First off, right off the bat, I must say I am not selling anything and I certainly don't want any contact info. I just wanted to share what I learned from one year of unemployment and going through the daily, painstaking ordeal that is job searching and the exact process for how I landed a role, finally, with a job I don't hate.
I'm with you guys. I despise the current work system and everything about it.
Always have and always will.
I was out of work for awhile not long ago, and I wanted to provide some resources that were the accumulation of all my personal research and assistance from job coaches, and the resumes I edited for my colleagues (once I figured out how), complete with notes on how you can do it, too. (They all got jobs as a result, btw. One friend, I kid you not, had zero interviews in 6 months then had 3 in one week after these edits and methods. Could have been a fluke, but I'm just saying this method works. No promises of course, but its genuine).
All in all, the job coaches cost me $1,500 and I don't want you all to spend a dime on anything to find work that, if you're anything like me, you likely dont want to do anyways.
But if we must work and search for work, here is a link that contains the absolute best resume/cover letter formats I came across and actually got attention with in that year of unemployment; as well as interview tactics, cold outreach email templates, and modules that someone sent me that containt practical tips and tricks for how to get a job.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vZyeVUqJ69NmHD-w3-Jt15D4HmTOybM_
It's my goal to help ease the anxiety and stress of this process for any anti-worker who may be actively or passively looking for a job.
It's something I wish I had a year ago.
This resume format is perfect. I know this because I tried many, many other formats and this one was the one that landed me and my colleagues roles much quicker. After months of trying to just get an interview, this style got us interviews in much faster.
Some additional notes on resumes:
- Usually keep it to one page.
- Keep the format and font the same as these examples; just put in your information. I included other CVs to showcase a variety of roles/careers. I think there is some formatting errors on a couple resumes, but you can fix those. I saved them as Word files so they are editable. 🙂
- Believe me when I say numbers mean everything in a resume, no matter the industry. So put them on as many bullet points as you can. Hiring managers love that. Which is better? “responsible for managing team and hosting meetings” or “managed team of 20 coworkers, whose combined sales reached 112% quota” See what I'm sayin?
- Keep this bullet point format: Past tense verb (created, developed, etc) —> number —- result number. Every bullet point, or as many as possible. Search resume verbs in google for ideas, or use the ones in the resumes provided.
- Did I mention have a lot of numbers on it? Just want to hammer that home. As many bullet points as you can. Numbers = profit or quantifiable results, separating you from the “vague description” applicants. It all falls apart if you don't do this, in my experience, and the resume will never get looked at, I can darn near 100% promise that.
- Inverted pyramid style: Chronological order, most recent job = 7 bullet points, next most recent = 5-6, etc etc all the way down. Some can be equal, it just has to be decending order. This looks good visually and they mostly care about what you did most recently anywways.
- Write a bad ass description of the company you worked for, right under your job title. This shows the recruiter how awesome that company is and it helps them understand what their mission is or even just what that company does, if it isn't obvious.
This is KEY!
Ex: “Johnny's Burger Joint was rated as the top burger restaurant in Boston by Boston Magazine. They serve an avg. of 1000+ customers a day and my franchise was rated the top out of 200+ locations across America.” See how much better that is than just the name? You feel the difference?
8) Numbers below ten, spell out. All others just write the number. Instead of exact numbers, when they get too big, write a “+ after the rounded numner (ex: “157 employees —> “150+ employees”)
9) Exectuive summary also has numbers and must be bad ass. See examples.
10) I changed all the names in the resumes to protect the innocent 🙂
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Notes on how to find jobs/ grow network:
Please, please, pleeeeeease don't waste your time applying to LinkedIn or Indeed posted jobs. 99% chance it's a waste of time. I sent out 500+ resumes like that over the course of a year and got one interview from it.
Total fail.
Now that I work for a large company, I see just how true that is. We did a hiring spree at the beginning of this quarter and every single one of the new hires was a referral.
Every. Single. One.
Companies just post those because they … have to? Not really sure, but again, this is my experience.
I can't stress enough how important it is to get an in at a company.
So how do you do that if your network is small or you dont have any friends (like me! lol)?
Get your LinkedIn up and going – this is super important because its the first thing hiring managers look at.
If you have exhausted all your friends and family to see if their company has a role you want, try this LinkedIn approach (the modules in the link also have other methods outside this one as well):
What I did was paste my resume info in the description field on LI, added a nice photo and background, and added a ton of people from realtor groups (they always accept requests) to get me to the coveted 500+ connection badge and make me look suuuuuuuper cool. (LI has a limit to the number of adds a day, so will take a few days to accomplish this).
I then sent DMs to people in a role or company that I wanted to work for. It went something like:
“Hey (name)- just wanted to say that I love (company name). Your job as a (role) is kind of what I have been wanting to do for some time. How do you like it?” People are flattered you like their role, and it opens the dialogue up for more conversation, which is when you later ask to speak with them about the company in a call (more details on that in the link).
Use the free site hunter.io to find anyones work email (i.e. recruiters) to send cold emails to (email templates in the link), or you can get even slicker and use a free scraping software like Phantom Buster to “scrape” (i.e. extract) emails from LinkedIn profiles, if they arent publicly listed. Totally legal, btw and a great resource. https://phantombuster.com/
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Look, I have a history of chronic depression and at times, absolutely debiltating anxiety. The job search made me super depressed that year, and more anxious than I ever was in my life.
I don't want that for anyone.
That's why I took the time to make this guide.
Because again, if I have to work to survive, I want the process to be as easy as possible for everyone and for free.
All I ask is if it helps you:
- share it with someone you know looking for work
- send me a DM or comment and let me know if it helped. I selfishly could use a little “I did something good” mood boost right now lol
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Also very open for suggestions in the comments to methods that worked for you as well.
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P.S. For those who are interested (and I feel this may be the perfect group to post this in) I helped several of my friends land a relatively stress free, remote job that they say also pays decent.
They work in software renewals / Customer Success (not Customer Support).
The Difference?
Customer Success you call already happy customers, usually not angry and you just check to see if they are happy, a little upselling sometimes, but it's really not bad. My friends who have this job would definitely never refer to themselves as salesmen, and all find it to be relatively low-stress, all things considered.
In Customer Support, customers are calling you and complaining about everything that is wrong and wanting refunds/fixes/etc. They seem similar because of the title, but they are way different.
Basically just make sure clients are happy (they almost always are), calls are easy and training easier.
Typically $70-85k year depending on the SaaS company.
They say it's the best pay for lowest effort job out there, and great starter to get in at a company, if that's what you are looking for.
Also many of those roles are remote now and they said basically you just need to hit reasonable call numbers or client “connects.” They also mentioned that's why you can make your own schedule outside of mandatory meetings, just as long as you meet KPIs.
This is also not a call center job. There are calls, of course, but not nearly as many and you get a higher base pay with only some element of commissions (instead heavy-loaded or full commission). Usually it's and 80/20 or 70/30 split, but again, its not that hard to meet quota, they say.
No degree needed usually.
A little bit of sales background helps to get in with companies, but the job doesn’t have that much sales orientation. (The resumes in the link provided will show you how to craft a sales related resume with lots of numbers).
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Anyways, I thought I would throw that in at the end.
But really this post was mostly made to help others find work as efficiently and pain-free as possible.
Whew! That was a lot.
Sorry for the long text, but wanted to address as much as possible.
To your success, happiness, and well being!