ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

How to Make a CV that is Irresistible in 2025 with Amy Adler

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 2 • Episode 36

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In this conversation, Amy L. Adler, a seasoned resume writer, shares her journey into the profession and discusses the evolving nature of resumes. She emphasizes that resumes are not just a historical account of job experiences but a strategic tool for initiating conversations with potential employers. Amy explains the importance of a comprehensive career portfolio, which includes resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and cover letters, and how each component serves a unique purpose. She debunks common myths about resumes, addresses the impact of AI on job applications, and provides insights on how to craft resumes that stand out in a competitive job market. The discussion also covers the significance of understanding job postings, addressing employment gaps, and making career pivots, all while maintaining authenticity in one's professional narrative.

Takeaways

  • Resumes should initiate conversations about future potential, not just recount past experiences.
  • A career portfolio includes a resume, LinkedIn profile, and cover letter, each serving a different purpose.
  • LinkedIn profiles should not be a direct copy of resumes; they should tell a cohesive story.
  • The myth that resumes must be one page is outdated; content should be prioritized over length.
  • AI can streamline the application process, but it may also lead to oversaturation and generic applications.
  • Understanding job descriptions is crucial for tailoring resumes effectively.
  • Gaps in employment can be addressed positively by highlighting relevant activities during that time.
  • Career pivots require strategic storytelling to connect past experiences with new aspirations.
  • Recruiters look for keywords and relevant experiences that align with job descriptions.
  • Authenticity and a well-crafted narrative are essential in standing out in the hiring process.

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Have questions or suggestions? Email us at info@santiagotacoronte.com

Amy Adler, welcome to ProductiviTree Hello, thank you so much for having me today. How did you get into becoming a professional resume uh writer? Well, I will tell you, there are zero children who say they want to grow up to be a resume writer. It's just not on the average kid's sort of plan. And it really wasn't on mine either. I started as a book editor in medical and scientific publishing, academic publishing. And that's all I wanted to do was to edit books. I didn't want to write them, although I did ultimately do that. I wanted to edit books. ah But I had been a freelancer for a long time and I understood what that world looks like. ah So when a friend of mine, so fast forward, a friend of mine who was a great salesperson, but not a great writer, just wasn't her thing, uh called me up and said, hey, can we just talk for a little bit? Because I need to apply for this job and I know you come from an editorial background, maybe you can help me. And of course, at that stage, this is probably 16, 17 years ago now, I didn't know anything about resume writing except what I had done for myself. So we got together, I helped her write her resume, she got the job. Well, she got the interview and then she got the job and I was super excited because I thought, wow, this is really like a fascinating uh turn of events. And it turned out there was this whole industry devoted to this very practice. So I just passed 16 years doing this, earned a bunch of certifications uh and... uh done a ton of uh continuing education to keep myself current. And I've worked with just a remarkable uh body of clients uh who literally every day I learn something new from, learn business from, uh wisdom from, and I am so grateful to be able to engage with this incredible group of people. So that is how I got here and how it got to be 16 years doing it every day. Amy, as one of the most credentialed resume writers out there, when did you realize that resumes were just more than a job history or a timeline? So really from the beginning. So it was impressed upon me by my instructors, by the research I had done that... The resume is just half the game. starting, you're thinking about where you are today, your resume can be a history. And honestly, that's how resumes used to be back when I was getting my first job. That's kind of all I thought about was, all right, I have this goal of kind of what I want to do, but all I can talk about is very concretely what I used to do. And I think a lot of people fall into that path. uh but somewhere along the way and maybe before I started, but certainly as I was kind of growing up in the industry, it became really clear that the resume had to fulfill the other half of the conversation, not just be a retrospective, but also be the initiation of a conversation of somebody's future hiring team. They have to understand why, especially you, the candidate, whoever you are, is standing in front of them, trying to get their attention. And if everybody else is just looking historically at all the things they've done and not considering their audience, that is going to be uh a cardinal error that is easily fixable, but something that people usually don't think about. You say that you build career portfolios. What does that mean in practice and how is it different from a resume? So a resume is just a piece of it. A career portfolio is a term that I adopted because I needed a way to describe the entire body of work that a, especially an executive, but really anybody needs to apply. We were to go through the application process in a meaningful way. So it starts with a resume, includes a LinkedIn profile built top to bottom. So not just a copy of the resume, although there's a place on LinkedIn to upload your resume if you want to, uh sort of to the back end. And then a cover letter. So this trio is the core of what a job seeker at any level is going to need. They have to have these pieces, because they all do different things, uh to fulfill each of those functions. uh The career portfolio could also include a reference strategy. could include an executive biography. It could include a speaker one sheet. It could include a whole bunch of other things and that sort of individual specific, but at a minimum, any job seeker engaging in any kind of job search, even if it's a casual job search, is going to need the three core things, which again are resume, LinkedIn profile, and cover letter. Let's stop one second there because you said that LinkedIn shouldn't be the same as your resume. And then I want to touch upon cover letters because some say they are not any longer needed. In fact, when you go to websites like, I think it's Google, they clearly state that they don't expect to receive a cover letter or motivational letter from you. What is the difference between these three and how do they complement each other and why are still cover letters needed? Okay, that's a lot. That's a whole bunch of questions. I hope I can get them all in turn. So when I said that the LinkedIn profile shouldn't be a copy of the resume, I really did mean that some people foundationally, well, some people don't do anything with their LinkedIn profiles. And that's kind of a tragedy because there's just nothing there for anybody to find you uh on or to learn about you when they get there. Kind of the next level up, and I definitely do not recommend this, is a wholesale copy and paste. And that's what I was... sort of advising against a copy and paste of a resume into LinkedIn. First of all, it's the wrong kind of format for the platform. It's not very engaging. It's declarative. And it might have private information you're willing to share with a hiring team, but not that you want to share with, I think, now a billion of your closest friends. There's like billion users on LinkedIn now. uh That having been said, your LinkedIn profile and to some degree your cover letter, we can talk about that in a second, should follow the same story. So anybody reading your resume and reading your LinkedIn profile should see the same person and the same kind of story. It's just the text that is different, the presentation that is different because they're doing different things and they're being found in different ways and being utilized uh in overlapping but potentially substantively different ways, different audiences. uh I can keep going if that talking about why LinkedIn is uh how it's different. So LinkedIn is. uh kind of a two-way street. It has this great searchability. Just this morning, I was searching for somebody with a particular skill set. I'm not recruiting. I was just looking to see if I knew somebody in this arena to make a referral. So I was using keywords and kind of making a Boolean search, certainly at a lower level with the regular platform. Recruiters who have the Recruiter app get all sorts of search tools that they can do to make really complex searches to find their ideal audience. So to make sure your LinkedIn profile is findable in that way, is a core goal of good, let's call it resume writing, but career portfolio development. And then when somebody gets to that profile, when a recruiter or a hiring manager gets to that profile, they want to have something super engaging, something that catches their eye, that is digestible, that makes them want to know more about this person. again, uh it's the next step in a conversation that's already been initiated. So they have a real understanding as to why they should reach out to that individual because they already have. have. um that connection, that uh meaningful interaction that makes them want to know more. uh Cover letter is again, a little bit different in the sense that the cover letter should reflect the person's story, meaning their history, but not necessarily retell everything. That is a pitch as to why that person belongs in this role in this company. So thinking more prospectively about what a specific hiring team is looking for, what a particular role is demanding. It's going to be a really good first step to getting that cover letter done well, but to your point not every Company is expecting a cover letter. You know I used to say send a cover letter regardless Whatever it says send a cover letter and I think with the advent of tools that make the easy apply so to speak So easy that cover letters just are not expected in every situation so if there's a field for a cover letter Upload a cover letter. They're for it, especially if it has a little red star that says it's required, you won't be able to get past the application without doing so. But if there's no field for that, they're probably not asking for it. And I think some recruiters and hiring teams don't read them and aren't interested. But if you're going to send one and if it's required and it's a good idea, then please take the time to do this well because they are clearly asking for them for a reason. And yours should stand out. Yours should stand out as not the standard... uh please accept this letter in application four. Everybody's doing that. ah I think something that everyone else, a lot of people are doing these days too, is relying on ChatGPT to imagine a cover letter for them. And not just ChatGPT, let's call them AI or large language models, I don't wanna call that any particular one. ah But I've heard this more than once, that ah somebody who makes the rookie error of just throwing the... the job posting into the tool and asking it to spit out a cover letter, you're not the only one doing that. And for uh the hiring manager, it's somewhere between horrifying and hilarious that they're receiving identical cover letters built ah through the same ask. So just don't do that. uh It doesn't reflect well on you and it might make you look kind of silly. We'll talk about AI in a second because there is a recent number of events around AI that worth a couple of questions. But Amy, what is the biggest myth that you still hear and people believe about resumes? The biggest myth is that the resume should be only one page. No matter who you are, what you've ever done, how old you are, how many years of experience, that somehow you have to cram everything into one page. And there's kind of a footnote to that, which is... I don't know if it's a myth or uh what I would call just not good practice is because of the one page sort of constraint. People think it's a good idea to leave the good stuff for the interview. I think people won't get to the interview unless they share the good stuff and show not just what they did, but how well they did it. And that takes a little bit more strategizing to get the content down to something digestible and very readable, ah but not so far that it's only one page. I've written resumes for high schoolers and college kids whose resumes were two pages that were exceedingly successful. And I've written resumes for senior executives that were three pages and were terrific. I also remember writing a resume for a sales executive who had the same job for 25 years. That was one page because he had the same job. And it was easy to say, here are all of the sales wins that this guy had over this period of time because his job did particularly change, but his experience definitely grew over time. so you've seen thousands of resumes what is the difference between one that gets ghosted and one that gets a callback Wow, that's a huge question because what people think is ghosting isn't really ghosting. I'm gonna call this out because I think it's really important for people to understand that not getting a response to an application in which there might be hundreds of other applicants isn't really ghosting. It's not great not to hear back. But ghosting is usually applied to what happens after there's been some sort of initial conversation. ah So... The question is what makes a resume rise to the top of a search or what makes a resume more um visible or uh interesting to somebody who is looking for particular qualifications. On the sort of the lowest end. Not having any of the requirements won't, you can apply all day long to jobs that you don't have the requirements for and you won't get picked. No one's gonna take a chance on you at this stage when it's really a buyer's market. uh If there are plenty of people who fulfill all the requirements and some of those might not even be picked for interviews, they're not gonna take a chance on somebody who doesn't have any of them or only has a small proportion of them. What happens after that is anyone's guess and there's a million reasons why somebody might not get picked. A recruiter might have a policy of interviewing the first five they come through that uh meet all the requirements, uh would be reasonable selections. uh They might have a policy of reading every single one of the hundreds of or maybe thousands of resumes that come through and making a disposition decision. uh which is why so many people feel like they get a rejection email so quickly. ah There might be, they might have other policies or there might be uh a referral that comes in from a particular hiring manager that says, I know you're getting resumes electronically, but please interview this, know, bring this guy in. We want to see this particular person. So there's a million reasons why somebody who might feel like a perfect fit could be overlooked. ah but I would say the answer is somewhere between whatever the hiring team is actually thinking, which is a black box usually to us, and what the job description actually says. So if their end game is to hire somebody who fulfills all of these expectations, take them seriously. Give them what they're looking for, as long as you have the experience and can corroborate it with good wins and actual context. Use that as your signpost, use it as your map to getting to where you want to go. Amy, you hinted at this before, but it seems or it could seem that people or professionals with longer careers have an easier task putting a good resume together. They have experience, they have worked for many different companies, they have been in different type of projects. Is it harder for more junior people to craft a resume that Crocsids. Well, I think it would be impossible for a very junior person to obtain a senior level position. I would find that very difficult. I think the more levers somebody is pulling, the harder it is. So if you're changing industry, if you're changing level, if you're changing... uh a function, right? The more of those that you change in any particular job application, the harder that's going to be. But if a junior level person is looking to just tweak it up a little bit and go to the next level, that should be a natural fit. If they're ready to go, they should be able to prove that they have done, either actually done what's in the job description, which might be ahead of their uh current job, sort of formal description. Or they might be able to say, this is a correlate of what you expect. So maybe they haven't worked in software x but they've worked in software y which does the same thing so the patterns are the same or maybe they haven't formally run a team but they're continually looked at within their current team as a natural leader for whatever situational uh thing that whatever their their experience is going to be so there are ways to share how well somebody is doing if they have honestly the insight to recognize that They're ready and they have done all the stuff that a future team is looking for. Let's move into uh the AI topic, artificial intelligence. was reading this very week an article that said the resume is dead. AI killed it. Now, when you look historically into this, a bit more of a reflection for companies who started with AI, analyzing resumes with AI, now the candidates are you know, counter fighting this with AI created resumes and it's literally a matter of seconds to apply through AI. Is the resume really dead? What will happen with this whole AI frenziness? So I don't think the resume is dead per se. I don't think LinkedIn killed the resume either. uh I think what happened is people recognized that AI can do much faster what they thought they could do by themselves. And I don't think that activities are the same. uh AI especially... uh in terms of asking AI to up-level this resume for this position kind of a request might inject skills or numbers or experiences that the person doesn't actually have. I've never tried this, so I don't really know. But would a large language model know how to do what a resume writer or honestly a human being should be able to do by writing about very specific experience? I don't know if that's true. uh But what I have seen overall is that the, the, that sort of easy apply element, which can, as you say, send out thousands of resumes in a matter of minutes or whatever the number is, I don't actually know, um, is it clogs up the system. So those people are going to get rejected because they haven't really thought they've done no thinking about what the job actually requires. And there may be some false information that if they get called about, like, do they know a particular software? Do they have a specific expertise? They're going to fumble when, the interviewer. or the recruiter calls and so they need to ask you about these certain things before we move forward. uh So I think it just gums up the works in a lot of ways and doesn't enable the people who are actually qualified to have that sort of straight line that they expected into the interview process. to deal with ATS, applicant tracking systems, I think is the acronym. Most companies, if not all, has one of them, algorithms that search resumes, looking for keywords. Most of them are keywords based. This has become a commodity, so it's something that almost every organization has. So how do you, how is possible to craft a resume? that has enough keywords to pass the first robotic filter but at the same time doesn't sound like a regurgitation of keywords that doesn't make any sense and tell a story. guess you said before you need to tell a story, you need to tell who you are. Well, I think if we can imagine, and I really appreciate this question, I think if you can imagine that the ATS is a giant filing cabinet and whether there are some tools that have some AI components, that might be true. um But I try to follow. in all aspects, recruiters who do this every day and really know what they're doing and are recruiting for pretty high level, complicated roles. I want to learn from them. want to, because I'm not a recruiter, I want to know what's happening on the ground. So insofar as there are some tools out there theoretically that will do all this work for you. And I heard somebody quip that pretty soon we're going to have, you know, robotic applicants and robotic recruiters and somehow in the middle they'll meet and maybe there'll be some people that come out of it. But in the main recruiters use this giant filing cabinet to store all this data because it has to go someplace. ah And then they create these enormous Boolean searches to pull out the resumes that have these characteristics that they're looking for. And then they put eyeballs on those. uh So to take that to the level of what do do about the keywords to get there. So let's say there is for a particular job, an ideal resume. Just imagine that somebody is the ideal candidate and they've written the perfect resume. plus or minus, and I'm kind of simplifying this for the purposes of illustration, if you take this resume and then alphabetize all the words. So now it's complete word soup. It doesn't make any sense, but the right keywords are there in the right proportion. So the right tools, the right um job titles, the right experience. And again, it's going to be way more complicated than this. I'm intentionally oversimplifying, but that resume could be found because it has the stuff in it. But when someone gets there, it's incomprehensible. It doesn't make any sense. There's nothing to grab onto. using the point is then using whatever keywords make sense for you or make sense for your experience in context is 100 % going to be better than just stringing together a list of keywords say in a keyword section. I gave that up ages ago. First of all, it took up way too much room and it didn't really help in terms of managing the real estate on the page. But also it just, didn't tie to anything. So if somebody knows a pretty particular technology or they have a particular skill set. Let's take for example, somebody who might be a CPA. They know accounting, they know general ledger, they know loan management, whatever it is they know. Those are keywords that are going to be super useful uh for a, let's say for an imaginary job that we're constructing here live, I guess. uh but it makes more sense to use those keywords to describe the extent to which somebody did something well. So if managing... uh and reconciling the general ledger every month is really important to a particular job, the person needs to describe when thing in their company, theoretically, when things went awry and how they fix them with respect to the general ledger and what other processes were tied into this. What other people did they have to talk to to organize this data set? And with a new system or a new strategy, did things go faster? Did they? gain any time, did they gain any efficiencies, and did, ah I don't know, auditors perhaps, or Wall Street even, ah to what extent did they respond positively or negatively to the change and how did things go? So this is a whole deeper story than I know how to do this particular thing. It's, I can get in there and handle this with the best of them. Recruiters um spend seconds on resumes. I appreciate them generalizing a little bit here. But it's well known that recruiters can skim through information very quickly. And they only might spend a few seconds. What are they looking for? I think at a high level, they're looking first for those keywords. Are they there? And that's gonna come through with that Boolean search. Then they're gonna say, see, to what extent do these things fit the kinds of goals that they know their hiring managers are looking for? And do they tell the kinds of stories that prove that this person has done this kind of work before? So if we think about job search or recruitment rather, ah as... a way to de-risk the hiring process. How do we put more effort on the front end to get the right person into this job so that we never have to think about filling this job again until this person, for whatever reason, departs or gets promoted or something else happens? but we don't have to think about this person failing. We don't have to think about this person quitting. We think this person knows how to do this job, can step into it on day one, and is gonna do it very, very well. So they're trying to solve that problem with, in the quickest way possible. Emi, are you a fan or do you recommend any particular structure for resumes? Some people say start with your experience. Some people say, hey, start with your highlights because in this few seconds you want the recruiter to see how great you are and then, you know, put the education at the bottom. uh Do include or not languages. What's your structure? So I would say, because my typical client is fairly senior in their career, so they're not new graduates, although I've worked, like I said, with kids, um young adults, if you've graduated within the last handful of years, three, four, five years, maybe your education can go first. Otherwise, I won't say it's an afterthought, it's just an expectation. Put it to the end, no one's gonna go there. um wondering about it. But as for those highlights, I think this is the same. It's another version of the same question we've been addressing. Highlights are important, but without context and without being uh tied to particular roles, they come across as a little bit too high level. uh And rather than say, here are the highlights, I would say, make them into business cases and put them in the, in the substance of your resume under each of the positions. So if you're going, with a typical format, which is what we call reverse chronological, it's, did, I'm doing this thing. I used to do this thing before that. I did this before that. I did this. It groups the content very nicely and it gives the writer, the job seeker, uh, the space to tell. complex story um in such a way that it's incontrovertible to the reader that this thing actually happened. So they might not want somebody who knows how to do A, B, or C, but they can't deny that it happened because the story has enough detail that it feels very real. And it should be very real, of course there's no lying on the resume. But putting those highlights in... in context gives them more substance. Instead of that, what I like to do, and I think most resume writers, contemporary resume writers will do the same, is to use that space at the top of the resume to do a handful of things. Name, contact information. I once had somebody who didn't want to have their contact info on their resume. I really couldn't figure that one out. That seems to be a terrible mistake. So please, everybody out there, please put your phone number and a typical format for your email to something professional. Underneath that, the title or the function, if you will, of the role that you're looking for. So somebody knows what pile to put this in. Are you a CPA? Are you an operations leader? Are you a chief financial officer? uh Are you a recruiter? you a HR leader? What is your, what is your function? What's your job? And you can be a little bit more elaborate there if you want, but it kind of frames the whole resume. then underneath that put in what we call a branding statement, which is something about what you know, how to do and how well you've done it, but sort of the overall message you want somebody to know about you. I'd like to say if your audience reads just that far, they should know everything about you. you. What you stand for, what you're good at, what you're looking for, what matters to you. And then everything below that, what we consider the body of the resume, the experience and the bullets and all that stuff, that's just corroboration. That's just proof that everything you said in the first third of the first page is the truth and the kind of thing that somebody would bring to the table if they were applying for this particular job. What is one mistake that executives make on LinkedIn and the resumes that kills the credibility? They don't go deep enough. They don't trust themselves. They think, here's a big one. they think everyone who has their job would do it the exact same way that they are doing it, in spite of the fact that they are exceptional human beings, incredible performers, and not everybody would do the job the way they would. So owning that and being willing to explain it in detail and uh I won't say brag because there's nothing about this that's bragging, but share their good backgrounds and their performance how really amazing they are at what they do, this is the one time they should be able to do it. ah resume and interview is the one time tooting your horn is a good idea. So, but if that feels uncomfortable and for many people, especially the kinds of folks I tend to work with who are usually pretty quiet, pretty introverted, not willing to brag, I say, I frame it differently. I say level with your audience. Tell them the facts. If everything they read on your resume is true. And of course, again, it has to be true or it's, it's whole different kind of failure, right? But if it's true, and you want your audience to know this, it's okay to own all the good things that happened because of your actions. And there's no argument. It happened this way for a reason. You were the agent of this expertise and this win. And again, whether they need somebody who knows that or not is not something you can control, but they can't tell you it didn't happen. Amy, not only are a great resume writer, but you can also read minds because that was precisely my next question. How introverts can deal with the, I'm bragging in my resume. Thank you for, for taking into this. Let's talk a little bit about how to decode job postings, right? Because by now it's clear that there needs to be a certain level of customization and certain level of story. How do you read the job description and extract what the company really wants? Okay, so this is on two levels, the higher level and then the specific company level. Your resume, a person's resume is really good at exactly one thing. It's really good at getting interviews and only to the extent that your resume addresses a handful of roles that look like that person's goal. So if we think of a Venn diagram, ah each of the job descriptions is its own circle. That shaded part in the middle is where your resume should be focused and you should be addressing all of those things. Of course, every individual job posting is going to have its own unique qualifications or expectations, but this is getting the resume 90 % there so that the shaping of the resume, what you call tweaking, I guess, per job description is based then on the unusual or uh individualized characteristics of that particular role. So you've got most of the way there. uh So if you're a CPA looking for CPA jobs, they should all be, well, accounting, not necessarily CPA, but accounting roles or accounting leadership or finance leadership. It's not going to be refrigerator repair. That's so far afield that the resume, no matter how good it is, won't succeed. But let's say, okay, the person's now narrowed themselves into this body of opportunities, a subset of all the things that are out there that feel like the job they want to do. now as you asked, a particular position. Usually there are qualifications and there are preferred characteristics or preferred qualifications. Some of them are non-negotiable, especially in highly regulated industries. There may be really good reasons why only a CPA could be hired or only this type of licensure could be hired or only this type, just because of far beyond my pay grade, but reasons that they have to do this for their accreditation or for their uh certifications or whatever it might be. But either way, in this list of qualifications, if there are five or six or 10 of them, it probably should have most of them, especially now again, because it's this buyer's market where companies can say, I can take the best of the best and still have really qualified people that I didn't have the chance to interview. uh Beyond that, there are preferred qualifications, something like MBA might be a good idea, preferred MBA or graduate degree and such and such, but will substitute eight years of experience without a graduate degree, those kinds of things, there's a little bit more flexibility. uh There's lots of variations of this. uh And beyond that, knowing from everything else, if it's a more extensive job posting, you might really learn something about the company's ethos or its uh mission or what it stands for. And to infuse your alignment to that uh kind of sort of cultural alignment is a good thing. It helps your audience understand that you're on their team, that you understand where they're coming from, that whatever matters to them matters to you. as well. And some of that also can be found in other things like LinkedIn or the company's website. But sometimes they do a really nice job of adding this color and dimension to the job posting. It's good to respond to it. Two more before we go to the rapid-fire questions. Gaps, maternities, sabbaticals, what do we do with this? depends on where the gap is and when it was. there's a really good reason for a resume to go in detail for about the last 10 to 15 years. And what happened prior can be relegated to prior experience, things I did before, and it can be sort of short and not so much in depth. And you can save space that way too. But mostly because your audience or the job seeker's audience doesn't care what happened 20 years ago. We were all doing something else 20 years ago. So if the gap falls neatly into that break, if it's 12 years ago or 10 years ago, you might be able to... the story in such a way that the gap is kind of invisible. If the gap is today and so many people are experiencing this because of the layoffs and uh the difficulties people are having in navigating this really, really complicated job market. If the gap is today, there is always something somebody can be doing with their free time that is worthy of explaining on a resume. Maybe somebody is a volunteer in a cause they really like, or maybe somebody is taking a class and learning a new skill or a bunch of new skills, engaging some sort of self-study program. Maybe somebody is writing a book. Maybe somebody is uh taking a family sabbatical to care for an elderly aging relative. uh Whether it's good idea to include caring for children, I still am on the fence about this. I think it affects men and women differently, depending on how they say it. uh So I haven't, I don't know if I have a good answer for that one. ah But if somebody has something meaningful uh beyond sort of consulting, which a lot of people are doing sort of fractional work, but if they're doing, again, like some sort of self-study program or heavily volunteering, doesn't matter if they're getting paid or not because it's still work, it might be useful to put something on their resume that indicates they have filled their time to present, so to speak, ah with something other than... Well, then nothing, honestly, than to leave that space with a gap in it. career pivots. I've worked most of my life aiming in data. But maybe I'm now motivated to move to HR because I have found a passion. How do I turn 25 years of data experience into, I want to be in HR or I want to be a recruiter? there are probably as many answers to that question as there are questions because everybody's case is different. I think the first thing people should do is talk to people who are in those roles that they're seeking to figure out what happens on the ground. so they can sort of assess for themselves where are they already doing that kind of work? Because again, companies don't want to hire uh a candidate if they think it's going to be a risk. So they want somebody who can uh step into the role and be very successful from the beginning. One way a person with a newfound passion can test the water, so to speak, if they're really, like if you're really seeking to get out of data and you're really seeking to get into recruiting, maybe uh the adjacency is recruiting in data science or in that field. So you can say, come from a position of subject matter expertise. I know what happens every day. I now want to add to that skill set and not change it not leave everything off not step away entirely And then maybe the next role in a year is recruiting in a different discipline. now suddenly you're shifting into now maybe you're an executive recruiter seeking to hire uh chief data officers uh or chief analytics officers at a much higher, obviously at a much higher level uh because you've now learned the entire process and you've proven that you are no longer any kind of a risk to a company who is seeking to do recruitment at that level. I obviously just made up a story on your behalf, but Something like that can serve very well. again, what I think is really hard is when somebody develops a passion and tries to enact all the strategies at once to shift in every possible way. ah Because again, pulling all the levers at once makes somebody reading your resume wonder, why is somebody who is very clearly this kind of a person now trying to get over here? Because there's this... uh leap of logic in the middle that is hard to cover. Amy, let's do some rapid fire questions. 30 seconds or less to answer. Only five. Number one, what's the best question a hiring manager can ask to find a top tier candidate? What would you do on day one to start this role right and ensure that you're going to be successful for the first 90 days and then beyond? What is the worst answer that a candidate can give? something that, well, I think the worst answer to the question of what questions do you have for me is something they could have found on the company's website. So uh not knowing an answer is fine. uh Not knowing something that is really findable is probably a terrible mistake. What is the biggest red flag you find in resumes? People who think what they say is very clear and doesn't go deep enough with respect to the position that they are seeking. If there are really clear topics that somebody needs to address from the job description and they're not, they're missing an opportunity. one piece of resume advice you would love, you wish people would follow. If it's not your area of expertise to write a resume, find somebody who does this because it will go faster, it will go better, and it's an investment in your future. And what is the most underrated tip for preparing for an interview? not reading the job posting thoroughly, and not researching the company. That was two things, you asked for one. But I think that's information that's readily available that can inform the way, it can shape the way you answer your questions to help your audience understand that you're already part of their mindset, you're already on their team. um Amy, let's give uh the last piece of advice to our listeners. What is one thing you want job seekers to understand about the hiring market today? We know that the hiring market is not great from what reports say. I guess that this depends on the type of roles and the type of industries very much. Some industries will be down, some others up. What do want people to understand about the hiring process and the entire life cycle of seeing a job description or a job position, understanding it, crafting a good CV or a resume and finally applying? If you are doing the right things, getting the right advice, networking appropriately, reading job descriptions, writing your resume to the best of your possibility, or finding somebody who knows how to do that. uh The consequences of your actions hopefully will be that you get the interview. But if you're not getting the interview, it's not a referendum on you. You might really be perfect for this job. You might be really successful in this role. And given the market, so are 10 other people. And that's a really hard truth to swallow. And it's sad and it's depressing and it's demoralizing. but the next one will be yours. At some point, if you were doing all the right things, the next one will be yours. So don't let the fact that these jobs get filled really quickly and not necessarily with you. Don't let that be a... Don't let that change your mindset. Don't let that shift you away from your goals because I promise you, you're amazing. I've not yet met a person in my 16 years of doing this who did not have an incredible story to tell and I know you have one too. Wow. Amy, I'm sure after uh this conversation, will be many, many people that would like you to write their resumes, their cover letters, help create the story, the portfolio, how they can get in touch with you. My website, thank you for asking, my website is fivestrengths.com. That's F-I-V-E-S-T-R-E-N-G-T-H-S.com. And my LinkedIn profile handle is Amy L. Adler. That's A-M-Y-L-A-D-L-E-R. Amy, um thank you so much for uh giving us all your knowledge and wisdom. um You said just a couple of minutes ago, you are amazing. I think that you are amazing and your knowledge shows everywhere. I'm taking a couple of things away today that. Authenticity. in showing what you are, it's still relevant. Despite AI, ATSs and the rest of systems to come, because there will be more to come, there is value on crafting and showing your authentic person and your story. And that um it's important to pay attention to the signals, right? What the job description is saying, to look at the company. because this can also be a big, big plus for you to get at least the interview as you said, right? Because that's the first step of it. Amy Adler, thank you so much for being with us today and we hope to talk to you very soon. Thank you so, so much for having me. It's been such an honor.