Ep. 9: Why Your Resume Never Sees the Light of Day

Career Design Podcast

Episode 9

00:00

I'm Lindsay Mustain, and this is the career design podcast made for driven ambitious square pegs and round holes type professionals who see things differently and challenge the status quo. We obliterate obstacles and unlock hidden pathways to overcome and succeed where others have not stagnation feels like death. And we are unwilling to compromise our integrity and settle for being average in any way. We are the backbone of any successful business and those who overlook our potential are doomed to a slow demise. We do work that truly matters aligns with our purpose, and in turn, we make our lasting mark on the world. We are the dreamers, doers, legends and visionaries who are called to make our most meaningful contribution and love what we do.

Lindsay 00:42

So today, we're gonna be talking about the five reasons why your resume never sees the light of day. And the first one is that we have missed the purpose of our resume. All right, so most of time, when we build a resume, it's like we spend all this time How many of you can understand this? You're slaving away, you've googled everything, you have some sort of template, maybe you bought one, maybe you found it on something, or maybe you're using your resume from college. This is usually the reasons that I see for people who are not having a lot of success in their resumes or with their resumes. But they spend all this time and labor and then they they all this effort, and they've spent hours like I asked somebody once one time how long they'd spent working on their resume, they're like more than 40 hours, which is an entire workweek people. Okay, here's the thing. Your resume is just paper. It's just a piece of paper. It is not who you are, you cannot. Because I was saying to my team this morning, you cannot expect it to go around shaking hands and kissing babies. All right, it is all about introducing you and what you have to offer. And you've got six seconds. That's it. Six seconds. That's all you have. Now, with someone like me, I've looked at over a million resumes. So I'm looking at it for like three seconds. And you're probably thinking well, do you have a chance to really qualify? And the answer is both Yes. And no. Yes, I can minimally qualify you because guess what? 75% of resumes that are applying online, they're complete crap. So I can immediately get off the garbage right away. The time where I'm spending more you know that average number is the average number is what I'm like, Ooh, this looks really good. Let's take a look at it. And then I'm sorting it into three piles, there is the Hell yeah, there's the maybe, maybe if the Hell yeah, as of grade. And then there's the No, no. And the majority of my effort is to get at least 75% of those into the no pile. And the reason why is that we have this easy Apply button. And everybody in their brother and their mother seems to apply for jobs, whether or not they're qualified or not. And that makes my work a lot more difficult. And so my job is to get to the best people. And as a recruiter, my true responsibility is just to minimize the amount of time a hiring manager has to spend making a decision about their right candidate. Listen to me what I just said, The job of my as a recruiter is for me to minimize the amount of time that a hiring manager is going to spend in the process of trying to interview the right candidate. So that means I'm not going to take a shot on people who are in the maybe pile likely, I'm only going to choose the very top few.

03:32

All right. Now we also know that a resume does not describe somebody in full. In fact, there are amazing resumes and crappy candidates, and there are crappy candidates and amazing resumes, but you know, who's going to get the advantage here, the one with the strong resume. So you've got to make sure that it passes the six second test. And you also need to understand that it is not like Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come that is not how it works. Okay, it does not magically manifest because you finished on your Word document, you're like, hell yeah, I got a great resume. It does nothing, okay.

04:09

In fact, what I teach my clients is that if you do this, all right, you should never have to use your resume. What is the point of a resume then? It is to understand how flipping awesome you are. That is what my goal of your resume is for you to understand what you have to offer. because believe it or not, this ethos, this reason, is never defined for every person who I ever worked with. They cannot say, here's what is most marketable about me, here's where my zone of genius is, here is what I'm going to create millions or billions in some cases of dollars for a company. Because of these skills. They don't say that. What they do is they list everything and this giant brain dump of everything you've ever done, including the stuff you hate, and they put on a resume and say okay, Here, here's everything. And then we push it across the table, the metaphorical table. This is the ABS system. And then we hope and pray. somebody sees value in it. Here's the deal, guys, most resume suck. They do, they just do, okay, and your resume, like when people love. I'll go on a whole other rant about this another day. But there's a whole other group of people who are writing resumes, who've actually never even hired somebody, or have been a recruiter, and have no idea how to actually be marketable. And so there's a lot of times where this misinformation around here means that you expect a certain outcome from your resume. And I'm going to tell you this is that's not how it works. Okay. So the first part is your resume has one purpose to get you the interview. That's it, just to get you the interview. Okay, you got six seconds, maybe three to six seconds to say yes or no. And that's it. So if a person is spending a bunch of time looking at resume and trying to find the information, how long do you think I'm going to spend looking for stuff? 1.25 seconds? No, that's it. Did you see that? That's how much you Okay, you spent 30 minutes applying online? No, because I can't even find anything on here. All right. So less is more. When we talk about your real estate. This is your resume, your professional real estate is your resume and your LinkedIn. Okay, your resume only is able to be accessed when you hand it over your LinkedIn is always accessible. But you have to be able to tell a story. So the thing that happens, the second part that goes wrong here is what I call basic. You missed. Okay, basic bpms is what I wrote my best selling book on seven critical resume mistakes to avoid,

06:43

Guys, 75% of resumes are missing a critical piece of information. In fact, I talked about this last week, and we tell it about works called this stupid mistakes. stupid mistakes, like I don't include my phone number, or I don't include my email, which is the most egregious mistake you can make in this process. Okay, they may have an objective statement. All right.

07:08

Thank you for dropping. And they may have references available upon request, they may have put it into a functional format. There's a whole bunch that can go wrong. If you want to learn more about that you check out my book, but you are including stuff that doesn't matter. Or you're including or not including stuff that does matter. Okay. So the first one is that you don't understand the purpose of your resume. And the second part is that you either omitted it omitted, omitted or included information that is not value added.

07:45

Okay. So this is where I'm going to go into the third thing. And we're why we're what my job is, is to discern the qualified from the unqualified, the qualified from the unqualified that is my job is to part the CS, okay, in that piece. And so a lot of times people come to me and they say, Ah, I'm either overqualified, or I am under qualified, okay. And this is where I want you to know, again, that I do not want you to apply to jobs if you are one of those people who are out there just applying to jobs. Because you need to collect your unemployment go apply for something that's really not like, like, go apply and get out of the way and move on. Okay, but don't spend a whole bunch of time applying for jobs that you're not qualified for. And making it difficult for everybody else. That is just my call to you to stop complicating it for recruiters and your fellow humans on this planet, okay. But when you are trying to, you're falling into this qualified or over under qualified or overqualified, the problem is not actually that you're overqualified, or under-qualified it is that you've opened over complicated the issue, okay. And what I mean by that is that most time when we say overqualified, that means you've listed 30 years of experience. Okay, you've underqualified by you've only included what functionally was applicable to the job which nobody's gonna hire you for, by the way, nobody, I've never ever once. I've been doing this, oh, my god. 20 years here.

09:15

I've never want somebody to go what I really love a functional resume format. No, you know, who will tell you that the unemployment agency and they have zero ability to actually get people hired, so I wouldn't listen to them at all. Okay. Nobody wants a functional format. You also have missed the part of taking what is transferable and awesome about you, and clearly communicating how it applies to the job. Okay. So we are I want you to know that. We talked a little bit about this today and my team that resumes they all traditionally look the same. There's a name on the top, there's usually some sort of summary at the very beginning, and then experience and education. That's typically the gist of it. So while they all look the same, we always talk about how do you make sure you show up the right way for the right job. Now I am not a big believer in applying for jobs because it has a success rate of getting you a job offer point 4% of the time. Okay. Let me repeat that to you, it has the success rate of giving you a job point 4% of the time, okay, now you can see why just about anything, including going banging on your neighbor's doors would actually be a better use of your time than applying online. I don't recommend that, by the way. I don't recommend that. Because what you really need is a strategy, okay. But in order, when you think about it you go to the movie theater, and you go and you buy a ticket. All the tickets look the same. But a ticket only works for one movie. It only works for one movie. And this is why you've got to be very specific about what movie you're going for, or what job. So this is where one resume does not cut it. I like to say one master resume absolutely does. But it's the same thing when you guys get those rejection notices, and they all say the same thing like you are overqualified. Or you get that we selected it doesn't say recall usually says thanks for No thanks. That's what we call it or the reject notice, which says thank you for applying online. At this point, we selected other candidates who are more qualified to move forward in the process, we welcome you to apply online, which is a nice way to say good luck. See you later, you're now okay. And what you need to do is you really need to tailor that resume in order to make sure it fits the job. Now ideally, you're not using this as an applying process, you're using it because you've cultivated the opportunity through another source of means. And if you have zero clues what that means this is where you're going to go into my profile. And you're going to click follow, because we are going to show you how to do that, okay. But you need to understand that your resume is not a size fits all, it has to be tailored. And then here is the fourth point, which is it needs to show scope and impact. We call this the metric-based resume. Alright, guys, this is where it's going to get uncomfortable for you.

12:05

And what I mean by that is that if you cannot demonstrate how you can either do two things, save money, or create revenue for a company. There's no way they will ever pay you more than minimum wage or the bare minimum of any job, because you are taskmaster please No, I say that from a place of love. But in this world of artificial intelligence, which let me just tell you artificial intelligence looks like a reoccurring calendar appointment, a recurring calendar appointment. And so when that this when you think about whether or not like filling out a report and sending it off, is that a value add? No, because it can be easily replaced. In fact, an intern can do that. Okay. So you need to figure out how you do one of two things, save money or create revenue. Those are the only two ways to create a high-caliber candidacy and increase your power position as the candidate of choice. This is where we win. I don't care. It's hard being unemployed. It's hard not being able to feed your family. Yes, it's hard. You've done hard things to get over it. You need to be able to specify whether or not you make money or whether or not you save it. If you cannot do that, then you will always always always be pushed to the very bottom, you will end up in the no pile. Okay, I say this from place to love because I had somebody fight me about this last week. And I'm like, they're like I'm a journalist. How many articles did you write? How many words did you write? How many impressions did you get? How many publications did you do? Like when you tell me you can't do that? Do you know what I hear you saying? I am too lazy to figure out my worth. Okay, well, I am too lazy to spend time trying to help you. Because that's not my job. My job is not to find you a job as a recruiter. My job is to help the hiring manager find the best person. It's not a job search soup kitchen, your recruiter is not invested in you. That's not what they built the Department for. Now. I have a whole bunch of reservations about that. Okay, so let me be really clear. Recruiting as a department is not a value-added department. Because most of the time what we do is say no. And we don't understand how to hire the best people. Okay, so we have a fundamental flaw in this. So I'm just telling you about the realities of what is happening right now. Yes. Do you remember the conversation with the journalists? Yes. Because it was and I told them this because it was important for me to stop diluting the truth. Stop deluding the truth because telling you falsehoods or softening around what I say is not helping you and yeah, it's gonna hurt. I'm telling you let me tell you the best thing I've ever got caused me to cry. Okay, it caused me to work constantly hurts. And then you know what is scabbed over and I'm stronger, okay, like bones that bit mends after being broken are stronger. The same thing you have to realize about yourself, okay, so these are the two things again, your resume cannot show whether or not you saved. You can either save money, which is also saving time that can be increased, or improving the process. But you have to figure this out. Okay. And the second part is how do you generate revenue? And this one people will be like,
15:13

I don't know, I don't, I don't have anything, okay, folks, if you don't have anything, and if you cannot figure it out, please don't listen to me anymore, because I can't help you. Okay, you're gonna have to go down to the remedial level. But if you're talking about somebody who's a senior, professional, and most the time, they can't understand this part yet, because it's not something that's been introduced to them. And that's okay. That's why I'm here, I'm trying to help folks understand what's marketable about you is whether or not you can create profit or savings, okay, it's not whether or not you can do a task. Because guess what, we can outsource that, we can hire somebody on Fiverr, we can get an intern who will be happy to be there. Okay, you have to show what your value is. And then when you become the thing that becomes the investment, I invest in this, because therefore I get a return. That is what changes your power position, and why people want to pay you more money and give you multiple job offers. because by then you have established your narrative. And that is the last part here, your narrative around your skillset is the most important thing that you can do. Okay? Because unless you understand your value, you cannot clearly communicate it to anyone else. Let me say that, again, if you do not understand what you have to offer when people come back, and they're like, oh, I don't know why I got that didn't get that job. And I'm like, what were you What would you tell him? Well, I wasn't really sure what I was going for, like, come on, like, if you don't understand how to market yourself, no one will ever buy, okay, no one will ever buy at a premium price. Okay, and this is why you see people who have the good who, and you know this, that is way less qualified than you way less intelligent than you. And they have higher-level positions, they have a higher level of authority. In fact, they probably don't even work as hard, you might even be doing their job. Okay. And the deal is, they've been able to tell and build the relationships around what it is that they do. Okay. And I understand it's hard, it's hard. And this is where like if you're struggling with that, it's time to get a coach. Okay, if you're struggling with that, you can either wander the desert and hope to find food.

17:24

Or you can find the fast track, okay. But that's what that's what I'll say is that what happens with coaching is it compresses time, and it increases speed. So that's what happens with coaching, if you're struggling with this one piece, and it is the single greatest objection I get and trying to tell people, you have to demonstrate scope and impact metric based resume. If you can't do that, then go ahead, play the game, because you're playing a commodity, just like everyone else on the shelf, you'll look exactly the same. You can play that game. It's a it's a statistics game, it's gonna take you a long time, it's gonna hurt, you're probably gonna end up broke by the end. And I know that not because I'm saying I want you to but because that's what happened to me. Why I created this process was I ended up broke $30,000 in debt after being laid off from a job that became practically extinct in the Great Depression. So what I learned here is after watching 20 years of applications, 20 years of applying, and then my own unemployment journey, and I realized that no one because I work, like the single greatest one job title, I work with this VP of HR, that our own folks inside of HR don't even understand how to do this. So this is not, this is not because something's wrong with you. There's not this is just something that we don't teach people. Nobody gave you the handbook on how to write a resume that gets you an interview that gets you multiple job offers. The reason why I wrote the book. The person who wrote the book is me, okay. And you have to have certain things, there are certain steps. There's eight core foundations to this. And that's another topic for another day of how you create what we call the purple squirrel. And the purple squirrel is what all recruiters are looking for. And it's like trying to find a unicorn. hard to find highly desirable. Everyone wants it. Now let's talk about the law of supply and demand. When supply is low, and demand is high. What does that mean for pricing? Really high, okay. But if there's a lot of supply, and not a lot of demand, which is the current marketplace for most people, you're going to get under employed, you're not going to be able to demand your worth. And the one thing that changes is as soon as you understand your narrative. Everybody have a wonderful day. Thanks again for joining me. Bye, everybody.