The Ugly Truth About Your Resume

I listened to your vids and fixed my resume as recommended and I got 3 interviews within 1 week when before I didn’t get any bites! Thanks for the great advice it helped a ton

Hi Brian, can you please make a video about portals where you have to split your resumee up into sections : enter your first work experience, enter your second work experience, enter your first skill, enter your education, etc. Does this format require a specific treatment ?

Really let this sink in..The hiring process or lack of process is broken. You have to convince someone to get access to food, water, and shelter through a job resume. So if you get rejected you are essentially making it very difficult for people to get these things. I thought we evolved pass this nonsense especially if we claim we are the leader of the free world.

So if you applied to 500 jobs you seriously think that customizing to each job takes very little time?
That's not the problem nor is it something that busy hardworking Americans can do all the time. People need to think much deeper. You seriously think that would change people's bias? The real problem is that people are greedy and don't allow opportunities for their fellow man. Seriously there are other things to be more critical of. Let's get pass this nonsense of competing for food. Food, water, shelter, etc. were meant for all people. Why do we allow such nonsense to exist for these things that were basic rights for all? You have to jump through a shitload of basically worthless systems and processes that can't seem to provide for the hardworking American.

My resume is directed by Steven Spielberg

Thank you.

Brian, whats your advice if you work for a company that uses weird job titles that nobody else uses ? is it lying if you turn it to what it effectively and absolutely is? Ie I'm a PA but currently my company calls them some weird spin on Administrator which also indicates a lower level . They also call Private Secretaries Executive Assistants when they are really not. I have put PA on my resume for my current job because it boils down to the same tasks and same level.

At about 12 1/2 minute mark you talk about making a more generic title for your job, would that apply to your LinkedIn profile as well? Thanks.

Bryan if Jon hasn't awarded the Resume Rocket fuel, ME PLEASE. 50 yr career whittled to a page but I need a retirement side hustle, watching everything you put out..

Good advice

Seriously speaking, if the hiring manager doesn’t like how you look or doesn’t like something about you, it doesn’t matter what you say or how great your qualifications and character are, you will not get hire. That is life! It is all bs.
Also everyone company want experience workers for entry positions, so no fresh college or high school graduates will ever get hire. Stupid corporate people making stupid decisions as usual.

I've got a recruiter to apologize to me for sending me a link to a webinar for an antiWhite company. The company referred to Thanksgiving as "Native Heritage Day" or something like that.

The whole interaction with the recruiter was over text.

This only works if you use the proper scientifically proven lexicon like using words like antiWhite and NEVER dignify the words "r*c*st" or "r*c*sm" or "antiWhite r*c*sm".

I deserve the free copy because I have a lot of community service experience and would be a great fit for any company. I have been out of work for years.

"We don't know anyone who knows you" - it's probably not the resume!

In my previous experience , I have seen job posting and recruiters not knowing the details and duties for the individual and will post a chopped up ,generic posting ! I goood company would already have the basic job requirements along with some goals and expections for potential canidates

I wonder if this is the same in Australia, because I've never heard of anyone being "found" by a recruiter. It's always through applying for jobs. I work in the Pharma manufacturing industry, so maybe it's different for us grunts at the coalface.

It's certainly a cheat, but I think someone could use ChatGPT to clean up their resume format?

Companies love modesty but don’t hire it…

I almost fell for an employment scam last year and am now wary of unsolicited offers

Idk, I’m in Wastewater Operations and in FL I see the same jobs being month after month, when all you really need is a State License to do the job, so idk how you can say the pro recruitment firms know what the client wants. Almost every job I’ve gotten over the last 20 years as been because I called after a week or 2 to see if they got my resume, and they always say come in for interview on that call.
These resumes just sit on desks and inboxes until applicant makes a move.

.. im not buying any of your advice but i can’t stop watching your videos

Until biographical resumes become more common, the advice to senior applicants is that you are allowed 1 page for every completed decade of your life. So two pages should only be in your 30s.

I would appreciate some clarification around your statement regarding resumes being rejected when people specifically apply for a req. I have applied like crazy for positions I know I am a good fit for, with a tailored resume plus cover letter, and almost never get calls back. Are these being rejected due to bias simply because I’m directly applying? Or is the 5% just a statistical average of hires when comparing accepted vs rejected?

The turn-over is very high in my field.
My resume is always very efficient : I always taylor it to the specific position I’m applying to, and only write what is relevant to this position. There’s not even a picture of me.
It works very well.
I got my last job by putting that resume online on our field’s hiring website, tailored for the generic position I wanted. I quickly got one e-mail from an HR rep and it was the right one.

sir can i have free resume template thank you

I've definitely gotten ~15 pages résumés, always from people with irrelevant work history and really boring, rambling descriptions of jobs.

"Hey, so we think you're a perfect fit for the company and you fit pretty much all the criteria we're looking for, but unfortunately we'll have to reject you because we prefer to wait for someone else who's an even more perfect fit for the role that might never actually come along"

I think 4y college is a big west of time

Good advice on "run to run engineer" from a sub-industry. Maybe put "Production Engineer, Run to Run"

This is good information, and I do find it valuable to know from a recruiters experience, what recruiters and hiring managers look for in job candidates. Reading through the comments, it seems like a common struggle that job seekers have is that we may find a job that is a great fit for what we’re looking to do and we may feel that our skills match what is necessary for the position, but we get passed over because we may not be the perfect match on paper. Do you have a recommendation for how someone in that situation can get the attention of the hiring manager or recruiter?

Often the recruiter and hiring manager are idiots that have no idea what the role requires.

I've had countless recruiters and hiring managers tell me they don't understand what the positions function actually is. THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU THE ONES IN CHARGE OF HIRING FOR THAT ROLE?!?!?!

The recruiters are college IDIOTS that are incapable of hiring the right people to perform a job. That's why employers say that they can't find "QUALIFIED" people, and they have to outsource everything. When you hire eggheads with a degree, that don't know how to use a hammer or a shovel, that's what you get, a poor product and lack of productivity!!! Better to fill those jobs with people that have common sense and WANT to work. Who cares about the NICE resume that impresses the recruiter! I'd rather hire someone with a Good attitude, than hire someone with a GOOD resume!

I have a title as a legal brief writer and paralegal but I change this title to legal intake specialist, legal administrative assistant, legal assistant, legal secretary, legal case manager, or legal document specialist depending on the position I am applying for.

The 1971 Powell Memo makes being an employee closer to indentured servitude than employment.

I have nine employers on my résumé but most of them are one-liners after the company name. I deleted one of those seventeen-year-old call center jobs, it is not relevant. The most recent ones are those that actually could land me a job, and in great detail. I try to keep it at 4-ish bullet points though. I would love if this channel could give me a brutal review if I submit my résumé.
Edit: the point about making your work title a bit more "fancy": I speak three languages fluently and I recently had to translate my résumé into English. I took the liberty to translate my work title into "Communications & media relations specialist and social media consultant". This is not a lie by any means title-wise but sounds a lot more fancy in English, to be fair

This mans' advice is spot on.

Source; I've been on the other side of this as the person providing answers for an in-take call, drafting a job description for a position we needed filled.

Wtf is the point of a resume then?

It seems strange that so much emphasis is placed on tailoring a resume for an applicant tracking system (ATS), considering that only a small percentage of resumes (5%) are actually selected for review from job postings and inbound corporate recruiting efforts.

I get the bigger point but sometimes the advise overlaps and contradicts from many of the experts.

The topic Bout job titles is absolutely correct. Unique does not make you stand out.

I would like to get a copy because I just got my masters and I keep getting rejected for job still. I need rocket fuel to get a better job.

I should have added that always include a covering letter as a carefully crafted brief letter allows the option to use a generic one page resume

Best.....😊

In my country we once had a leader who liked to say he was a "one page guy". A thought has just occurred to me ,after reading the experience of some of the people posting comments, : maybe a one page summary with the promise to provide background information if the application invitation moves beyond a scoping exercise.
.
Just a thought.

Best....😊

I am curious what happens if an applicant puts every buzzword on the planet on their resume, but on a unvisible (say a 1 font, white)
part of the .pdf/.doc file so the search filter will pick it up. I would think it would at least appear as a blip on the radar 😀

One problem is that the recruiter is often a victim of bias. They believe that resumes from applicants are not likely to be the candidate so they take from their search what they didn’t accept from the application.

Is it legal to ask on an application if the person applying is part of the lgb movement? Bungie does…

I'm very selective about the companies that I apply to. Almost every time I apply I get interest from the recruiters and get pretty far into the interview process. But the final steps always involve a zoom interview, and then I get a rejection letter. I'll be 59 next month. I'm starting to think it's my age.

I am guilty of a long resume… tho it never hurt me. In reality the hiring team looks at my last two jobs to determine a fit…. The rest is gravy to show I’m qualified… at the end of the day the company is trying to find the right person for the job.

If a job title is not industry standard, could it be possible to leave the job title you had, but put the industry standard in parentheses?

Some recruiters don't know entirely what they're talking about. If they're hiring for all sorts of positions within a company, they might have a general overview of each position, but they do not know the exact relevant details/experience to fish out from a candidate. I speak from experience as a not so experienced job searcher, spent a few months interviewing for dozens of companies, finally got decent amount of offers but not until very recently. I was interviewing for a lot of IT support, product/software support, and customer support positions (generally all within same remote technical support sphere). You as a candidate have to be aggressive and fight to keep the conversation onto your relevant work experience that would apply well to the position. Recruiters were often times not particularly technical, that only happens for the 2nd and 3rd round interviews when you speak with your possible coworkers or tech leads. So you have to emphasize soft skills, versatility, ability to learn quickly, etc...

When recruiters do have some knowledge about what the role is, you have to bring up relevant experience or skills, even if you lightly touch upon it, many times they won't dig deeper into your skills. Also know your audience. I made the mistake of responding to a "challenging time at work" question for an email software company with hardware experience story, as I was telling the truth about a challenging time, however physical on location hardware support experience isn't really relevant to a remote email security company, so I should have "lied" and played up a more software issue I dealt with to make it seem complicated, but it would have been more relevant. As for resume length, 2-3 pages is fine, they often use tools to search through key words within a resume, and unless you're willing to make a custom resume per each job listing, having something somewhat larger helps ensure you'll have key words. If you did many roles at a company, you want to be detailed and spell out what you did, even if it's 5-6 lines under a position instead of 3-4 shorter ones. ALSO! (last point I swear), by the time you're at a 2-3 round interview, they're also looking for "fit" meaning if they can get along with you, so be friendly, make jokes if the opportunity presents, etc...sometimes you'll get to talk about interests outside work, so connect with the recruiters or managers as best as possible. Fit is a massive thing, and really if you have a set level of knowledge and experience, you can be taught everything you'll do at a job, so the bigger factors are if the managers or employees like you.

Watching this, I am now convinced recruiters are a waste of time and money. They don't actually know about the jobs they are hiring for, so they can't tell an outstanding applicant from an average one, and have no clue about industry specific requirements...As a scientist, it is required to put a list of every publication you have. After a few years, that takes several pages, for no other reason than it has to be cited properly. Nobody thinks anyone, even the hiring manager is going to read every line of that, they are going to count the publications and make sure they are properly cited for integrity. Furthermore, certifications count and take up space. When I need to list my certifications that can take a page or more!

Do you honestly think I want to spend time typing all of that stuff out? Especially basic stuff that everyone in the industry must have to work legally? Do you honestly think I think it will help me get a job? It's an industry requirement.

I would love to cut my resume down to a page, 2 at max. It would save me a lot of wasted time and useless effort...Of course then I won't meet the minimum requirements or key word searches...

I’ve flipped the narrative. I don’t care what my resume looks like and I will flat out tell employers in interviews my resume looks the way it does because I fire employers who don’t appreciate me and the now hiring signs outside of everyone’s business right now says I’m not wrong. I will tell them I don’t lose jobs I move on because the company sucks🤷‍♂️. I’m candid, I don’t mess around with people. If you want your business to rot with a bad staff go ahead and skip over me I really don’t care. I am employed right now. My work and attendance stands on it’s own. Employers better get with the program if they want to keep people like me because I know we’re not a dime a dozen anymore.

They're basically just trying all they can to reject all the weird people... they'll usually be fine if the recruit is not intelligent or skilled as long as they're not weird...