finding career zen

How to Make Your Resume Stand Out in a Crowded Job Market With Stephen Greet

• Pete Newsome • Episode 54

Share episode

Ever found yourself staring at a blank document, the cursor blinking mockingly as you try to encapsulate your career on a single page? Fear not, as Stephen Greet of BeamJobs steps up to the plate in our latest episode, bringing his tech-savvy approach to the age-old quandary of resume writing. We tear down the intimidating walls of drafting the perfect resume, offering guidance for those struggling to showcase their professional journey.

We start this episode by dissecting the elements of a standout resume, including the surprisingly overlooked part: personalization. With Stephen's expertise, we cover the essential steps to crafting a resume that tells your story and resonates with hiring managers. We emphasize the persuasive power of numbers and the critical need for clarity, ensuring that your resume won't be the one lost in the abyss of the 'apply now' button.

To conclude this episode, we discuss the resume builder created by BeamJobs, revealing how its straightforward, step-by-step assistance helps job applicants succeed. This game-changing tool helped Pete's son breeze through his graduate school application.

Additional Resources:

🧠 WANT TO LEARN MORE? Be sure to subscribe and check out https://zengig.com/

👋 FOLLOW PETE NEWSOME ONLINE:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petenewsome/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteNewsome

👋 FOLLOW STEPHEN GREET ONLINE:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-greet/

Pete Newsome:

You're listening to the Finding Zen Career in Podcast. I'm Pete Newsome and my guest today is Stephen Greet, co-founder of BeamJobs. Stephen, how are you today?

Stephen Greet:

I'm doing really well, Pete. How are you?

Pete Newsome:

I'm doing great. It's so wonderful to have you on. Beamjobs is the best platform that's out there today for resumes. Why don't you tell us a little bit about BeamJobs and how you came to start the company?

Stephen Greet:

Yeah, so I'm happy to go into my background and my spiel. So the company was actually started by my identical twin brother and I, so I was at a company called Chegg in data. He was an engineer at a little company called Google. We both always wanted to start a company together, didn't really know what we wanted to do, so back in 2018, we both took the plunge and just sort of quit our jobs cold. We knew we wanted to do something in the hiring space, but we didn't know what that looked like.

Stephen Greet:

So for the first two years, we just helped companies hire technical talent. So hire engineers, hire data scientists and a common problem that we always saw was that we'd have really, really qualified people who would apply to the roles that we helped fill, but the resumes just didn't reflect the quality of the candidate that they were. So we set out to build software to try to solve that. So back in 2020, we launched the first version of our resume product, the whole premise being that we use data to make sure that your resume gets you more interviews, and over time, we've grown quite a bit. So we've just crossed over 2 million resumes created on the platform, and the beauty of the system is that the more that people use the platform, the better it gets over time, and our goal is just to help everyone put their best foot forward, because resume writing is stressful. It's not something you do a lot, but it has such an outsized impact on your career earnings and your career trajectory.

Pete Newsome:

I was looking at your homepage and the headline that's on there currently says a resume that removes stress. Right, I mean, that's such a simple thing to say, but powerful, because resumes add a huge degree of success, or stress rather, to candidates. Why is that? I mean, why are resumes such a difficult thing for individuals?

Stephen Greet:

Look, let's say it's something you are going to get a job or not get a job based on something that you do maybe once every five years. You're not in there. Your day-to-day job is not creating resumes, right? Your day-to-day job is doing your job, but you're judged by this document or this artifact that is completely divorced from the actual job that you do. Right, it's not about your job, it's how you talk about your job.

Stephen Greet:

So the reason it's so stressful is how do you sum up your career or your life on this one-page piece of paper and really make sure that you're putting your best foot forward? It's just not something that we do a lot, but again, it has such a massive impact on your career trajectory and your lifetime career earnings and it's just not something that we do a lot. So no one knows the best practice, because there's not a lot of objective best practice. It's sort of jumping from subjective opinion to subjective opinion, completely divorced from the reality of what works to get interviews and what doesn't. And when you're looking at that blank page of paper, you feel that weight on your shoulders incredibly, because you know how important it is and you just don't know how to crack the code, to get started and to get the interview.

Pete Newsome:

Yeah, and it's almost like the better you've, meaning you don't need to create a resume because your career reputation has taken care of itself, you get referrals and recommended to places, or you've thrived for a long time as one organization. You're almost at a disadvantage when it comes to creating resumes, which is a cruel bit of irony, I think 100% and trends are constantly changing right.

Stephen Greet:

Imagine you got a job eight years ago. You've been at the company for eight years and now you're reentering the workforce and ChatGPT is a thing. Where do you even begin to start thinking about how to present your resume with modern technology or adapting to current trends? It's just the more you stay at a company, the more disadvantaged you are, unless you're at the cream of the crop and you're getting inundated with inbound LinkedIn messages with job offers. I think that's a rarity and I think people think that's more common than it is, but it's the rare candidate Most people do have to put in that work, create their resume, build their network to really land the job that they want.

Pete Newsome:

Well, the better your resume, the more opportunities are going to come your way. I think everyone can acknowledge that. But it still creates a big challenge to those who don't know where to start, and that's where you guys come in right.

Stephen Greet:

That's exactly the goal. I think people see their success in the job search as a reflection of their self-worth and I think that's most acutely felt by people entering the workforce. So recent grads or new grads, people who are laid off and people who are looking for a career change. Because it's exactly what you were saying, pete. It's that first job, getting in, breaking through, is the hardest part, and once you do that it becomes a bit easier. But it's just overwhelming to get started and not sure what to include, specifically when you feel like you have no relevant experience or no experience to get you the job. It can just feel almost impossible.

Pete Newsome:

So you think about resumes more than I do. I think about young professionals a whole lot. Why don't we help them with this in school? Have you thought about why there's such a gap between what you need and what you're actually getting in terms of education?

Stephen Greet:

Don't even get me started on this. This is one of my hot button issues. The name of the game for colleges is not necessarily job preparedness, right, the name of the game for a lot of colleges is to get higher articulation to get more students to keep that revenue coming in, not necessarily with an interest or an importance placed on placement. So there's this massive gap between the incentives that colleges have where they want to get more students in the door and the incentives of the student themselves where they're laden with tens of thousands, a hundred thousands of dollars of debt without the preparedness to turn that debt into meaningful income to then pay off the debt. It's just this difference of incentives between students and the leaders of the colleges.

Pete Newsome:

Yeah, and you and I talked about this before recording. We probably should have hit record. I'm not sure any college would ever talk to either one of us if we had. Maybe it's better that we didn't. But we share a perspective that students or recent grads need more help than they're getting from those who are educating them. So where do they begin? I mean, start at the basics. If you're a new grad, where should you begin with your resume?

Stephen Greet:

So I can talk sort of anecdotally about my experience, even right. So I graduated with a degree from math. I had no idea what I could do with a degree in math, right? So where do you start? I just I knew I needed income, I knew I needed a job. So the first thing I did is a Google search what can I do with a math degree? But that was my job, that was what I did. I just did a Google search and from the list of five job titles oh, data analyst sounds cool.

Stephen Greet:

And that first thing that I would recommend is starting with identifying potential jobs that you can take on. Right, it doesn't have to be jobs that you're in love with, but let's just start with a list of possible job titles. If you're a marketer right, what are all of the things that you can do in marketing? It is an incredibly big field with almost infinite job titles. So first you have to lock in on some potential job titles and then from there, you can really start digging into the research Beyond that, figuring out custom jobs, how to customize your resume. But it really starts with figuring out what your possibilities are based on your degree.

Pete Newsome:

Yeah, I've been in touch with a lot of new grads over the past week and a lot of them don't even know what they want to pursue, so they have this degree.

Pete Newsome:

They know they need to figure out their career opportunities, but they don't know where to start. And I give similar advice because you can't hit a target if you don't know what the target is, let alone if it's going to move, and we know it will move. Career paths are winding, but a lot of these guys are saying I don't even know where to begin. So we're not going to solve that today necessarily, but there are lots of assessments out there for young people and that I agree with you a hundred percent that that is a very, very important first step building a resume and pursuing job opportunities. Talk to me for a minute about what are the important components of a resume for someone who's just starting out.

Stephen Greet:

Yeah. So once you have that level of specificity right, like you said, you can't create a resume that's going to work for a software engineering role and an HR role. They're completely different disciplines. So once you have an idea of the kind of jobs you're going for, the first piece of advice I go for is read 10, 15, 20 job descriptions right. Find job posts for that kind of job. Understand the typical responsibilities, understand the skills of the trade, and hiring managers at this phase of your career are not expecting you to be a full breath expert. You don't have to know 25 skills right. Pitch yourself as a master of one or two skills, things that you could actually apply on day one of the job, because, again, hiring managers understand that you don't have that relevant experience yet. So it's really about specificity and trying to make it clear that you know a couple things that can actually add value to the role you're applying for, and color that with how you learn those skills right.

Stephen Greet:

Do you know Microsoft Excel from a school project? Don't be afraid to include that school project. I think the problem that I encounter a lot with recent grads is that they think they need to have 10 years of relevant experience, but it's just not true. You can make any experience relevant, whether it's a class project, a volunteer initiative right. It shows that you take charge and you can actually go out your way to provide value. Anything can be made to be relevant experience. And don't get hung up on not having five years of relevant data analysis experience, right. That's just not the reality.

Pete Newsome:

I'm so glad you said that, because one of the things that I've said a few times lately to young grads is it's okay to make small things sound big. You don't feel fraudulent in doing that, and they feel like they're cheating the system. But you have to do that. You have to highlight the attributes that you have in lieu of others, and so it's incumbent upon you to do that and it's expected, right. I think that's as important as anything else is. People know that a resume is someone's best foot that they're putting forward. So if you're not willing to do that for yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.

Stephen Greet:

Yeah, let me tell you what a hiring manager doesn't want to read. I'm just okay to excel, right, that is not that you need to be. The resume is the place to brag. It's the place to really be a little bit arrogant, a little bit cocky. Really talk yourself up, because it also is a reflection of how you communicate right Written communication. In businesses or in jobs. You need to be able to voice something and articulate the value that you're providing, and if you can do it on your resume, it's a pretty good reflection in that, or a pretty good indicator that you'll be able to do it on the job, which is incredibly, incredibly valuable to any company.

Pete Newsome:

So let's talk for a minute, then, about how BeamJobs can help with that. I want to talk about some other things that are negatives on resumes and what to avoid, but let's focus on the positives first. You're coming out of school minimal experience, maybe, some internships, maybe not right, and that's pretty common too. What does BeamJobs do to help you build this initial resume?

Stephen Greet:

I do a lot of writing for BeamJobs as well, and the hardest part about writing is looking at the blank page right, not knowing where to start. So I think the real value that we can provide at BeamJobs or we do provide is we help you overcome that cold start problem. We break this overwhelming task of building a compelling resume into micro steps that don't feel overwhelming at all. We'll start simple let's ask your name, right, we'll take it from there. Ask the job title you're applying to. We'll make it a really incremental, guided process so you're not feeling the weight of looking at that blank page and figuring out what to come up with. And the trickiest part, I think for most college students and most people generally is figuring out how to talk about their experience. And we do a lot there to give you recommendations and proactive tools and tips and we score your feedback.

Pete Newsome:

But we our aim is really make this daunting task straightforward simple, perfect, and you guys have a lot of sample resumes as well, which I know is a great way to get ideas, and if you see what others have done, see those recommendations. So talk about that for a little bit.

Stephen Greet:

Yeah, we have examples across every profession you could probably imagine, across all levels of seniority, and what really matters here is that these are not spun out of cloth right, they are what works. They are data-driven. We know what works to get interviews, we know what doesn't work to get interviews specifically on your resume, specifically for people who are entering the workforce. So we take that data, distill it into practical examples so to again help you overcome that cold start problem of looking at a blank screen.

Pete Newsome:

So where do you get your data from? How do you gather that?

Stephen Greet:

It's a beautiful cyclical process, right? So the more that people use our platform, we know, hey, you're an entry-level marketer looking for a job. We know that you applied for X jobs with this resume. We know you got an interview at Y number of places, right? So the more that people use our tool, the better our system becomes, because we're learning what works and what doesn't. So now the beauty is all of the data comes from the people who are using our platform and, with over 2 million resumes created, at this point, we have just a real huge corpus of data to know what works and what doesn't to get that interview.

Pete Newsome:

So, when you look at what works, is there any consistent themes that you see that you'd want to share with anyone listening?

Stephen Greet:

I would love to. The number one far and away most likely indicator of whether you're going to get an interview or not is whether you quantified your experience, and I know this can be overwhelming, specifically for fresh grads or people who are breaking the workforce. I don't have any relevant experience. How do I quantify it? It doesn't have to be as overwhelming as you're thinking, right. So let's say you're looking for a marketing role at a college and as part of a class project, you did a pseudo PR announcement for a made up company, right. You can turn that into metrics, right? Wrote a press release that garner 17% more views than baseline, right?

Stephen Greet:

No one is expecting these metrics that you include in your resume to be wholly accurate. You just have to be able to make sure that you're positioning yourself, that you're talking to the pain points of the company. Companies want quantifiable results. If you're also focusing on quantifiable results on your resume, you're just removing the doubt from the recruiter's mind and you're going to get most likely going to get an interview right. You want to make the recruiter's job easy. Convince them you can do the job. There's no better way to do that than numbers.

Pete Newsome:

You just said a phrase that is one that I repeat often when I'm talking about resumes or a profile on LinkedIn or any interaction you have when you're a job seeker is make the recruiter's job easy, and what that means to me is don't have them guess, don't ask them to try to put you know, fill in a missing puzzle piece. You want to spell it out. So you, you, what you were. I usually think of it in terms of red flags and I want to get to that in a second, but what you're saying is spell out your highlights very, very clearly for them. Why is that a struggle? For most people, I mean, it's intuitive, right, and when you hear it, you think, of course, I should do that. Is it just a discomfort with trying to make yourself sound better than you believe you are? Is that? Is that why?

Stephen Greet:

I think it's that, but I also think it's an editing problem, right, the more you write. I think what you learn the more you write is that it's much harder to be concise in your writing than it is to be super lengthy, right, when you have to write with concision and write a highlight reel, you have to do some cutting, you have to leave some on the cutting room floor, right. And I think new grads especially are a bit insecure that they think they have to include everything they've ever done, such that when it's time to cut they think everything is too precious. And it's really that process of editing and trying to cut the fat that makes it so much harder than sort of just going with your five-page resume with every single experience you've ever heard about or read about or done. It's that editing process which can be difficult.

Pete Newsome:

So you bring up something that I have to ask the age-old question One-page resume or can it be more than one page for a new grad?

Stephen Greet:

For new grads keep it one page right. If you're going to two pages as a new grad, unless you have six or seven relevant internship experiences, it just seems like you're adding a lot of fat, a lot of fluff to the resume. Specifically for new grads right. If you have more experience, it can definitely go on to the second page, but new grads there's no reason that your resume needs to go on to the second page. It but new grads there's no reason that your resume needs to go on onto the second page.

Pete Newsome:

It just means you need to do a bit more editing. Now, most grads do have that initial problem that you've been referencing, which is not enough content, right, but I see some that do have a lot. There's a tendency to put in personal things, hobbies, right, volunteer activities. Where do you land on that for a new grad?

Stephen Greet:

So I think it's actually very relevant on the type of company and type of goal you're applying to. So a little story on me. So before I worked at Chegg, which is a tech company, I worked at Geico, right, a big, stodgy insurance player. And what I did in college is I played a lot of poker, but I didn't just play poker to gamble, right, I did it in a very data-driven, analytical way to improve my game. So when I applied to tech companies, I actually included that as a talking point.

Stephen Greet:

I played poker, but I talked about my strategy and my strategy of using data to become a better poker player, and that got me so many interviews and it was a massive talking point on interviews, to the point that the reason I got the job is because that was my in at Chegg for the hiring managers. We talked about that and I got to dive into more of my analytical philosophy. So if you can position an experience that you have and make it relevant to the role you're applying to, I say, by all means, include it, because you know what stood out when I was applying to jobs against 100 other people that I played poker right. That wasn't on everyone's resume and I made it relevant. So if you can make it relevant, I say go for it.

Pete Newsome:

That's a great way to phrase it and I'm really glad you told that story and were you good at poker.

Stephen Greet:

I was pretty decent, yeah, I consistently generated return on investment. I tapped out a little bit after college when the career took over, but it was a nice little hobby in college, my first foray into turning my math skills into a bit of money.

Pete Newsome:

Nice, nice, good for you. Well, but I do think that is such an important point to make it's okay to have personal things, provided you make them relevant and that you phrased it perfectly. So that's a mistake that I see a lot where I don't know what else to say. So I'm just going to start putting things down, and it's all very consistent what you're saying, which is how, by the way, all of this applies to experienced professionals too. I'm asking you a lot of questions about new grads, because we know that that is who really struggles the most in just starting a resume. But I see these challenges apply to people who are very seasoned, very experienced, and it really never goes away, does it?

Stephen Greet:

It really doesn't. And, to your point, you have to make it relevant. Everyone watches Netflix, everyone watches TV, but you can't put that on your resume because it's not going to stand out, it's not going to be a talking point. If you can make it relevant, it can apply across the board, to both entry-level people, seasoned people. If you can get a conversation going and make it a draw, I don't think it ever hurts, as long as you're drawing attention for the right reasons reasons.

Pete Newsome:

Yeah, no doubt. And what about volunteer activity? You know that because on one hand you could argue, hey, that makes me look like a good citizen, and it does. I would argue that it's not the most relevant. So what's your, what's your take on that?

Stephen Greet:

So I think, especially as a new grad, right, you want to show that you can handle responsibility, you can have you're a bit independent, and I think volunteer work is a great example of that. Right, did you show up every day or every week for four years of your college degree and help people, or help show up and take initiative and own projects? I think that's exceptional and I think that's a great way to position yourself as someone who's responsible and can handle that responsibility on your resume. So it all comes back to this point. I'm going to sound like a broken record, but can you make it relevant, right? Hiring managers want people who are responsible, who are going to show up and do the work. Anything that's evidence of that, including volunteer activity, can be made relevant to highlight that you check those boxes.

Pete Newsome:

Perfect. I love it as far as looking at things as you go forward in your career. I tell people and so some of this is a sanity check for me right? I want to see if the advice I give as a recruiter has been the right advice as a true resume professional is you want to highlight your best attributes. You want to put those up top. So I tell students if you're new on the job market professionally, put your education up top, because that is probably the most relevant thing you've done. But when you're old, like me, your education is almost insignificant. Right, bury it at the bottom. No one cares what degree I had in a few years ago.

Stephen Greet:

I could not agree more with this, and it's one of my pet peeves about resumes is when you're a seasoned professional of five, 10 years of experience and you're still talking about your GPA or the classes you took in undergrad. It's just not relevant. Lead with your strength. Lead with what's relevant. If you just graduated with a software engineering degree, that is your headline. That is the thing that makes you most qualified or most likely to get an interview. And again, as you progress in your career, that becomes inverted. Your relevant work experience becomes the reason you get an interview. So, exactly to your point, Pete it's lead with your home run. Lead with the thing that's going to grab the interviewer's attention or convince them that you are worth interviewing.

Pete Newsome:

What about objective statements? I see some people recommend against them. I'm a fan. I think the more clearly you can spell out what your purpose is with creating and then sending someone your resume, the better. But not everyone shares that view.

Stephen Greet:

I am wholeheartedly in agreement, as long as you're customizing it for each job you're applying to. I'm sure you had the experience that I had as well. When you're reviewing 100, 200 resumes, the resume objectives become this blur of generic nonsense. But I think a little, a little hack that we've identified is if you mentioned the company name of the company you're applying to in the objective, you're immediately more likely to get an interview right. So it's all about that specificity, because, believe me, every other objective is I am highly qualified for this role, so you have to make it like it's you're writing to one person and one company. It cannot be generic, otherwise you're just wasting real estate.

Pete Newsome:

Yeah, and that is a huge proponent of that where the more specific you make your messaging and I'm going to put you on the spot now Will you come back and report with me again to talk about cover letters, because I don't want to hijack what we're talking about now, but I'm coining this phrase, stephen cover story. I think you need to tell your story specific to the individual job and the person who's viewing your resume to determine whether they should pick yours out of the pile or quickly move on, because we know you get what. Five, six, seven seconds that's how long a recruiter is going to look at a resume and make a decision.

Stephen Greet:

Yeah, you have about six seconds. So if your objective is fluff, the recruiter is going to see that they're going to immediately move on and be a little bit more dismissive as opposed to, let's say, you're applying to beam jobs and you're leading with beam jobs on your, your objective. I'm reading that. You have my attention right. Make sure it's standing up, make sure it's custom is customized and your companies have egos hiring managers that egos play into that ego a little bit and talk about how great the company and the role is and how great they are at their job. Right, everyone has to read about themselves. Everyone has to read about themselves, hiring managers included.

Pete Newsome:

I unfortunately have not had a line out the door yet of people coming and saying my career aspiration and my greatest goal is to work for you or your company, but I'm still waiting. But if someone does that and they say this is my number one objective is to work for you and work at Beam Jobs, you're going to stop, like you said. You can't not stop and notice that I mean. But how rare is it that people will actually take that step right? We could say it and no one would argue against that. I can't imagine they would if they were on with us right now. But what percentage of people actually take that advice, do they?

Stephen Greet:

Oh, it is so small. So even another experience right. We hired for a marketing role at Beam Jobs and within 24 hours we had 750 applicants. We had one required question of just tell me about a past marketing experiment you've done and 15% of people, even though it was required, filled it out right. So I understand it can be very overwhelming when you think you're competing against hundreds of hundreds of other people for a given job. But you have to understand the average level of quality of these applicants or the customization of these resumes and applications is nil. If you just do a little bit extra, you are going to stand out. You immediately vault yourself into this top 10% because most people are just playing the numbers game and blindly submitting resumes and applications. So if you can do that little bit extra to draw the attention of the hiring manager, I promise you you are much more likely to get an interview.

Pete Newsome:

I could not agree more. And the bar is so low, which is to the candidate's advantage, right, it's unfortunate that the bar is so low in many respects. Ai one-click apply job application process is killing how the system works. Process is killing how the system works, but that is to the advantage of any candidate willing to go slightly above and beyond not significantly, but slightly, which is crazy.

Stephen Greet:

I think that's the point. I think most people, when they hear, oh, I have to customize my resume for each job that I applied to, they're thinking hours. I'm not talking hours, I'm talking 10 to 15 minutes of changing your base resume for a given job. Read the job description, read the skills section. As you read, it does anything you've ever done or worked on come to mind. That is the level of simplicity we're talking about and it will again vault you right to the top because, I promise you, most of the people you're competing against for a given role are not taking that time. A given role are not taking that time?

Pete Newsome:

Nope, they're not. And I know that when we see you see it on the resume side, we see it on the candidate side, when it comes to recruiting, Very few people are willing to do it. Many are willing to complain about how hard the process is, but that's a pretty big cheat code. And you said 10 to 15 minutes. I say at most. You know, I think it's probably closer to five. So if you see a job that you really want, isn't it worth an extra five, 10, 15, 20 minutes? Of course it is.

Stephen Greet:

Absolutely. And again, I think the quickest hack you can do here is include the company name in that objective, because it just immediately draws the attention and again at least shows that you are willing to do the work to at least customize your resume for the job right.

Pete Newsome:

People want to know that you're willing to put in the work and there's no better indicator than if you took that five to 10 minutes to customize your resume. It's a great tip because if I know nothing else about you as an applicant, I know you were willing to do a little bit of extra effort to catch my attention. And that is super meaningful because I think what candidates don't realize is on the recruiting side, we're just as worried about candidates disappearing. On the recruiting side we're just as worried about candidates disappearing, not being interested, ghosting, whatever you want to say, as the candidates are about company. So my team of recruiters they want nothing more than a candidate who is genuinely interested in the role they're recruiting for. That is like gold. So when candidates are proactive, even if it's a small step, like with a big impact, mentioning the company name makes a huge difference in their candidacy.

Stephen Greet:

Yeah, you were speaking music to my ears, right? Everyone wants to look good. Everyone wants to be good at their job. Do you know? Hiring managers and recruiters look good at their jobs If they get people who follow through in the process and don't ghost. It's a two-way street. Make the life of the person you're trying to appeal to as easy as possible. Make them look good and you're more likely to have success in your job search.

Pete Newsome:

And maybe that's why we hit it off the first time we ever connected, because we're very but we come from a very different place. Right, I'm trying to provide career advice. I'm an recruiting company. You're the expert in putting together resumes specifically, and so, even though our ultimate objective isn't the same and how we earn our livings, our message is almost exactly the same, right, coming from very different perspectives.

Stephen Greet:

Fundamentally, quality rises to the top right, and I think that's true on both sides of the coin here, for both hiring managers and for candidates. So just make it so that you are that quality that rises to the top, because, again, when you're reviewing 600, 700, 800 resumes, the ones that took the time are clear as day. It is so obvious when someone takes the extra initiative to put in the work and customize their application.

Pete Newsome:

Absolutely so I'll share an analogy with you. I recorded a video earlier today and see if you like it. I recommend that people treat their resume as if they're a magazine publisher, where if you're publishing a magazine, say People magazine you know that's going to be at the checkout counter at a grocery store, right and with 10 other magazines the Candy, the Gum, all of that people are passing through, they scan those magazines and it takes the right headline, the right imagery, whatever it is to prompt someone to pick up that magazine, maybe buy it, but at the very least open and see what else is there. And that's what I've started recommending to people to look at their resumes like, Think, like a magazine publisher, Think your headline, Think your imagery. The more you catch my attention and you display that you're what I want, the more prone I am to pick it up.

Stephen Greet:

Exactly, you're touching on all the points. This is exactly the advice we echo, right? It's the reason that you should include the company name and the objective. If you can, you should make your headline, your job title, on your resume match the title you're applying to. It's the reason we use numbers, because it makes it scannable and immediately convinces someone that you're qualified, because you're speaking to metrics that prove that point. Right, it's exactly to that point, pete. You want to make sure that someone looking at your resume very briefly can be convinced that you're good for the role.

Pete Newsome:

Perfect. Now you've given an immense amount of quality advice for people to apply, and I hope a lot do, but let's talk about things to avoid for a minute. Sure, what are the top resume red flags? We've written lots of blogs about them. I'm sure you have too, but if you had to narrow it down to a couple prevalent mistakes, what would you describe them as?

Stephen Greet:

So I'm going to look at this from a lens of new grads and people who are trying to enter the workforce. I think the number one mistake that I see is a skill section that's 15, 20, 25 skills long. And I think this is even more so true in technical fields. Right, if you're trying to convince a hiring manager, as a software engineer, that you know 10 different programming languages and 15 different coding frameworks, that's not reality, right? No one expects you to understand that right out of college. Be a master of a few skills, not a jack of all trades, if you can avoid it.

Stephen Greet:

Because, to your point, specificity matters. Make it so that you're the perfect fit for that one specific role you're looking for and the other is content. That's too long. Right To your point where you want to make the headline as appealing as possible. If you have a resume that's three bullet points, that's four paragraphs each bullet point, you're not doing yourself any favors because you're making the life of the hiring manager harder. Always look through the lens. If you were the hiring manager, what would you want to see? How can you make their life as easy as possible?

Stephen Greet:

And no one's going to read it if it's long. You're just going to immediately into the no pile.

Pete Newsome:

Right, I mean so to that. So another question put you on the spot with this one, an objective statement. If someone is going to use one, what length would you? What's too long?

Stephen Greet:

I'm saying anything beyond like the four or five lines is pushing it. I'm saying keep it to two, three lines. Mention the company name. Be highly specific, not generic. Do not just pad content. Everyone can. I'd much rather your resume have white space at the bottom than you just fluffing out content just to fluff out content.

Pete Newsome:

Nice, much rather your resume have white space at the bottom than you just fluffing out content. Just to fluff out content, nice, perfect. I say three lines. That's my standard go-to, so we're in sync there too. All right, so we've given a lot of advice in a short period of time. If someone wants to use BeamJobs, steve, where do they go? Where do they start?

Stephen Greet:

You can just head on over to beamjobscom. We make it super easy so that you again our goal is to make this process as less overwhelming as we possibly can and the homepage will direct you through that flow which, again, name of the game, make creating your resume not intimidating, and that's the hope. When you come to beam jobs, we'll walk you through it so that we can take you step-by-step. You walk away with a resume you're really proud of, that gets you more interviews.

Pete Newsome:

Perfect, and I don't know if I told you this yet, but my son, who just graduated from college, needed to create a CV for grad school and he used BeamJobs. So not only am I a? Fan, but I think I'm still paying for it with him, but I'm also-.

Stephen Greet:

I love to hear it, but, pete, you should know you always get free access. You and the family always get free access. Give me an email.

Pete Newsome:

I should have made that call Well listen, but it was great to experience it through his lens, through his eyes, and it was a great tool that was easy to use and I'm not going to my desk here. Hopefully he gets the fellowship that he applied for and we'll know very soon.

Stephen Greet:

I sure hope so. Now you have to follow up with me. I have to know, sure?

Pete Newsome:

Well, look, we're going to come back, we're going to, we're going to record again, hopefully in the near future, to talk about cover letters. It's an important part of the process. It gets a lot of you know, a lot of controversy at times, right? So that's not everyone agrees, but I think we're in sync there too. So, steven, thank you so much for your time today. It's been very valuable.

Stephen Greet:

Yeah, thanks so much, pete. This has been, this has been a pleasure.

Pete Newsome:

And.