how to write a resume that doesn't suck (solo show)

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All right, so let's talk about how to write a resume. Let's go and dive in this morning again I'd be able to question this please ask them. I'm gonna go and share my screen and again So here's here's here's what's great about Resume help doing didn't help everybody has a different opinion, right? So like literally you could shot my opinion around and like, you know, Dan may disagree with some of the stuff I say right and that's okay But so what I would do is like when it comes to resume writing I would definitely like work with people in your industry That had been in your industry.

I think kind of a blanket richy. It's good to see you buddy always You know, I see a lot of resume writers out there and that that say they're a resume writer and What they do is they have this stock template and typically every single resume writing service that I've seen is not good They typically put way too many words in the mix. It is just a wall of text So my recommendation to you is if you want to go out and find somebody a resume writer to help you with this I Would recommend finding somebody in your industry, you know, I don't publicize this a ton But I do do resume reviews LinkedIn reviews and kind of some career coaches of your interest that DM me But I'm really good in the software space right now I have helped my dad in the restaurant industry writer really good resume Did you get the job because of the resume?

I don't know you got the job because he networked way I told him network, but the resume didn't help so I would highly recommend to find folks in your industry So if you're a software developer and need the arrest may written you don't want to use me I would find a resume writer who specifically has deep experience writing software engineering resume because it's they they need to know what the higher managers look for so That's kind of my rant around resume writing services. Be careful with them It's usually kind of a quick way for folks to make money and you technically really need to be qualified So all right, I'm gonna go and share my screen first and foremost this morning and we're gonna go into so we talked about this briefly yesterday But I do want to dive into it again, so I'm gonna pull it up right now You guys good to see you this morning my friend great see this morning all right, so let's let's go resume So first off make sure You leverage the header for your name and contact information listen both some of you all Just not Robin.

I don't know who that is, but just be on the lookout and be on the lookout for that And then you'd go it's good to see you so make sure you leverage the header portion, right? I there's so many resumes that I see day and day out that like kind of don't use this part up here and like start start the resume like Like start the resume stuff down here and it takes up Room right you really want to keep your information up at the top Keep it clean keep it short. Don't have big bullet points because I want to get as much information on the first page as Humilly possible a lot of y'all do like y'all's names like like a good gazillion point font, right?

Like I mean, I'm telling you some some of y'all are here like this and then literally you do like I'm not kidding me. It's like 30 font like that. Listen like I don't Need that like I don't like I don't need your name does not need to take up that much information Again, I think 14 16 point font. I know there's different theories around this But like keep it short also to a lot of people ask me it's like I wouldn't even include your phone number or somebody Post on TikTok. I'm doing this on LinkedIn live so head over my LinkedIn live my link is on my page So head over my LinkedIn watch something live or YouTube or Twitter pretty much anything by TikTok TikTok doesn't really go to your inner grid.

I I would personally just do email unless you want to get blown up with calls For me I do much better if I can like track everything like in a single like way So like if I'm getting calls for a job and like and I get flustered sometimes I don't do the best at like recovering So what I would do is I would just put your email and have everything kind of come through your email another thing that I would do to is I'll let's see here So honestly, I would just do this if you do have a link, you know, maybe maybe a GitHub link Or LinkedIn link right here right I would say keep it simple like that very very simple and And then we can again just keep it keep it super super simple Let's see here.

I'm guilty yet good morning. It's good to see you. I'm guilty of using 36. Yeah, you don't listen But like you don't need to scream at me right you don't you don't need to scream at me at all A Google voice networks also a great way to have your friend. I love that love that as well My name and number the footer, but I hate it. I wouldn't put in the footer Chris I would put it on on just the top right here, right? I think put it in the header Next thing that moving on that talk about yesterday professional summary and then professional experience like in my mind And also some of y'all just get crazy with bolds like you don't need a ton of bold text around here I would just use bold to break up kind of the I would break up the portions using both texts so the professional summary experience I would use this experience to basically outline your career As it relates to the job you're submitting to so a lot of people like I use you should change your resume for every single job Listen the feasibility of that is really it is like almost not existed right?

It's almost impossible to change your resume for every job You post but for the professional summary experience if your professional summary lines up to what I'm needing in my job I'm not even gonna read the rest of your resume I'm gonna call you immediately right so I took this example yesterday from a job description They're basically looking for back-end Python engineering role so I just made this up obviously Let's say I have eight years of back-end experiences This this position needed Python development at least four years why I have six years of Python Then they were looking for solid Django experience Let's just say I had two years of Django and they were looking for automated testing platforms So I said hey, I have four years of automated testing platform So again, what I would do right here is is for every job that you submit to change the professional summary As it relates to your career and the must-habs are required in the job you're submitting to The where I pulled this from and Dan can attest to this when we Were when we recruit and we submit to hiring managers We literally all hiring majors want to know is how many years of experience do you have with the required skills?

Right, so if you can just jump that and just put that in your resume That's gonna make you have the call back way more than not Who but comes in here? Do you think this including link tree? I mean you can but here's the deal man if if I'm looking at your resume I'm not really gonna necessarily look. I'm not really necessarily gonna look for like you to click on like If I'm looking at your resume, I'm not looking at all your socials, right? If anything, I would include your GitHub and or your LinkedIn I think link tree is overkill But I don't think it's gonna dock you by any means.

I would just I would be careful to not put a ton of links in your resume I don't know if this is true, but I know a lot of times it doesn't do well in the ATS kind of reading if there's a bunch of links Of course you are Kelly. We are the same human being. Please stop copying me. That would be great. All right, so And then let's dive into Professional summary of professional experience. So again, right. This is not the end all be all but the way I would write your job is company Tab over Month year month Year right for starting end date right always include month year not just year.

I would put your title here and then If I mean back in the day We used to put city state, but now that everything's remote I would just locate if it's remote here or if you are local to that and have to go in town. I would put Obviously national Tennessee and or the city You live in all right, so let's let's move on to the next bullet point of what I'd like to see right? so the first bullet point is Give give me a overview of what the company does mainly around revenue and or Give me some sort of idea of how big or important Accompany is right so again if if you're not working for a fang or Google or if you're not working for a fang company Most people probably don't know what it is right so for example my last company Beiko Right where we were a billion dollar staffing organization right like that those are big numbers right that is not That is not a startup staffing company with mom and pop numbers right that is a huge enterprise environment and that looks that looks good on paper because I have worked in a You know, high performing, you know enterprise A billion dollar organization that brings a little cloud.

Okay. This person has been there. Yada Yada right so given over you what the company does Like as recruiters a lot of times we are given requirements like hey we really need this person to have health care experience right well if you just put your company The company name and you don't describe what the company does I'm not going to Google your company if I'm looking at your resume So if this if it's a health care startup say I'm working for a health care startup That's trying to solve xyz so that way if I'm a recruiter And I'm looking to develop her with health care experience.

I can find it right Again incredibly important the next thing I would do is give me an overview of why you were hired and what your main responsibility Is right so like for me like what what what I Yeah, exactly Stephen comes here don't assume people know about the company working at yeah 100% again Right like if I'm looking for software developer with health care experience and you don't include that the company you're working for as a health care company I could maybe look over your resume right again like you need to have all this stuff, you know in front of you um so So

obviously and then give me an overview right like hey, you know here's the overview of the company I was specifically hired to come in You know, let's just say gun IO use me for example I was specifically brought in to help grow content community and drive revenue back to the business Right so again I'll give you an overview of what gun IO is we're a talent marketplace Where we have our own platform that we have built to help connect hiring managers and developers faster my second bullet point would be I was brought on to do xyz and then the the rest of the bullet points

needs to be so start each sentence uh Senate slash bullet point With an action verb right so i e managed uh ran um created um you know uh led Lead led right so like again i i i need like i did this right lead You know uh lead You know lead initiatives to start virtual meetups for gun IO right like need to have action verbs I need to know exactly what you've done right um next thing what i do as well is um uh also When you are writing out bullet points Give me quite a pay the things that you've done Now this is going

to require you To uh to maybe do some day Right so like i've talked with a few developers what up trade it's good to see a buddy um i've talked with a few developers like tailor i don't know how to find like how many users use the application i'm working on or i don't know how much revenue that my application i'm working on is driving well ask somebody right and and and and and and just casual stuff right like like legitimately like just asked like ask your product owner ask your manager like hey i'm just curious like i've been doing some thinking because i mean

listen you can't if you go to them like hey i'm rewriting my resume how much revenue does our app make you know that's obviously going to trigger some some red flies with a hiring manager right so i would just say hey i've been just doing i've just been curious like how many users or how much revenue does this app that i'm working on you know drive or something like that so again do some digging um also too like uh one of the biggest issues i see is like it's just a wall of text um i would try to again this is again this is this

is just my two cents people may disagree um uh i i would really i would really try to keep each bullet point like in line uh aka just like one sentence right i i i i think it's a lot cleaner if like you can just read it and if you have like multiple bullet points where it's like two to three sentences under the bullet point it gets a little wordy challenge yourself to to keep it one sentence on like a single line and be as quantitative as possible i think that's a really good role if you can write specifically what you've done in one bullet

point and it's quantitative is to the point that is going to be way more effective than three bullet points have just worded by it right um another thing i would add to especially from a development perspective so um don't don't don't give me tasks give me you know again give me specific things that you've done so instead of saying hey i've built i've built up uh you know i was a part of a team that builds a platform using react right that tells me about what you've done what i would say is um uh i work on a um 10 person team creating a highly

scalable sass application uh driving one million in revenue and my responsibility was specifically using react to implement a lot of a lot of a lot of right like get quantitative a lot of folks right resumes it's just like it it it's it's so broad right like you don't talk about yourself talk about the team you're on and that's just going to hurt you um can ray can you teach me how to use chat gpt don't use chat gpt to build your resume i'm just gonna say that right now or do i don't know i don't care uh Dan brings up a really interesting thing i

have never thought about assuming most emails and resumes are being first consumed on a cell phone it's estimated that 50 60% of email opens come from mobile devices and okay i didn't even think about this so Dan thank you for bringing this up again i mean keep it short keep it concise if you have a wall of texting your resume and i'm trying to open it on mobile i'm going to delete it immediately right if you're looking at this resume right now this resume is a lot more consumable on mobile than i would imagine than most of y'all's resumes with like long long paragraph text

right um joining comes in here if you're a contractor in the contract renews with a different company but you're still working in the same position a new company how would you put that um uh let's let let's see um if you yeah so Dan comes in here says so no block of text 100% i am sure dancing this constantly a lot of y'all just write paragraphs like bullet points bullet points is key um uh let's see here just want to go back here so if you're a contractor the contractor renews with a different company we're still in a same way so what i would do

Jordan in this instance so i would put company uh there's there's many different ways to do this right so let's let's do um so let's say this was one position right here right so let's do all right so let's say you work at so let's just say let's say let's say gun i know it's a software consulting company right and then let's just say you know i started july 2023 that i'm still here right so what i would do is i would do like if you're a consulting company i would do like a project um xyz and then what i would do is then i

would tab over now would do start end date right here and then i would do you know x xyz i did this you did that and then i would do project a bc start end right so so so so what it does and what i would do is i would bolt gun right here and then not bolt these so so the users eyes don't take you have multiple positions and then and that way i can say all right gun gun.io tailors work there for the last year and then project a bc lasted six months project xyz lasted three months and then that way um you

know you can easily easily read it i would see here um Christina yes absolutely need a personal brand things after your team yeah i get don't talk about your team what your team did talk about what you did uh no weird columns yeah i mean i mean kelly and i've done a talk kind of a general talk on this uh check out my youtube um because uh we talked about it on my youtube uh kelly and i presented about this i connect tech last year um but yeah no weird columns i don't know who's out here teaching kind of the column thing but it's just

it's just a wall of text again going back to dan it's just another block of text uh quick hit bullet points um recruiters are lazy give us enough uh and give us just enough to want to keep reading yeah 100% quick hit bullet points recruiters are lazy i understand you know exactly what you do immediately um let's see here join the rise if it's for one of the client i would list a single position of kelly at 100% kelly in here make it clear this is a consulting gig in the description though easier the higher major to see yeah 100% it's like what i would

do is like you know so again gun i oh um you know i would do right here um you know gun i oh is a software consulting company um servicing um health care clients right um and then what i would do is i would do project this or or if this is a contract roll right so let's do this down here um so let's just say this is another roll down here what i would do here is um if it's a contract position i would do contract like that that is that is what i would do there um is it true uh see here is

it oh my stream yard's not working that's kind of weird i can't pull up your i can't flip your comment um dan dan i can't pull up your comment is it true that a lot of large companies are using software now to scan resumes uh i mean here's the deal dan i mean there you can a lot of companies at yeses and i've never worked internal so like somebody can correct me if i'm wrong with this the ats is just people right it's literally just people looking at your resume i do believe that you can set some parameters in the ats to reject resumes based

off not enough key uh i have no idea what happens we back yeah yeah i've yeah literally stream your just went out on me be all there real there lost connection yeah yeah i could please comment please comment yeah stream your religious item you have no idea what happened are we back we're back now okay all right that was crazy i have no idea what happened there that was that was wild it literally just stopped on me um all right so i have a call here in and in three minutes um but to recap let me so i'm going to go back and share my

screen real quick so again to recap y'all let's not kill it with bullet points keep it very simple thought a lot of quick hits try to keep your bullet points like in a single line to to hold your accountable to not ramble always put month in a year for start if you're in a position where there's multiple projects set it up like this um let's see here the end comes in here goes you can reject resumes usually based on knock-off questions most ats have zero functionality reject based on resume okay all right awesome there you go awesome cool sweet all right y'all i know that

was kind of random uh let me know if there's any questions we got two minutes left let me know there's any questions um but i would say that's it at a super high level when it comes to um what's a smallest font size i mean here's the deal right i mean this is this is ten and a half i mean i don't know i probably wouldn't go i wouldn't go smaller than maybe ten and a half again this maybe yeah i mean this is this is ten and a half i probably wouldn't go any small i mean maybe if you want to ten to maybe

fit a little bit more on your page but you know again keep a like like like this like this for a bottle fonts pretty good in my opinion so again just just be aware of how it comes across right um i'm glad this is helpful uh but if i send a pdf with two columns as a single would not work this i would not have a two column page flat it is a wall of text the problem i see and honestly i could do another resume with senior developers or senior engineering leaders because it just is kind of a mess um but when it comes

to a lot of leadership resumes a lot of y'all have just like a just a ton of words and there's no bullet points and it's just it's just a lot i will i will tell you this um i would just keep it i'd get rid of two columns it's okay to go over more than a a page especially if you're a leader in tech um and uh yeah that is that's what i would recommend how many pages do you recommend with all these details so i would say at most if you're a senior developer or senior engineering leader i would say three pages max is

probably the most you should do if you're like if you're if you're a junior to mid i would say like one to one and a half pages if you're senior i would say two pages and i would say if you're above senior around three pages there's there's there's no reason to go more than three pages and even then if you do three pages i'd probably only like go into the third page of that makes sense so all right y'all i got a call i appreciate y'all sorry about that that that that was crazy um that that it died hopefully you got something out of this

and uh i will see y'all in two days peace hey you did it you'll listen 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 finish 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

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