying I'm the expert, and I don't believe I am. I just— I'm running through the, the data gathering that I've been doing with resumes that I've been reviewing and the ones that I have seen be successful when being delivered to a hiring manager and for candidates who've actually landed a job offer and accepted, right? That's, that's what a lot of I've been sharing today on this call. Every, every hiring team and everybody has their own flavor of how they like resumes. But the benefit, as I mentioned earlier, of working with an organization like a staffing or recruiting agency is that they have those relationships already set. And so in a good amount of time, when they see your resume, they can help provide feedback, constructive feedback to you to let you know where your resume sits as is at that point, right? And take everything as it comes when somebody's giving you advice and just know it's coming from a good place. I appreciate this session. I wish that before I was submitting a resume, and I've shared this at other times, I was a person that was submitting one style of a resume, had a lot of what I felt was impact on there, but it was a lot of good teammate, right, and all those other pieces. And I, number one, I wish I had somebody who took the time to show me, but then I also wish that I was the professional that realized that I needed to improve, uh, the way I was trying to show— showcase my skills to an organization. Instead of having them read through the lines, I should have made the story very clear. So from tonight, just know there's a lot of tools and products that are available to help you build your resume effectively. Seek some mentorship. I'm available. You want to utilize, you know, send me a message, let me know. We'll jump on a call. We'll look at your resume, give you some feedback. If you think it's great, awesome. If you think it sucks, well then, hey, to each their own, right? But I appreciate Kedisha for bringing me on tonight and If we can get the roundtable together, I'm gonna look at bringing some other people, get some different perspectives, which might be the most beneficial part of seeing different eyes and hearing it from a few people. But then at that time, if everybody's saying the same thing, guess what that means? That means it's true.

Yeah, like I said, LinkedIn needs more, needs more voices from the recruiters and hiring managers. It's, it's, it's not enough of that. It's way too much of ICs and ICs who are just not as connected honestly with the hiring, like the job market process. Like if you're like a big creator, you are not applying and going through the hiring process like the normal, like everyone else. And so you don't really have content to really help everyone else to do that. So we definitely need more of this. Yeah, we definitely need to get a roundtable discussion. I I would love to. I've been thinking about it. Like, I would love to have like a roundtable discussion, like, you know, once a month or something like that. Like, that'd be great.

Oh, that would be real good. Yeah.

Okay. All right, listen, good stuff. Again, we probably gotta do another, another one of these coming up. Um, again, please, like last time, if you guys reach out to Pedro, please attach a message. Okay? I would encourage you to do it on your laptop because it's kind of hard to do it from your phone. And say, hey Pedro, I love listening to you. Heard you on, you know, the webinar tonight. You know, this insight just blew my mind. Or hey, I'd love to, you know, see your— that, that resume template that you had, whatever it is. Uh, or hey, I've been on the job hunt for a while. I know there are several veterans on this call. You know who you are. Go talk to Pedro. Okay. All right, so just, just do that, but just please make sure it's a personalized, you know, note. Don't just, don't just send a connection request and, and do nothing, um, with nothing attached. Um, but all right, uh, listen, great call. You know, we went over about 30 minutes, but I think that was great, right? I think it was great. It was a great, great, great, great call. So I know everyone got some really great value. Um, it's gonna be a great, um, If you didn't take notes, definitely catch the recording, definitely preferably on YouTube. It's kind of hard to do that on LinkedIn. But listen, otherwise, I'm glad y'all, you know, hung out with us tonight, and we'll see y'all next time.