Your Resume Doesn't Matter So Stop Worrying About It

Good morning everyone! 👋

Welcome to another edition of the UpEmployment Newsletter.

Together we’re going to get you into a role that has you saying, “I can’t believe I get paid to do this.”

On the personal side, it was another wild week for me.

If you read to the end of last week’s newsletter, you’ll know that my wife and I welcomed baby #3 to our family (we now have Boy, Girl, Boy).

It was incredible, and my wife proved her legendary status once again.

The Queen of the Amazons!

(Only after you witness childbirth can you truly understand that women are an entirely different superhuman race.)

2 Lessons I Was Reminded of This Week

As fate would have it, this week, I ended up in the emergency room of the same hospital with some unforeseen health issues.

Thankfully it was just a scare, and I’m feeling better, but it was a great reminder of a couple of things:

1. “This too shall pass

   I recently watched a star studded interview with Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, and Jamie Foxx (you can see it HERE).

   In the interview, Tom Hanks is asked what he wishes he would have known in his career.

   He said…

The health scare this week was a reminder that no matter the highs or lows that you’re experiencing, there will always be unexpected events that pop up that are completely and utterly out of your control.

When those things arise, you can choose to be crippled with “why me” syndrome and retreat into a hole.

Or, you can choose to look at it and say, “This too shall pass.”

Good times will come again and I’m going to do everything to make the good times long and the bad times short.

Don’t dwell on what you can’t control.

Identify what you can control and put your attention there to continue moving forward.

2. The sick man’s wish

   The second reminder was of an old quote.

If you’re reading this then I know you.

You’re ambitious and want to get into an awesome role that will accelerate your career forward and light you up inside.

That hunger and drive are what set you apart and what will ensure your progress.

But don’t let the pursuit of your goals come at the expense of your health.

When I start to feel negative thoughts creep in.

When I start to doubt myself.

When I start to feel like I’m not making any progress and that I should just give up.

In that moment I’ll catch myself and review:

• What has my diet been like? Have I been eating healthy?

• What has my sleep been like? Have I been getting 8 hours each night?

• What has my exercise been like? Am I getting in the gym or running on the road?

The answers to all those questions is “No” and the minute I get back into my healthy routine… POOF! No more negative thoughts.

Funny how that happens.

It’s easy to get tunnel vision in your pursuit of your dream and put everything aside but make sure that you continue to take care of yourself.

Only by taking care of yourself can you take care of others.

The $4,595 Resume

When I was starting UpEmployment I spoke to countless people.

Former bosses, former employees, mentors, friends, family, and many many strangers.

I wanted to get everyone’s perspective on what they wish they had when going through the job hunt process.

As I started to post more on LinkedIn, a former employee reached out.

(He’s a subscriber, so if you read this you know who you are and let’s catch up!)

He was thinking about leaving his current company and starting to think about what was next.

I asked him what he was doing to prepare.

Him: “Well, I hired someone to update my LinkedIn and resume.”

Me: “How much did that cost?”

The number he said next blew my mind at the time.

Him: “$750”

Me: “And did that come with any sort of coaching or guidance to help with what you’re looking for?”

Him: “No, they updated my resume and LinkedIn and I jumped on one call to go over everything.“

Don’t get me wrong, his resume looked complete and his LinkedIn looked pretty good but it seemed like a steep price to pay for a portion of the job hunt that in my experience was a side dish, not the main course.

That got me thinking, how much are people charging for these services?

I went on a Google hunt and found services charging upwards of $4500 for resume and LinkedIn optimization.

No coaching.

No clarity creation to determine your right next step.

No assistance with developing connections with the people that matter.

Just updating your documents.

To me that’s crazy and here’s why.

The Cult of The Resume

Look at the standard job search advice and you’ll see these staples:

• Update your resume

• Create a cover letter

• Submit your application

But how many people with careers you admire credit their resume as the reason they got the job?

I’ll wait…

My guess is that number will be zero.

I personally haven’t spoken to or heard of a single person that I would define as having an “extraodinary career” that has said, “You know what? The real break in my career was when I got this amazing job and it was all due to submitting the right resume.”

That doesn’t happen.

When I went from cubicle data entry to Uber employee 250 my resume was submitted after the fact as a formality.

When I took a job as VP of Operations at a well-funded company coming out of Y-Combinator (another dream job) I didn’t send a resume at all.

When Charlie Hoehn became Tim Ferriss’ first employee (read the full story here) he didn’t submit a resume.

Caleb Ralston credits showing his videography abilities and persistence as what landed him a job that led to him becoming GaryVee’s videographer (you can watch the interview here).

Shaan Puri was the CEO of a company that sold to Twitch for $25 million but he says he got the job that led him there the before ever interviewing because of his interest in the company and his ability to give insight into how the product could be improved (you can head his whole backstory here).

Go find an interview with a person who’s career you admire where they talk about what made all the difference or how they landed their career-changing role.

My guess is that the word resume doesn’t appear.

It’s Only Getting Worse

And resumes have only gotten more irrelevant.

People think the “easy apply” button was created to make it easier for them to apply for jobs.

It wasn’t.

It was made so it was easier for companies to get access to more applicants.

The result.

A wave of resumes for every semi-attractive job posting making it next to impossible for the hiring manager and recruiting team to sort through them all.

As many roles transition from in-person only to remote or hybrid that wave of applicants has turned into a tsunami as now people from all around the world are competing for the same roles.

I have been a hiring manager trying to sort through all the applicants for our open roles and I can tell you first hand it’s very hard to stand out on resume alone.

I have this quote by Seth Godin on the wall in my office because it’s so unbelievably true.

It was true in 2008 when Seth wrote it, and it’s become even more true today.

Are You Saying I Shouldn’t Update My Resume?

No, not at all.

The resume has become an essential box to check in the hiring process.

What I am saying is that you don’t need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars paying someone to update your resume and you also don’t need to spend days obsessing over the perfect wording.

When I talk to ambitious job hunters I often see a common pattern.

Right energy and enthusiasm, wrong actions.

I fell into this trap myself.

I would obsess over the language in my resume trying to tweak it perfectly to what they might want.

I’d obsess over it for hours or days causing me significant anxiety.

These tedious little tasks are often what hold us back from doing the work that really matters.

The less time you need to spend on updating and optimizing your resume, the more time you’ll have for building relationships with people in the organizations you want to work and creating value that shows them the problems you can solve.

So how do we do that?

Before we dive in…

Want to get more dream job offers, in less time, with less stress using proven systems and surrounded by a group of fellow career champions?

Of course you do!

If you’re currently looking for your next life-changing career-accelerating role in tech and you want to eliminate all the guesswork, enjoy the process, and meet the next generation of company leaders, let’s talk!

I recently launched the new and improved version of my UpEmployment Program and spots are filling up.

Click here to schedule a FREE job search strategy call and assess whether you would be right for the program.

The Easy Way To Update Your Resume

Technology is a beautiful thing.

What used to take me hours to pour over my resume takes a piece of software seconds.

Here are some tools that will dramatically cut the time you spend on resume updates so you can get back to the work that matters.

Quick disclaimer - I am not affiliated with any of the below. I have used them, tested them, and poked around them but am in no way, shape, or form paid by mentioning them here

Tool 1: WordCloud.com

What to use it for: Pull keywords for your resume and LinkedIn profile.

The website looks old-school but what it does it helpful.

Open the job description for the role you’re applying to.

Copy all the text about the Role from the job description (leave off the company description, benefits, etc.).

Open WordClouds.com.

Click on Word List > Import from Text.

Paste all the text from the job description into the empty field and click Apply.

Once you see all the words populate into the word cloud go to Word List and select Save as CSV.

You’ll see a list of all the keywords you can add to you profile, mention in networking conversations/interviews, and add to your LinkedIn profile.

Quick Tip: If you want to use this for LinkedIn profile optimization, find 10 to 30 job descriptions that are exciting to you, combine them, and paste them into the empty field. This will allow you to include the major keywords that apply to all of those jobs in your profile and show up in company searches more frequently.

Tool 2: ChatGPT

I know I know, when will people shut up about AI and ChatGPT?

Well… maybe never.

But, this tool is free and very powerful if you ask the right questions.

Potential Uses

Professional Summary: You can have it write a professional summary for you based on the text from your resume and your desired job descriptions. Just give it the prompt:

Write me a professional resume summary using my experience from my resume here: [enter resume text] and my desired job description here: [enter job description]

You likely will need to play around with it a little bit.

Resume Bullets: While far from perfect, you can ask it to update your resume bullet to speak to more actions taken and results driven. It won’t be able to pull the data for you but it can re-word your bullets.

Keywords: Similar to WordClouds.com you can ask, “List keywords and how often they appear in this text: [insert job description]”. It will give you an output of the keywords and the number of times they appear. The output is also cleaner than the CSV from WordClouds.

Don’t get soured to this tool because of all the hype beasts around it.

It’s incredibly powerful and something you shouldn’t ignore.

Tool 3: The Cultivated Culture Tool Stack

LinkedIn legend Austin Belcak has put together some awesome tools for job hunters.

The best part, they’re completely free.

ResyBuild.io: Use free resume templates to craft your resume in a resume generator.

ResyMatch.io: Compare your resume to job descriptions. Get scored on ATS Best Practices, Hard Skills Match, Soft Skills Match, and how well you sell yourself. This includes keyword matching.

ResyBullet.io: Analyze each bullet in your resume one by one and get scored on Hard & Soft Skills, Action Words, Measurable Results, Common Words, and Bullet Length.

Tool 4: ResumeWorded

Another free resume review software tool, ResumeWorded has the following features.

Resume Scoring: Get a review of your resume and areas you did well and poorly. This includes Impact, Brevity, Style, Sections, and Soft Skills. The great thing is they show your score compared to average resume numbers along with tips how to improve them.

They also have help on Line Analysis, Sample Bullets, and Soft Skills but those are mostly locked behind a paywall of their Pro package which is $50/mo.

Targeted Resume: It’ll help you analyze your resume against job description keywords and tell you which ones are missing but the interface to update and add them to your resume is a bit clunky.

LinkedIn Profile Score: An additional tool they have is a LinkedIn profile score. Upload the pdf of your LinkedIn profile and be scored on how it stacks up against best practices.

Tool 5: TealHQ

TealHQ is an awesome tool with many features.

This is the #1 job hunting tool I recommend people check out because of how many boxes it checks in terms of automation and acting as a one stop shop for your job hunt.

David Fano and his team have been making awesome progress on the product since I learned about it 6 months ago.

Most people come for the Job Tracker but the Resume Builder integrates beautifully making it easy for you to update your resume to include keywords for each job description and export your resume directly from there.

They even have a tool that will auto-generate a Cover Letter based on your resume and desired job description.

Pretty sweet!

Please Please Please Remember

Those are the top 5 tools I have seen, used, and recommended to people.

But please please please don’t get caught up on what is the “best tool” and get paralyzed as you try them all, determining which one is the perfect fit.

Your resume is one small part of your overall job hunt strategy.

Get it in a place you feel it’s good or good enough and move on.

DO NOT OBSESS OVER RESUME PERFECTION.

If you read and apply the process that I recommend in this newsletter, on my LinkedIn, or in my UpEmployment Program, your resume will be an afterthought, not your leading opportunity generator.

As always, I could always go even deeper, but we’ll stop there for today.

Each week, we’ll dive deeper into each step of the job hunt process and the systems, tools, templates, and case studies that will lead to more dream job offers in less time with less stress.

I’m excited to share everything I have learned over the last 12 years and go on this journey with you!

Let’s become career champions together 🏆

Kyle

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

#1: FREE Job Search Strategy Call: For a limited time I’m hosting free 1:1 job search strategy calls. I want to hear what you’re having trouble with, share what has worked for me, and see if you would be a good fit for the UpEmplyment program. Schedule a call today!

#2: Want to get more dream job offers in less time with less stress? Discover how to build a proven system to land your dream job in a matter of days here.

#3: Follow me on LinkedIn for more job hunt systems, productivity tools, and networking templates.

💎 Job Op of the Week 💎

Each week I’ll highlight a different job opportunity I think is awesome and give tips for how I would approach getting into the role.

This week we have the Strategy and Operations Manager, GTM position @ Whatnot.

What the company does: Live shopping and marketplace. Buy, sell & discover products you’ll love.

Why is the role awesome: One of the most fun parts about early Uber was launching new markets and the go-to-market strategy. WhatNot is a fast growing company and you’ll have the opportunity to grow supply and demand in existing product categories as well as chart a new path into previously untapped areas.

Why is Whatnot is awesome: There are multiple reasons.

1. The product is a mixture between TikTok and E-bay. The live buying market is Asia is huge! It can be huge in the US too.

2. I know many early Uber operators who have joined the Whatnot team. That’s a great sign. These are people that have seen rapid scale and learned the lessons of doing it well and the perils of doing it poorly.

How would I approach getting in: I would watch and listen (1,2) to all the interviews from the founders and Execs at the company as well as reviews from users. Reach out to Yoni, Martin, Allan, and Tiffany with a personalized LinkedIn connection request message and email. From those conversations, I would look for areas of pain that I could alleviate immediately.

Ex: I would survey the app, identify markets they are not serving, provide data regarding the opportunity, and a high level strategy you would use to launch the new market.

Apply for the job here and DM me on LinkedIn mentioning this post, send me your resume, and I’ll forward it to my connections there.

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In fact, if you surround yourself with other career champions, you’ll land your dream job quicker.

So share this newsletter with anyone you know that is currently looking for that next career-accelerating opportunity so you can win together!

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See you again next week!