back to the basics (solo show)

full transcript

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to guidance counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had guidance counselors in middle school. We had guidance counselors in high school, but we didn't really have guidance counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vacovac.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at tdsintdessey. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. So let's go back to the basics here. So again, thanks for your opportunity this morning for guidance counselor 2.0 back to the basics. So during the holiday season, I do get a little sentimental. I do want to go back to the basics because let's face it, a lot of people use this time to edit their resume, get their LinkedIn updated, write down their accomplishments, maybe start looking for jobs after the new year.

And so I always try to go a little back to the basics here. And so the first thing I want to talk about today when it comes to go back to the basics is your resume. Now, I always go back to this, right? Resume and LinkedIn, these are your building blocks for your job search. Your resume and your LinkedIn, if there is one area or one piece of paper or one website that you should be relatively OCD about, it's your resume and your LinkedIn because those are the two things that will help you find a job on top of networking. And so I want to Erica Christmas decorations and music begins on Black Friday.

However, Christmas Hallmark moves the play now. I see what you did the Erica. I love the strategy on that. Narayan notes. Great. See a big dog. Weight on music. So after Thanksgiving, lights, maybe Thanksgiving just cause a lot of weekend. I love that. I'm going to make notes and when do we need a cheat seat just saying yes, yes, we do a cheat seat. So yeah, resume and LinkedIn. LinkedIn, right? We've talked about all the time. I talk about this all the time. If you've listened to me in any way, shape, form over the last few months, years, I say the same thing. Your LinkedIn is your primary place for you to be discovered on the internet, right?

And so your LinkedIn needs to be now. In my opinion, in my opinion, now people will fight me on this and that's okay. That's okay. I'm in shape. I weighed in the lightest I was. I've weighed in the lightest I was since July last week. So I'll fight you. Your LinkedIn should be a summary. I don't go to your LinkedIn and I don't want to see like your entire work, your entire work history in major detail on LinkedIn. I go to LinkedIn to see three or four bullet points of what you did, et cetera. And you and I move on, right? Now your resume needs to be a more long form content.

I had this question on TikTok right now from this is Raphael. It's great to see you. Thanks for hanging out with us this morning. Any tips on searching for a second job. If you already have a first job and you want to leave the first job, again, my, again, my major tips is to DM people on LinkedIn and try to have a conversation. Now if you're trying to side hustle for your next job, again, second job, all it is about networking, that's all this dang things about is just networking. So, so this is Raphael. I would say get on LinkedIn, start to network, start to connect with people because that is what's going to do it.

Let's see here. Kaling comes in here. Good morning. I say witches are Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko is fantastic. I'm a big fan of Sabrina on Netflix. That was great as well. Julia, it's great to see you buddy. It's been a minute. Yes, Jeff, good morning, fellow nerds. So for those of you for so Jeff's comment, I'm going to get some more content here in a second. It's just good to hang out with you all this morning. But Jeff brought up this. So my team has a Discord channel where we post our jobs and we're building community. If you want to be a part of that, I'd love to have you a part of it.

I'll drop the link in the comments after the show. So if you need to check out, but we'd love to have you part of it. That is what his comment was for with Good Morning, fellow nerd because we call ourselves a nerd, which is the national engineering remote division. John comes in. Link has got me two jobs and 95% of my interviews. Look at this. Listen, I am not paying John to say this. I'm not paying to him to say this, but this is it. John says LinkedIn has gotten me two jobs and 95% of my interviews. I don't apply anymore because of LinkedIn. I love that so much.

Josh, your guys house two point episode with Alicia on resume tree. That was fantastic. I definitely updated mine. Yeah, for those of you did not know what I'm talking to what Josh is talking about. It's all my YouTube. Alicia Novin is a, now he got promoted recently at Microsoft. I think he's like a senior product manager or some sort of manager or product people now. I'm sure if he watches this, he'll correct me. But he and I are doing another resume tree. This week, this Friday actually, and I need to post about it. This Friday, we're doing another resume tree. So you need to make sure that you can hang out with us.

And then Nate, it's great to see you buddy. It's really, really good to see you Nate and I had a great conversation this past weekend. And then Allison, it's great to see you as well. Bridget comes in and goes, if you don't have more details, key terms on LinkedIn, you're, do you miss your, you, do you miss out of being, yeah. I mean, here's the deal. Bridget asks a great question. If you don't have more details, key terms on LinkedIn profile, do you miss out? Yes, you 100% miss out. So again, right? People go on LinkedIn more in my opinion than they do on the job sites.

Now you need to have it both ways. But in my perspective, your LinkedIn needs to have your LinkedIn needs to have as many buzzwords as you feasibly can put in it. Because if not, you're going to miss out. What are buzzwords? Buzzwords are key terms your industry uses consistently in job descriptions, et cetera. If you do not know what your buzzwords are for your industry, Google your job and find job descriptions and then incorporate the common phrases and buzzwords in job descriptions in your resume, if that makes sense. So again, resume LinkedIn needs to go first. Your resume needs to be more of a complete work history.

Right. Now again, I, where I'm doing this resume triage on Friday, your resume really needs to stand out in eight seconds. Right. It was fascinating. So my wife recently did an interview for a huge tech company because she's a commercial photographer and she'd never written a resume. She said, Taylor, I need you help. Pardon you, resume. It's a great, let's do it. I sent her my resume and tell him what she wrote it. And she told me she goes, this is really simple. Are you sure it's going to work? I said, absolutely trust me. Funny enough story, true story. She had to interview with the recruiter for this opportunity.

And the recruiter goes, you have a fantastic resume. It's super simple. And I, and she goes like, thank you, my husband's a recruiter as well. And here's what's fascinating. I've never heard this before and I want to share this. So this recruiter was a creative recruiter. So recruited photographers, videographers, designers, et cetera. You know what this person said? And I, I've never heard this. And I think this is, this is an amazing, amazing insight into why you need to keep your resume simple. Because this creative recruiter said, if you start to be creative on your resume and it's not simple, especially if you're applying for a creative job, those creatives will start to pick apart why you did a certain color scheme or why you did a certain font.

And what it does, they're going to start picking apart your resumes creative instead of actually looking at the content on your resume. So it's incredibly important to make sure your resume is super simple. Because you don't want to, if you're especially if you're creative or a designer, you don't want to be disqualified because of maybe a design choice that you didn't even think about or that you can't even explain. Right. So keep your resume super simple. It means it really, really pays off. I love this from Lauren right here. Says LinkedIn is, is like your baseball card. Absolutely. Right. You get your baseball card. You look at your key terms and then you move on or look at your key stats and move on.

I love that Kevin. It's great to see this morning. So all right. So resume LinkedIn top two most important things. Next what I would do is start messaging recruiters. So LinkedIn resume recruiters. I would start messaging recruiters and get critiques from recruiters for your resume LinkedIn. Right. I talk about it all the time, especially junior devs, people in the industry, jumping to a new industry, especially in tech. The biggest question I get is, well, can recruiters help me, even though I'm junior? Yes, they can. And you know how you ask them, Hey, can you give me one piece of advice from my resume, one piece of my advice for my LinkedIn?

If you do that 10, 15 times, you're going to have a really, really, really well written resume LinkedIn for free. So take advice for those. The next thing what I would do is after you have your resume, your LinkedIn and recruiters, the next thing to do is start to message, start to network with people at companies you've always wanted to work for on LinkedIn. Again, send a DM three parts of a DM, admiration, flattery, specific time and specific, specific time and specific question. Right. If you do those four things, resume LinkedIn, talk to recruiters. To get to get better interviewing, to improve your LinkedIn, to include your resume and then message people on LinkedIn.

What are all those not having come or what are those? What like, what's different about that list? There is no applying for a job period. So incredibly important there. I want to give a few more shout outs. Alivana, it's great to see you. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, Nate, you got to get on that stream yard, dude. You got to get on that stream yard. Josh comes in, recruiters are great for advice on resumes and so much of the job search and how to make you stand out. Yeah. Again, you can pick recruiters brains tremendously. And then Lauren comes in and share my job and I'll give you three pieces of advice for free.

Listen, there's a lot of advice your recruiters need amplification. So if you start sharing their jobs, listen, they'll, they'll give you some love. All right. So that's it for today. Partly because I have dad duty this morning, my wife's a dog's appointment and my, my daughter's getting a little angry at the moment. So that's it for today. I appreciate y'all hanging out with me again, four tips back to the basis. And we'll dive into these more over the next few weeks. Resume LinkedIn, BOCD, be obsessed, get the key terms, look up job descriptions for the job that you want and corporate those buzz terms. If you can, within your resume, your LinkedIn three, message recruiters, talk to recruiters, get pieces of advice on your resume, LinkedIn, et cetera, make those really good.

And then the four things start to DM and message people at companies you've always wanted to work for. Listen, that's it for me today. I appreciate it. Hopefully you got something. If you did, please share it. I'm going to go hang out with my daughter now. Hopefully I have a wonderful Halloween and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful because you know why. There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store.

I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T-Dasting on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.