Transcription
Okay you guys, for all my friends who are looking to change careers or get a new job, I'm gonna give you the most comprehensive crash course in making the most awesome tweaks to your resume to ensure that you get hired.
I see a lot of my friends who have lots of skills, and the problem with today's culture is that we have a culture where many people work lots of short-term jobs, particularly for my friends who are artists and musicians. I see a lot of you who have an extremely broad range of skills, but you want a job that is completely different from what your skill set reflects. And I'm just going to give it to you straight: employers don't care about your skills that are not directly related to your job.
And the reason for that is is because when you apply for jobs, humans are no longer looking at your resume. Robots are. So if your resume is not formatted for robots to properly read and scan your resume, you're not gonna get a call back. Or maybe you will if it's like a smaller BS company, but any bigger company that can give you like a more full-time job with benefits, in my experience, they only want to see a maximum of two jobs, no more than two, in ten years of work history, and on a one-page resume. So even if you have way more experience and you're older than that, you're only gonna give people the last ten years of your life, and then maybe touch upon some other stuff in a cover letter.
And even if you have had all kinds of independent gigs, what you're going to do essentially, you are your own self-employer. You are an independent contractor whose work lots of short-term contract gigs for lots of people. So what you're going to do is you're going to take your vast skill set and yes, you're gonna white lie and consolidate it into no more than two positions.
So here's what I've done with my resume. Obviously, I've blanked out the years and whatever, so you know, it's as mysterious as possible. But here's one thing I've done. One, I've changed my name into a shorter version of my actual name, which is gender-neutral. Now, why would I do that? It's because it helps me get hired. Because in my experience, sometimes if people don't know if you're a man or a woman, that increases your chances of getting hired.
So I've got this vertical bullet format. I've got my city with my zip code. I have got my email address, which should only be Gmail. It should not be Yahoo. It should only be Gmail. Then I have my cell phone number here, and I have vertical breaks separating each thing. Then I have a page break.
Okay, next, I have a summary. And you know, even if your experience is in a whole bunch of things, you're gonna focus and tweak your resume to the two or three things in the industries that you want. And you may have two or three different versions of resumes specifically for the jobs that you applying for. So this resume in particular is geared towards property management. Now, I host Airbnb, right? But just saying you're an Airbnb host isn't enough. So what have I done? I made up a basically BS company that does not exist. Nobody gives a honestly. I'm calling myself a property manager because that's what I am. And I've consolidated my years of working both, you know, I've worked with a friend of mine managing Airbnb, and I work for my family managing Airbnb. But it looks better to say if you work for a company.
And if you have a relative that's willing to be your reference and say, "Oh yes, they've totally worked for me for X number of years and do amazing work," I recommend that your first job you have worked at your quote first job for at least three years to six years. And if you haven't actually worked that long at any job in real life, make one up. I'm being dead serious, you guys. So I've consolidated basically all my years of work doing Airbnb between two cities, working for various people, into one position.
Now, here's the next key point that you need to pay attention to. I have separated this into bullets. So your skill, your skill needs to come first, and it needs to be formatted exactly like this: with a bullet and a bold point, bold for your title or the skill. Property manager: So got a bullet, bold, and a colon. And then I break it down. I don't add a lot of fluff, but each thing that can be defined as whatever something someone might be looking for on Glassdoor or Indeed, I'm gonna use those key terms. I'm basically spitting back out whatever it is someone is looking for on the Indeed or Glassdoor or Craigslist application. So here's a skill: property manager, property marketing and leasing duties. But it's all in bold, all very clean, all very concise. Each bullet point should be no longer than one or two lines. So my aim is to make my first job take up about, you know, a little more than a paragraph. Okay, and I'm describing what I'm doing, but I'm being very brief. I'm using very brief language with commas, and then uh, you know, just no fluff.
Then onto my next job. If you have done a bajillion things working as an independent contractor, if you've done social media, if you've been a teacher, if you've been an organizer, if you've done secretarial work, you're gonna lump all of that into one job and you're gonna call yourself an executive assistant. And then you're gonna make up another company. No, I have a friend who actually owns this business, and this is work I actually did, and this is real. But what's cool about my job that I had here is that, you know, the official years were from, you know, say three years. So your second job should be three years. But you can also add plus contract work. Anytime someone hires you to do contract work, doesn't matter if it was in five different cities, you're gonna say it's in one city. So you see my my title is on the left, and then my city is spaced all the way to the right. The company name, again, if it doesn't exist, make one up. Doesn't even need to be Google, doesn't matter. Then my years. So, ideally, no fewer than three years should you be working at any job. Okay. And so now I'm breaking down all the micro different skills I've done into basically one job because it's you, you are your own boss, and so you're just reflecting that on paper and making it look like you're not all over the place. That's very important. So I say I'm a contract-based assistant, and then I say I'm a project manager, and I outline all of the many things that I am doing.
Then I put my education in bold. If you are applying for something that is like official or office work, whatever stuff you're doing that's not really do that doesn't matter, just put what you've done for community college and, you know, regular college. You can put high school, of course. I didn't go to high school, so mine's not on there. And then if you have a separate resume say for sports or whatever, then you're going to put your other types of certification there. But the goal, you're gonna take out a lot of stuff because you want this to all fit on one page because if it's too long, employers are busy, they don't want to look at anything longer than one page. Then I don't put my interests. I don't put anything. I just put other miscellaneous skills because nobody cares about your interests. They just care how well you can do the job. You can put your interests in your cover letter. So I've got, you know, skills, and then I have three references. Again, get a friend or family member to white lie for you, and you should return the favor both ways. And these are people I've actually worked for. But again, if you don't have the one person that you've actually worked for, make one up. Go over how many years you've worked for them. And, you know, the job market is terrible, and I think the ethics of how most employers work today sucks. But if anybody wants a copy of this, I'm like, happy to send it to you. But by using this format, I can basically get hired for any job I want. Now, whether or not I keep the job is secondary.
And you might not agree with this, but for all my artists and musician friends who have done so many small jobs where, you know, I know what it's like when something is supposed to lead to something real. I've done lots of jobs where you start off part-time, and the employer says, "Oh yeah, well, up your hours," and then they never up your hours. And then they end up, you know, there's a lot of shady people out there. And so it's really difficult to get a long-term position when so many companies today are geared towards the gig economy. But that doesn't change the fact that employers only want to see that you have worked two jobs that are directly related to the industry that you are applying for. So if anybody, you know, wants help with their resume, pull. But I just figure, you know, you're not hurting anybody by tweaking things a little. The work you do is legitimate regardless of whether it's for lots of people or a few people. And just because employers today don't want to take on real employees, that doesn't mean that you don't deserve the right to a fresh start and a career change and a job in an industry that is new, maybe somewhat new to you, if your collective experience is relevant to uh, you know, earning that job. If you've earned it with all of your collective experience, just make it look better. You're just making minor tweaks. It doesn't matter who you've worked for, you've worked for yourself, and you deserve it.
So that's my video. Obviously, I'm probably gonna get some shade for this, but hey, whatever gets you hired, whatever gets you a fresh start, I am for it. Anyway, catch you guys later. Hope you enjoyed this video.