 So, this is the resume writing workshop, and the goal is really not to just improve your resume but to make it so that you have a better chance of landing an interview based on your resume. If you guys can just introduce yourself in the chat and share your occupation or industry that you're looking to work in and some sort of geography like City or County. And you can also share how you found your most recent job or your first job. I'm going to just share in the chat that I work in affordable housing in San Francisco, and most of my jobs I found actually my first job I found from a job fair. And then many other jobs I found online, especially through crisis. And at any time during the presentation feel free to ask questions in the chat. Basically, there's two main types of resumes out there. One is chronological where you typically have your contact information at the top, followed by an objective and a summary of skills, which usually has traditionally been at the end of people's resumes but I recommend moving it up to the top. These days, and then that is followed by a list of your places of employment and your job functions and achievements chronologically reversed, and then with some education certifications volunteer work etc at the end. But there's another type of resume which some people have which is a functional resume where you can see in the purple part instead of having your places of employment and job functions that job functions actually get categorized. And with the most relevant categories first based on the job that you're applying to, and then your places of employment and achievements just become a list at the end. So here's a sample of a chronological resume where this person worked at three hospitals and they listed their job titles with their job descriptions functions and things that they did there. And then this one is a sample of a functional resume, which I would recommend for certain people where your position, if your job title has remained the same from place to place where you've worked, you can consolidate the information into this type so that someone reading your resume doesn't have to read the same thing over and over at different workplaces, or in some fields where it's pretty much standard categories of skills that you would have. So in this example here they have administrative support and everything they've done related to that customer service and Reshet reception, and then lastly management and supervision. So, you are able to grasp quickly that this person has supervised staff, and then at the bottom they just list their employment history, and the different companies where they worked, which I would still include the dates there. So here's the two side by side where you can see the difference. And it, I think most people have a chronological resume but sometimes it could be helpful to think about whether or not you want to switch it to a functional resume or just keep it chronological but just to let you know the two are out there. And just going to look in the chat to see who is here. So we have some folks. Someone who found their job on indeed Craigslist library assistant healthcare senior project manager information software engineering instructional technologies San Francisco internship medicine doctor doctors license in China. And then a profit after a long break. Okay. Cool. Thank you everyone. And that'll be useful later when we do a sample job search. So today, what I kind of want to walk through is we're going to put on our human resources hat to pretend that we are in the role of the hiring manager. That's really where you'll see whether your resume is strong or not in its current state and whether there are some things that you think you need to change in it. So, if we look at these two candidates, if we are the hiring manager candidate A is on the left versus candidate B is on the right. If you are just want to put into the chat which of these two candidates you think sounds like a stronger candidate for this role of PR manager. And yeah, a couple folks are saying candidate B. So interestingly, these could be exactly the same candidate right they have exactly the same experience but the difference is that candidate B gives us important information they tell us quantity scale, the volume, the frequency of their work and it makes them sound like a stronger candidate. So, adding how many and how often makes a big difference and being able to compare you to the candidate next to you who has who may have the exact same experience. So, by step one in your own few if you have your resume with you. Resume self audit is to add numbers to your resume, wherever you can. And so just kind of pause for three minutes so that if you want to pull up your resume, you can kind of exit the full screen of this zoom webinar at the top right or if you press escape on your resume and you can just pull up either your LinkedIn and make live changes or your resume file or if you have it printed in front of you, but here are some places on your resume where you can add numbers. To your job functions so some things that you did on a recurring basis that were every day, every week or every month, large ongoing services. So, answering the questions how many, how frequently, how many people did you process, what was the volume, how many did you train, if you were at the front desk doing support how many people did you support, were you in a professional office or what kind of office, how many people worked for you, how many people were on your team. How often did you do certain tasks so really just everywhere you mentioned a job function can you add a number of some sort. And this is not just frivolously adding numbers everywhere. The really the goal at the bottom, which is highlighted is you want to show leadership, you want to show depth in your work, the ability to handle higher higher volumes than others, the ability to be more efficient than others, you just really want to like if you have the experience you want to give people a full description of what experience you did have. And then if you have projects on your resume what were the outcomes of the projects how many people or teams or offices for impacted by did or who how many do you have to work with. And in terms of achievements, if you list achievements on your resume how much did you earn the company how much did you save the company, what percentage increase or decrease did you help them grow. Did you help them downsize like whatever it is. Those are all different places where you can add these numbers. So in the two examples, I just showed one person here under their lead business analyst role they said identify key roadblocks and propose effective solutions for a $55 million project not just a project that saved the hospital. So that's pretty great compared to someone who did not include the numbers and just said they did a project that saved the hospital money. And they also said that they were promoted after just 11 months of employment. And then the other person provided telephone support investigated and resolved billing problems for an 18 member manufacturers buying group, which is a lot more impressive than like, if it was only do. Probably less experienced than someone who supported a 200 member manufacturers buying group. So the numbers just make a huge difference. And that would be really, that's the advice that I give to the most people, most of the time. Why does this matter. So, if you take this image of these rocks on the beach, if the outer ring is the company, and each color of rocks is a, is the department within the organization, and each individual employee is one of these little pebbles. Basically, what the HR, the hiring manager is trying to do is see if you fit into one of these open roles that they have in their organization. But when they're receiving resumes, this is what it looks like. They're just getting a ton of candidates from all over the place and each person's resume looks different. And really what you want your resume to do for you is to have HR picking it out as the one that they want to do the phone screen and then hopefully the in person interviews or the video interviews to get the role. And in the environment right now it's pretty competitive. I feel like jobs have just been competitive for for a while, probably the last couple of decades and I know after the great recession it was like for every one city job that was opening up there were 1,000 applicants, which literally this for more than the pile of this picture. So it's just really important to give yourself at least the leg up in in doing these small edits to your resume that can really make it clear for someone that you're more qualified than the next person over. And a few other things to consider are that people may have already had the job title multiple times and you're trying to apply for it new you're trying to apply for a promotion. People may have worked at several companies in the industry, while you're trying to break into a new industry, or people have had exactly the same projects and tasks as those in the job description and you're maybe saying you have transferable skills but not the exact skills. You don't know the exact same software as you. Or they have relevant certifications or degrees recently, but this is why it's really important to pay attention to your cover letter your skills and experience sections of your resume to really make it stand out what qualifies you for the role and you're really excited about it if it sounds like something that you would be very qualified for, then you really want to make that show in your materials. Oh, and then from the employer's perspective, there's also several factors that are affecting how your resume gets read. So, for example, if it's a large enough company, they might be sending your resume first through an e reader like it's a computer reading in a human being, so then the words really matter because someone's not going to put two and two together and realize that oh, this thing that you're calling something else is actually the same thing as that thing you're calling. Or it might even be better because maybe they did program the computer to read it like that versus a human being reading your resume wouldn't know that this software that you use is similar to what they're asking for with this other software that they use. And it might be, it might be an HR professional reading your resume or it might be someone who is not like professionally trained at processing resumes so for example on one place where I worked. Our HR department was focused on the hiring of the property management positions because that was approximately 90% of the company. And so for the other 10% the corporate office jobs, all those departments like it communications had to an operations had to do their own. They process like we had to read the resumes ourselves, even though we were not the HR professionals. And be screening for people so it just want to make sure that the wording is friendly to everyone somebody who knows the job and someone who doesn't know the job you just want to make sure that you're still being clear about your qualifications and skills. And then someone may be reading it digitally on the computer, in which case the font size doesn't really matter because they can zoom in or out but if it's a printed version. So for example another place I worked, I would just screen through some resumes and then prints them to give to the next person, and you want to make sure that the printed version is also easy to read. This is just in case that's how that the next the second person is looking at it. And in most cases, it is usually a short staff department or there are open roles for a reason. So people possibly may only be giving your resume, I want to say, even less than a two minute review they could be skimming depending on, you know, if they get. If they get 20 candidates they'll probably spend time reading the resumes but if they get 1000. They're not going to be doing anything more than skimming your resume, just for the key words, and if it mostly looks relevant. They'll look again. If it mostly looks irrelevant. They will just toss it, and you might be really qualified but if you didn't spend the time to take out the non relevant things on your resume then you're just going to miss out on this job that could have been great for you. I have a few questions in the chat. So do you need to add numbers to every sentence or is it okay to just put one step for experience. Yeah, it doesn't have to be every sentence I think it, it's just where it will make a difference right so, for example, some of these jobs you might be, you may be applying against someone who graduated from your same graduate degree or from your same undergraduate program and so some of the things on your resume will be the same so what can you say compared to another person that will be a number that is competitive so for example, if you're applying to a large place and you worked with large teams then then you would want to save that number instead of you're not knowing that the scale of your company was similar in scale to that company, or similarly if you're working at a small place and you want to say like I have small business experience then you want to put those kinds of numbers. So if you don't have or can't get specific metrics regarding your performance, then I might just, if you can estimate that's helpful like if you have an idea that you may be processed 20 people a week or you can ask old coworkers who still work at the place where you used to work about the volumes. Otherwise, I mean don't make things up so just you can just leave it out but there are different ways to get different numbers doesn't always have to be like standard ones that people think of their can be a creative. And then one more question. Doctors license. Like to know if there's some institutions that can help immigrant doctors transfer from other countries to the US. Okay, I will leave that to Angela. Thanks, Angela. Alright, so going on. So here we have candidate C and D. And if you want to just put into the chat which candidate looks more qualified. Kind of a trick question, because they're kind of the same candidate again, but cool we have one vote for D, which I would suggest turning your resume into bullet points if possible. Sometimes it's nice to have narratives because you get the voice which is the candidate C wrote out in paragraph form. But nowadays, it's like people just don't have time anymore. There's like no work life balance in this country everybody's in a rush and it's just easier to read bullet points. And you have the cover letter where you can include your voice and kind of put more of the narrative back into it. And the nice thing about turning your sentences into bullet points is that you can then categorize them so I kind of alluded to these categories before in the last set. But basically, there are three different types of bullets you would have in your resume one is job functions. I noted with an F here one is projects and one is achievements. And ideally, you go, you could go through your resume and each sentence or each bullet point note. Are you talking about a project. Are you talking about an achievement, or are you talking about a job function. And this is kind of one of my not pet peeves but it's just like you look more organized if you put similar things together so if you put all the functions together then you list the projects then you list the achievements or even if you're applying to a project based position. Then you would want to put your project examples first, and then you can put either achievements of those projects and then list your everyday job functions. If you have it in bullet point form it's easier to move things around to make it in the order that's most impactful to the place where you're applying, and then for the next employer where you're applying if they care more about the, if, if your job functions were more relevant are more relevant to the position you're applying for you can move those to the top, you move the projects to the bottom, etc. And doing this exercise also helps you realize redundancies in your resume sometimes people write the same thing twice in different sentences and just like somewhere in the paragraph and people don't really have time to keep reading the same things over. So it's just helpful because you have a better visual view of everything you're saying in your resume and then you can do this categorization of the bullets so that they're in the most effective and organized order. Someone asked a question what about your profile should you keep that in sentence form. I think if you mean like an online profile summary or something. Yeah, you could use either. If you use bullet points below then it could be nice to keep the descriptive paragraph at the top in sentence form. I think just think about it whatever is easiest to read. So if you're, if you take yourself outside your own body and you're reading your resume as an external third party is it easier to read the paragraph, or is it easier to read the bullet points. So our next exercise is using some bullet points in your own resume. So if you want to just go through your resume and kind of note next to each sentence. Is this an F, is this a P, is this an A. And you can kind of determine whether or not you need to reorganize the order. So Fs are things that are daily regularly recurring annual semi annual quarterly P's projects are things that have phases. So it had like a beginning, a middle and end where you planned executed conducted post evaluation, for example. And the interesting thing with projects is that, you know, oftentimes projects involve multiple people. So, especially if you're in a large corporation, the project could have involved like 200 people across how many offices abroad and in the country. And you really want to highlight what was your role relative to others. So sometimes people just write they worked on a project but it's like 200 of you guys all said the same thing on your resume that you worked on this project like which thing did you do in that project. And also what's helpful is the duration, or some impressive numbers could be how many people did you have to coordinate with on the project team like how many time zones did you have to coordinate with or how many people together had to work on it in your office. And this is a chance for you to list what tools you used. So this is kind of like a good balance to your skills section where you list the skills and software and tools that you have used. But this is kind of a way to show where exactly you used those. And then for achievements could be key performance indicators of your company or if you have a strategic plan or annual goals that you set and that you've met or processes that you've improved. Usually, achievements is where people already have numbers on their resume, but you can include them in the other sections as well. And there's a question, what would you recommend one page or two page resume. So I think it's that next. No, but I would say two page resumes are fine. I would not try to squeeze everything into one page unless you're doing that in a way that it just looks, I mean it just happens to fit in a page that yeah, but don't try to squeeze it in like don't try to make it really small. I think longer than two is kind of like you didn't take that irrelevant stuff out. So what I usually do is I have one gigantic resume file of every like my master file of each job how I would describe it the long way and how I would describe it the short way. And then when I'm applying somewhere. I ask myself does this job it which is this job relevant to the role I'm applying for if it is you know keep the long one if it's not keep the short one, and then just like cut cut cut cut cut cut until it's down to two less than two pages. Since, as I said people don't have a lot of time to read through your resume you want to make sure that everything in there is relevant to the role. Another thing is that visually, you know sometimes people have been at a job for 1520 or 30 years, and it's just been that much of their life that they want to give it that much of the space on their resume. And that's okay if if what you're applying for is related to that. But if you're trying to change routes to go into what you studied but not what you worked in. Or if you're trying to just switch fields or something or you're trying to like hop back into the workforce into like some old job that you had years and years and years ago. You really want to upplay that section, you, you want to expand what's relevant, and you want to minimize what's irrelevant so even though it was 15, even though it was several decades of your life. If it's not related to the job you're applying for you just want to cut it down to like talk about what was relevant and then spend more time. You know, expanding your education section or expanding what's relevant like it. One person whose resume was mostly, I think their resume was mostly customer service and like they were trying to go into art curation. And they had studied art history but you know, when you have education at the end of your resume people won't realize that you do have relevant experience you do have relevant skills that you learned in school. If you don't move education to the top so in that instance, even though the education was like decades before, I would still move that to the top talked about what was my thesis project, what were my courses and list things that are all relevant keywords to the job that you're applying for because that's, that's what's relevant to them and that's what background you have in that subject and takes the customer service and just cut it really down until there's enough space where the ratio of the relevant is higher than the ratio of the irrelevant. I think that's adding information with trying to keep white space and ease of reading. I'm not, I'm not big on white space, even though I know it's good for everybody. So I think it's just like the content is really what matters on your resume, even formatting doesn't really matter I'll show some examples later which are all more on the graphic design field. They're a little out there, but yeah, I think it's just like how would you describe your job to someone who doesn't know what you did. And it. Yeah, it's like the, the analogy I was thinking about recently is like, if you have a friend who really likes giraffes, and you went to the zoo. You wouldn't like, you wouldn't tell them all about like all the other animals that you saw, and like blah blah blah. Like if you went to the zoo and you fed giraffes right, you would come to this friend and you would say, I just went to the zoo and I fed the giraffes you wouldn't say like, I just went to the zoo and I saw the lions I saw the bears I saw the tigers I like, and I saw the monkeys and then like I fed the giraffes and they don't care about that they just care about the giraffe part so just like get to the get to the content that they care about. If you cut your resume down to two pages should you mentioned in the line selected jobs only. Oh, um, I wouldn't cut the jobs out completely like I would still list the employer and the dates so that it doesn't look like a gap. But then I would just list one bullet point or two bullet points that are relevant, if any are, or, or you know if there aren't then just like list the employer but not show a gap. Okay. So, perfect question any tips on identifying the right keywords from a job description. So, um, the other thing with resume reviews is that my next question is always like, what is a job that you're trying to apply for because that's where it's important. And this is really the part that gets you to the interview. So highlighting keywords in the job description, like if you take a job description, pull out keywords first then you highlight them in some way where you never have to reread the entire description again later. But this is a good exercise because you make sure that you're including everything that might be important that you can say that's relevant from your experience. So in this example of a government affairs lead, it just highlighted some keywords that I would call out as important. So policy frameworks and governance protocols with governments companies civil society. So it's basically like kind of specific things that they say, you know, like industry vocabulary that they use. They're saying with governments and academic institutions policy and governance and the fourth industrial revolution, which I don't know if that's their own term or they're using that as like a nice way to describe the future. Here they describe some locations specifically San Francisco Geneva Mumbai Beijing Tokyo affiliate strategy engagement teams. So and note that instead of general public they call them civil society. And instead of like universities and schools they call them academic institutions so it's you know it's very minor, but these are the words that they're looking for. So instead of using the vocabulary you had before if you can change it to this vocabulary you want to. So these are some places where you will want to use the keywords in your resume when you're describing work experiences or job functions. In your objective and your skill summary, and in your cover letter. So here, for example, our two candidates eat and F. So if we look at them, they both have the same years of experience, they both worked in San Francisco. But which, which of these two candidates looks more qualified, would you say. Yeah. I definitely say candidate even though they're, they might have the exact same skills candidate sounds extremely more qualified for this role than candidate F. And, and yeah you can just see from the keywords. So, one common question that I have heard is what if I'm trying to change into a new field. So there's another question in the chat what if I have a 14 year gap when I stayed home with my kid should I address that yes you can definitely address that. You can write it into your cover letter and then also if there was anything else that you were doing in your back gap like if you were participating in things related to the schools or if you were volunteering doing something else. You can still put that in to your experience section and just retitle it instead of calling it work experience you can call it experience. And showcase anything else you were doing. So one thing you can do if you're trying to switch into a new field is volunteer. You can also emphasize your education as I was describing before, where if your education was related to the field, then definitely describe you at more descriptive of what you did in school in your program. You can include all relevant work. So, for example, I had a friend who was doing customer service but was trying to go into it, and had nothing really about it on his resume, and it, but even though he had done years of work, helping family and friends as their unofficial IT person. So that kind of hobbyist stuff is still extremely valuable experience and it explains to the employer why you're even interested in their position. So that should definitely make it onto your resume like any hobby. If you can say it in a way where if you were part of an association or a group that's even better but even if you weren't just noting in your interest section or just listing it even as an experience on your resume that for X to X years, which is usually like 1015 like your whole life you've just been doing this, like, you've been the auto person for your, the mechanic for your friends and family. Like, make sure to put that on there if that's the role that you're trying to apply for and that's your only relevant, like officially unofficial experience, it should definitely have a spot on your resume. And then, as I was saying before one of the common mistakes is giving irrelevant details too much space and then not sharing enough relevant details. So, yeah, keep the job titles and the dates for the flow on your resume but delete everything else that is not relevant because it's just going to catch their eye they're going to read the irrelevant thing and then throw your resume out because they're like what what job is this person applying so we did, we did for one time get a resume that had it seemed to have no relevant experience. But then we read the cover letter, which is why I think cover letters are really important. It was describing, you know, like, growing up in affordable housing, etc. And so there was actually a story where it made sense why she was applying to our company. And we actually referred her to a different position or to a different department, if in case they were hiring so it was nice she got an internal referral out of submitting that cover letter because otherwise the resume gave no indication of like why she was playing for and toothpaste resumes are ideal as I said, keep the font size large enough to read 10 or 12 point five or 11 and or if they give you specific instructions of course follow the instructions that they provide. Okay, so our next exercise is aligning your experience with the role. So hopefully you brought a job description, but if you did not we're going to find one right now. So there are a lot of places online where you can find a job listings, I think, if people want to throw into chat the chat like common ones that you use feel free. So this is just a sampling. The ones in bold with the triangle or ones that I have typically use more myself. So craigslist.org, indeed.com. Calops.org for government jobs job apps.com slash SF for city of San Francisco. This list on my website, which is resume workshop SF dot word press calm, which actually has a copy of this presentation uploaded to if you want to look back through the presentation. So, oh, and just a quick keyboard shortcuts on taking a screenshot on your computer on a Mac you could press command shift three, which saves to the desktop or on a PC you can press your print screen button and then control the to paste the image into word or PowerPoint. Oh, and Angela through the link to the website in the chat. Thanks. I have a question what's the typical sequence of reading resume and cover letter do they both get read length of cover letter one page as well. Okay, so I'll have a little section about cover letters at the end of this presentation. But I would say keep your cover letter short, obviously, since people, you know they're only skin being like, I would say like half a page or less. That's a good question. I always think to myself should I read the cover letter first or should I read the resume. I'm not sure what people do. But it's, yeah, I, I can't. I would have to, I would have to do it again in order to see which which order makes sense. Let's run a search. So ssb.craigslist.org. And I like Craigslist because the posts are live, like someone had to post it it's not just crawling the web for anybody's job postings which might be out of date because the webmaster hasn't updated the website and then you spend like two hours updating your resume just to find out that you're applying to a job that's no longer available. So Craigslist is nice because typically if the post is up the job is still, they're still hiring for it. And it's one of the few places on the website where the, you have to pay for the post it's not free so there's like a little bit of a screening mechanism. Obviously that's not a complete screener. I would still say like if, if they don't give any information about who they are like what their company is, and like you can't look them up then, if it sounds sketchy skip it but if it's, you know, they provide all the information it's a nice place to find job listings small to mid-sized places. So let me, so SFB.craigslist.com. And then here there's a job section and there's also all these dropdowns to pick a specific category but instead of doing that I would just run all the jobs so you can just see everything that's out there. And the nice thing about this is that you can change it so if I only want to do somewhere Munie goes you can choose San Francisco, it'll filter, and then if you only are looking in certain job categories you can come down the left side here and deselect all. And I think on the call today if I scroll back in the chat, oops I lost the chat. We had somebody nonprofit, my favorite. We had some strategies to designer. You can turn on design. Science and biotech. All right. Okay, so we'll say those are the ones that we're interested in. And then we can come down here and say pick neighborhoods. So for example, if you only want options that are accessible by Bart, then you can do downtown. And then you can go to center financial district on par mission district. You can just choose whichever neighborhood you're interested in. Since right now we feel notice there's three that there's more than 3000 listings which is crazy. And you don't want to sift through them yourself you want the computer to do it for you. So just select those and then I skip checking any of these in case the person filling out the form didn't check things. And I just want to see all so update search. And now we only have 66 so that is much more reasonable to go through. And once you get it to a good list that looks like oh I would apply to a lot of these. Save it, you can either bookmark it using your browser and just add a bookmark and say, and it'll just, you know, either so that tomorrow or next week when you feel like doing applications you can come back to your browser, click the button, and it'll run the same search, which is this search here so you can email this link to yourself so you can open it next time to if you don't have a crisis account where you can save the search. So just look through here and find a job of interest. Cool. All right, so there we have a job post great so I would copy and paste this to myself so that I can highlight some of the keywords to read through it once and make sure I include some of those in my cover letter and resume. So indeed.com is another site that's good for also small, mid-size, mid to large companies. And at the bottom. So usually a lot of these sites have this keyword search and sometimes it's hard to think of like what's the one keyword that describes what job I'm looking for. So you can have a job where you know what the keyword is when it's easy, but if you're open to different things and just looking to see what's out there. You can also go to the bottom the very bottom and just press browse jobs. And it's nice. That's the nice thing about Craigslist to you can just kind of see all the jobs and get ideas in case you don't know exactly what you're looking for. And then for local and see government job apps.com slash SF is the city and county of San Francisco. So since it's large enough they have their own website and what's nice is that you can see all the job descriptions of any job they're ever hiring for not just the ones that are available, like today or right now. You can go in there, see all the roles that they have you can sign up for alerts to be notified when that classification becomes available. So it's, it's kind of nice. And you can just, you know, get an idea of different job titles. Cal ops.org is for cities, counties and other jurisdictions that are just smaller and don't have their own dedicated website. You can sign up for like city of daily city city of Brisbane kind of alerts. Also, and similarly, and those just get emailed to you like once a week or so. So it's a manageable amount of emails it's not like every day you're getting bombarded. And also, you can just look up the top companies in the industry that you're hoping to work in and go directly to their websites because maybe they don't post anywhere maybe they're just so popular and they get enough applicants that they never post to any job boards. And just at the bottom of their website somewhere find the careers, they might even have a separate careers website. So here's our next candidate comparison so candidate g is on the left and candidate h is on the right. And as you'll notice, they have the exact same experience, but when you're looking at their resume. Yeah. Which one looks like the stronger candidate, we already have a vote for G. And I would also say yes, I think candidate G looks stronger. And this has come up because you know a lot of people in San Francisco are web developers software engineers etc. And like typically their skill summary all looks the same as everybody else's who's applying to the job. Like why even have that section if you're not going to say how you're different than everybody else, like everybody has the same skills, but really on the left is helpful because there are categories. There are is not levels of proficiency but there are years of experience. And it's just, you know, it takes up more space which is why I'm saying you don't have to limit yourself to only a page because a lot of the stuff I'm suggesting adds a little bit more content to your resume but you want to add this helpful content. So our next exercises crafting your skills summary to be specific. And here's one example of someone who has very specific skills and also they included like recognition that they've received, but basically quantitative and statistical analysis demographic analysis and working with census data. GIS software Adobe creative suite like these are very Microsoft Word Excel PowerPoint. Like I get the question a lot like aren't these a given for my role like they're going to know that everybody has these skills like Microsoft Excel or something. But it's like not everyone knows Excel and also if it's an HR person looking at the resumes before the hiring manager looks they might not know the things that are typically expected of in your role so you still want to detail out. You want to detail out everything because that's also the keywords that would get picked up by the readers, they would get picked up by the human readers, and it would just, you know, no one's going to assume that you know Excel, for example, unless you say it, even if even if you're predominantly used software in your industry is just helpful to just put it on there. Yeah, and then this is an example to where they put the relevant projects for their education. So crafting your skill summary to be specific and relevant. I think is that sometimes people have generic skills on their resume like good communicator team player that is very subjective. You're the one self describing it. And it also is kind of like all of us supplying to the job, or probably these things like who have worked in a workplace. I mean not necessarily but you know, it doesn't help distinguish you from others. What you want to do is spend this section listing more specific things such as job functions that you've had world titles software that you know languages that you speak the levels of proficiency and I think one important thing that you could put here is the population types, or audiences. Whether you're served or or industries or fields that either you have worked with or that your company has worked with. So for example, if you were selling insurance, was it to, was it to commercial like companies or was it to individuals, are you doing something that you'd be to see, and then, or if you're in property management and you've been working with seniors, and you're applying to a place that's asking for senior level experience, or, like, as opposed to working with families or use or something, or, or conversely if you're trying to apply for a families and use place then you can write that in. So, applying on company website versus going through a job board if listed in both what would be your recommendation. Oh, I would definitely use the company website. Yeah, maybe people are starting to rely on job work more now but still it's like job boards are still the secondary where they might not be up fully up to date as opposed to the company website, or maybe people are moving in direction where they're relying on the job boards and like not involving themselves with their IT person who's running their website so. Yeah, I guess just double check and then don't be too sad if both of them are out of date and the job's not available anymore. And then categorize your skills, so it's just helpful to read it if it's categorized. And if you notice that these job postings are all asking for this software you've never heard of like what is sales for us, I mean you definitely you'll want to look it up. And if you can volunteer somewhere or intern somewhere where you can get that experience so that it's something that you can add to your resume to make it more competitive if this is really the role that you're trying to pursue and they keep asking for it, or take a certification or free course online. So, via the San Francisco Public Library, you can take some online courses that would otherwise cost a subscription. And you can take them for free using your library cards so if we go to SFPL.org. I'm sure Angela put it in the chat, but it's under here research and learning. You can pull them up, but one example is Gail and Linda is now actually LinkedIn learning. But for example here are some of the things that you can take on Gail, you can take computer applications, composition, healthcare, medical, legal education, publishing, etc. So, just check it out. One time we had a candidate who had like 12 or 13 online courses that she had taken even though she didn't have a degree in design it was great that she was keeping her skills for like gaining skills that she needed for the role. As opposed and it's helpful to because it adds something recent onto your resume so for example if you're, you got your education a long time ago and you're concerned about age discrimination, one way to reduce the chance of that is by having recent recent certifications and free courses that you took recently that you list with the years on them so that it still looks like you're keeping your education up to date. And then another thing you can do is use community colleges not sure if they're in person yet, but I'm not a big fan of online education I like doing in person stuff so that's one nice way. The four conferences are a great way and actually industry conferences like if you look up what is the professional association for this industry that I'm trying to enter into. So if you attend the conference because you find out what everyone is talking about right now you can go to sessions and see like what's the most recent things going on and then you can go to the exhibitor booths and talk with people who are probably hiring and just get the chance for a face to face without having to go through like the email try to getting an informational interview no one's responding to you. So I highly recommend I know attending conferences is sometimes expensive but if you have the chance to make the investment you could really like get a lot out of going to one and the plus right now of it being a lot of events and events being canceled is that people are still hosting conferences virtually so it's like almost a cheaper opportunity to go and you can do it from like wherever you are with your computer. I, there's a question about gale courses in the chat, and I am not sure. Okay. Someone answered thank you. So highly recommend checking out any of the industry conferences at the national level or even like state level for a regional West Coast for your profession. Okay, so here's candidates, Jay and Kay, and the only difference between these two is what's in highlighted in the green here. So one thing that sometimes people don't do like, it's nice because on LinkedIn you can go and click on the link of what's this company and find out where they worked, but if you're looking at their piece of paper resume. Well, especially nowadays when there's so many different types of employers and like lots of startups and random companies that no one's ever heard of that you might have worked for it's just helpful if you provide a little bit more context of what is this organization, or what was your team or department to do, especially if it's directly related and relevant to the job you're applying for so for example, these two candidates. I mean seemingly have the same experience unless they describe the company in which case you find out that the one on the left is working for like a grant funded small research institution, and then the one on the right is actually working for an extremely large public organization. So depending on where they're applying one is way more qualified than the other, and we only know because they added the description of the company. So, a couple things you can think about is either describing the company or the industry or field or your department there, or the job title so it's just something to take into consideration when you're choosing like what should I put in bold on my resume and what should I take, I tell a size and so one common mistake is showing short increments instead of longevity and dedication. So this, actually this was in the example at the beginning of the presentation where they had two jobs at the same hospital but they listed them completely separately so it looks like they're kind of hopping around. And what you want to do, especially if you've been promoted in the same company, you want to visually consolidate it so that the promotions all look like part of one company with one time frame that is long. So instead of all these small jumps where someone who's reading your resume fast just sees like two years two years two years one year, like, oh this person's been jumping around a lot they're going to come on, we're going to train them and then they're going to leave so it might be. They might just have that bias without even knowing it. So it's helpful not to shoot yourself in the foot, which I had been doing on my own resume by not visually consolidating promotions within the same organization. And similarly if you did like consulting work or project based work. If you can consolidate that under the title of like one consulting role as opposed to like six months here three months there, it just will help make it look like this person can stay dedicated to a certain employer or employment for a period of time just looks better on the hiring manager's end. So, LinkedIn even learned this lesson so they started doing this visual dot and line so that now when your job, you have promotions within the same organization they look like cohesively all part of one longer time frame. It's a reminder to apply that equally to your resume. And common questions should I write a cover letter, I say yes, unless they say not to, and then if you don't have time and you just have to get it in before the due date, then definitely make sure to include an objective at the top which is just a sentence kind of describing you. So here's a candidate with their two candidates with their objectives. Candidate L is one that people are just like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to make an objective that applies to everything so I never have to change it. And like, you know, there's no point in anyone reading this like no hiring manager needs to read this because this is every candidate like what you want to do is spend a little bit of time to customize your resume to the organization. You can spend a lot of time if you really want this job. Because this person on the right sounds extremely more qualified for the same job than the person on the left. And so there's just a few components of this objective. So you're doing where you aim to be, and you want to be specific about your background so any like audience or constituents that you work with that are related, the scope or scale of your work, your fields of expertise, and your years of work. So, for example, I'm a professional ready to contribute my 10 years of multi-state experience, working with similar groups as yours to your social justice oriented role of whatever. I mean people will hear if you're being genuine versus like you're not really interested you're just throwing out 100 resumes and seeing where it catches. I have a question in the chat. A long time job doing many miscellaneous rules and tasks for many hats on a resume is that an advantage or disadvantage. So, yeah, I have that same issue to where it's like I studied a couple different things and then so I have these jobs that kind of go in different directions and I think in that instance you really want to make like two resumes. So it's a resume for the one path where you pull out the more relevant things for that path. So, for example, mine is like public policy kind of path, and then I had another like more graphic design communications path, and then you pull out the miscellaneous roles and tasks that are more related to that one. And that happens you do wear a lot of hats but like you're only pulling out the ones that the employer will care about. So, if you wore like 20 hats, you still only pulling out the three that are related to the job that you're applying for. And just delete the rest out and save that on your master template that you can use when you're applying to other jobs. So here's an online profile. So here are a few online profiles. Inevitably, they're going to Google you if you don't provide some sort of online link yourself. So what you want to do is just a have a LinkedIn probably. I wasn't really pushing it that hard because I know there's like a lot of concerns about identity theft and stuff, but a lot of recruiters and a lot of companies are just like using LinkedIn as the baseline for even just searching for candidates or verifying your resume or, you know, just seeing who else like on LinkedIn people can endorse your skills. You can write recommendations of others and they can write recommendations of you. So, it's helpful to have a LinkedIn at minimum. And there is the issue where you know, like what I was just talking about actually where you have two different versions of your resume but you can only have one version of your LinkedIn. And what I was doing at the time was like making it really sparse on my LinkedIn so it just had my employers but it didn't have detail. And then I really just put the detail into my resume. So I give the detail that I want to give that employer, I give the detail that I want to give that employer on my resume, but my LinkedIn you just verify like oh yeah she worked at these places and these people were her colleagues. And that's fine. And then the, or the other easy thing is that like you can just pick like, if you were to describe your job in three categories, like I did graphic design social media and marketing at this place and you can just put those three instead of line by line describing your functions just those like high level of whatever you're especially the ones most relevant to what you're trying to get next, you know, highlighting those. There's other websites so portfolio.com is where you can have like presentations spreadsheets and other stuff like those mostly for students who don't have like a visual portfolio but still have other things that they can showcase as work samples. There's these website building websites like Weebly or Wix WordPress is more like text based or be hands.net is for designers where you can create a visual portfolio so like if you're doing. Actually, I don't know if it's really like if you do construction or something or you have things where landscaping where you have like visual things that you can stick up on a website can make like a Weebly website or a Wix website, or even WordPress. But it's just helpful to have some sort of online presence and they're all free. So, oh, and then also you can use Twitter, which I think is a really helpful tool for getting real time news of companies so. If you, you know, you create a Twitter account, you can follow companies that you're interested in or companies where you applied so that if you do get called in for an interview you kind of have a know of what's most recently been happening with them because usually they'll post their press releases there or their recent news. You can follow local governments you can follow follow a lot of design blogs. And just people in the industry so you know what people are talking about right now and if you need to do extra research before your interview is just a good place to get content. So, I'm going to cover show a few design examples and then go into the cover letter in our last 15 minutes. But here's someone with a website and just this this one kind of had short lengths until the last job but it might be like school related. And just in terms of us resumes. I know in other countries, sometimes customary to include a photo or description of your family but those things you would remove for resume writing in the United States. And the one on the right has a website and they list what languages they're proficient in and how proficient, like I like having one accent color, not, not like all the colors on the left one but on the right just one color that makes things stand out especially for the digital version of your resume. The downside of that right one is that they have like a very small font, so I would just increase the font size. And then so here on the right this person minimizes irrelevant work, like they kind of gray it out believe it there if you wanted to look at it. They list all their main skills at the top which is nice, along with a headline so that's like LinkedIn kind of makes you have a headline to and it's nice if you have a headline of your resume kind of just describing like who are you, I'm a UX designer or you know, like I'm an accounting professional for something that kind of just gives the gist of who you are, what you're applying for. And then they have these specific main skills listed so you have three searcher information architect usability testing design visual design interaction design, development. And the person on the left has their own awards and publicity like this is chance to say like, I have this successful art installation or I was acknowledged as whatever. And if you have links to things that people would find online you can include the links. This person includes the references and I typically would not include the references because it's a given. You don't even have to say like references available upon request it's it's kind of a given that if you're in the interview round, then they will ask for your references after so you don't want to upfront give them references since you don't know where the conversation is going to go you don't know who you're going to want to list as your references. So just save those for later. It's like easy and linear. So this was one I was showing before. And the nice thing about this one was that they, they include all their relevant experiences in their work experience so one was an internship one was as a planning and designer and one was a graduate teaching assistant like if it's all related to the one you're applying for them just like call it experience. They have the headline. So those just a few examples, and you can get some more resources on my website resume workshop SF dot WordPress calm. So I have a sample resume that you could download from there, and then there's also a few other blogs about making a chronological resume versus making a functional resume. The checklist from this presentation is there. Yeah, so and just a reminder when submitting your resume files. When you're submitting your resume just have someone else review it to just see that the language sounds okay. And you're not using like insider language from your last company. If you want to spell check. I, we get a lot of not a lot but I'm always surprised when we get resumes that have spelling errors and punctuation errors because you're trying to put your best foot forward. Plus, it's, there's a spell check feature that you can just run. You can have a formal email address if you don't you can set one up for free and put the job title and your name and the subject line so that I'll make it stand out a little bit from everybody else's that just has the job title. What you can do is if you write a cover letter you can use that as your email and then attach it still and or attach your resume as a attach your resume as a PDF or if you're submitting it online and they only take one upload you can stick the cover letter into the resume PDF and then upload that. So someone asked these examples are visually attractive but difficult to read so our basic styles, you know, let's create a virtual. Oh, these are mostly for graphic designers applying to graphic design jobs but you know like the ones that I was showing at the beginning are totally fine, like basic black and white word template bullet points like titles and bold is fine. It's any less attractive. It's probably too much for the average job. Organizing your files. Oh, so it's just helpful if you keep your own list of where you applied and like the job posts you applied for because sometimes employers take down the listing from their website when they stop and then it's hard for you, who's still in the process to go back and look at what you applied and then you saved a copy for yourself. And yeah, this is kind of what I was saying like cutting down the master copy into the two pager that you're going to send in and then save that with the company name and date that you were sending it so that you're, you can find it later. For example, like one time I got called back like two or three months later at which point I thought I was like it was a volunteer position that I had recently applied for but then it was actually an employer, who I had, like, no recent records I had to go back in my files and pull out like what was the resume that I sent them so that I know what I can talk about like I don't know what they're looking at. So I had to call them back the next day because I didn't, I had uploaded it to their system so I had no email records and it was just like, eventually got the job so it's like good thing I have my records on me. But our last exercise is writing a cover letter. So you want, when you're writing your cover letter to again use the skills and keywords they directly mentioned in the job description so my sister has a really high level of getting back and she literally takes like you asked for this I have this you asked for that I do this. And it's pretty effective because that's what they're looking for. But if you don't want to be that rigid. What you definitely want to do so is start with the most concrete strengths you bring. So sometimes I used to be like, Oh, start with the story first like I've like loved you guys since I was a child your company is amazing but you know, that's not going to like get them to keep reading because that's probably everybody who's applying. So what you want to do is state why you're stronger than the candidate next door, obviously. And then something interesting or relevant about your work or your affiliations, why you like the organization and then you can even say your preferred contact method. So each of these being like two sentences or so so that your whole letter is just like half a page for less. So here's an example. But basically, like concrete strengths tells them the why me. And it's nice, you know, employers always want to know where you found the job posting because they're always trying to figure out where to market their jobs. But here, like, strongest strengths, these are words exactly out of the job description that are, if you have that background, you know, say it and say it the way that they said it. And that's the why me. And then the next paragraph is like the I'm passionate. So if the candidate next to you has the same like why me you guys both have 10 years of experience working in academic institutions and governments then the next paragraph could distinguish So you have more passion than the next person, but maybe the person next to you has more passion or same passion as you. Then the next paragraph is the why you why are you interested in there, the bad organization. So each paragraph you're basically trying to keep yourself as like I'm the most qualified. I'm really interested in this and I'm really interested in your organization, because the next person over might be saying the same things that you're saying so you just want to keep, you know, setting yourself apart. And yeah, that is it. So, I know that's a lot but you can go back and get it online. If you have any questions in the last few minutes let me know I'll go back to this actually so in case you want to just start outlining a cover letter. In order to email the librarians you can reach them up inside tech at sfpl.org. And then if you want to email me this library workshop CG at gmail.com. I don't check it all the time so I just have to, I would encourage you to email the librarians first since I'm just a library volunteer, but yeah, feel free to reach out. And I'll go back to this and ask if anyone has any questions. So will there be time at the end for you to take a look at my resume for feedback. So I do do resume. I'm doing resume feedback by email right now so if you go onto my website. You can fill out the request form and just send me your resume and a job that you're interested in looking at and I can just email you some feedback. So feel free to shoot it over. What is your email again. Library workshop CG at gmail.com, but the resume feedback is through a form that's on the website so you can just go to resume workshop sf.wordpress.com. And then on there too there's all those other resources that I was talking about earlier. Which is this resume review checklist to do your own review and the writing a cover letter. And kind of like a general downloadable template. So if you want to just stay on and start working on your own resume or start working on a cover letter feel free. Otherwise, if there's no other questions, I guess we can wrap up. Yeah, I just want to say actually that it's like, even if you do all this and you start applying, it's possible that you won't hear back from places because just like the market is so crazy and I know it's like an uphill struggle to apply for jobs and to be motivated to keep doing it week after week. So just, you know, if you keep trying it and start working, then I would say like, you know, go back through some of the suggestions and like try something different or like try making a functional one. Definitely get get others to look at it to just give you some input on it. And yeah, it's not just going to happen overnight like it. Well, it would be nice if it does like you might look out and they'll be the first time you apply for they call you right back but it. Yeah, it's the struggle but I know there are jobs out there for people that you can do what you want to do and what you love to do and you know, have it make a living for yourself so I would say don't give up on trying to like switch out of if you don't like what you're doing definitely try going for something different. And it'll take time but it is like even mine I was applying for affordable housing job like I was in graphic design for a while. Which was like a tangent from where I wanted to be and it took like three years for someone to finally like pick up on my resumes and applications and even then is like five like once you break in, you know, then it's really easy to move around. Once you're inside where you're trying to be so it just takes a lot of that investment at the front. So that's the spacing single or double. I usually use single spacing and just include the extra space between the sections, but whatever it looks easiest to read. Can you also look over portfolios. Oh, interesting question. I mean, maybe. I haven't really gotten that before but yeah I'm always happy to it's nice like SF State where I went for grad school they had a resume review of portfolio night where they would call back like alumni from the program and then all the students could just showcase their portfolios to some of the alumni who are working in the field and yeah it's kind of fun. I'm sure. All right. That's all the questions. Good luck everyone. And yeah, you can do it. Thank you Christina for taking the time to share with us your knowledge and expertise on resume writing and cover letter writing. I also like to thank everyone for joining us. I hope you found the presentation informative and helpful to you. I'll be sending out an evaluation survey along with the link to the recording later this afternoon, or later this evening I should say. And I really really appreciate it if you guys can take the time out of your day to fill out the evaluation so we can improve in our programs. Thank you all again, have a wonderful rest of the evening. Goodbye everyone.