 Hey there and welcome back. We're so glad you're here for another episode of the nonprofit show. Thrilled to have with us again, Dana Skirlock. She joins us from Staffing Boutique where she's director of recruitment. She's brought a conversation to us that I cannot wait to get nerdy about. Modern resumes for the digital age. So Dana's got some great insight that she's going to share with us. But before we pass over the microphone, we want to remind all of you who we are, if we've not met you yet. Julia Patrick is here, of course, where she serves as the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jaret Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. Honored to be here alongside Julia. And thanks to these amazing presenting sponsors that allow us to continue these conversations like we are about to have with Dana. So shout out of gratitude to our friends over at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, 180 management group, your part-time controller. Of course, Staffing Boutique, again, where Dana joins us from. Also thank you to JMT Consulting, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. So again, thank you to these companies because they allow us not only these conversations but also the archive where you can find all of our multitudes of conversations, including previous ones with Dana and her partner Katie over at Staffing Boutique. So go ahead and take out your smartphone, you're probably texting or typing on it now, but scan that QR code and you can download the app and you can still find us on the streaming broadcast and the podcast channels. So Dana, welcome back. Yeah, you join us regularly. And we always love to have you, but for our viewers and listeners that maybe might be joining us for the first time, you are hearing and possibly seeing Dana Skirlock, Director of Recruitment at Staffing Boutique. Welcome back Dana. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to be here and thanks for having me on again. I'm so excited about today's topic. It's one of my favorite. You know, Dana, it's a new year's kind of Q1 topic, resumes, because so many people say, okay, I'm gonna get a new job or I'm gonna make a change or whatever. And I think this kind of pops up, but you and I had decided this, we were gonna do this show. And lo and behold, last week in the New York Times, there was an article about digital resumes and it was kind of chilling because it followed this trajectory. Talk to us about what the entire digital piece of this looks like before we start asking you specific questions. Sure. And I'm so glad that you mentioned this article earlier when we were just in the waiting room, we were discussing it. And I haven't read it in depth yet, so I definitely wanna get ahold of it and take a look at it. But I think it's gonna be interesting as my feedback on resumes is very anecdotal, just the function of having looked at so many over the years and screening so many candidates versus like the New York Times, I'm sure has done a very comprehensive like data focused study on it. And so I'll be interested to see how our opinions kind of line up. But just to give folks listening at home a little background on where I started career-wise, I began as what we call a candidate recruiter or a recruiting assistant in the staffing industry. And so essentially what I was doing is I was receiving hundreds upon hundreds of resumes. My job was to review all of them, find out who was appropriate for the jobs that we had on file or that were open currently and then start making outbound calls and pre-screening those candidates on behalf of the firm. And so during that time, I probably screened thousands of resumes over the course of like the two and a half years I was a candidate recruiter. Now that scale never goes away when you're still in recruiting, you're still reviewing resumes daily. So when I first started in 2008, the logistics of what it looked like to review hundreds of resumes was that I had to go print out a ton of resumes, manually review them, and then from there add them into a system, into a database system of who I was interested in moving forward with or people that we wanted to save for later, perhaps. And so because of the manual nature of that, I think resumes being one page, for example, like that was sort of the adage that we all got from the time. Probably we were in high school when we were doing sort of this home act job training classes. We were told you could only have a one page resume. I think that that made sense up until maybe the 2010s when now I never review a resume by paper even when I go to career fairs and I'm in person meeting with people, I'm able to get a digital copy from them pretty instantaneously. And also just in thinking about using as little paper as possible, containing resources, we don't wanna go back to printing hundreds of documents for disposable type of usage for it. So I think that it's great that everything's digital now. What that lends itself to though is that we don't have to confine ourselves to just one page. And if for my money, when I'm reviewing resumes, I would rather have more information than less. And I think having candidates sometimes with 15, 20, 30 years of experience, even as little as five to seven years of experience, it's really hard to keep it to one page. And so you're really getting sort of an anemic description of what their background is to be able to make a hiring decision quickly. And with everything being as so quick these days, everyone wants jobs filled right away, candidates want feedback right away, we're expecting information to travel very quickly. We I think are doing ourselves a disservice by sending out resumes that don't have all the information on them. Because what that means is that the person reviewing them can't really assess your full background. And so more likely than not, you'll just be discarded and not called back for further interviews or even to get your foot in the door to even get a phone interview to start unless you have enough information on the resume for the person reviewing it to go off of. And so obviously there's a limit to that. We don't necessarily wanna see six page resumes or five page resumes. So you don't wanna be overly verbose or overexplained, but definitely making sure that you take the time to give a detailed analysis of your previous work and experience, even if that goes over one page it's gonna be really paramount. Dana, I have to ask you because there's this platform you might have heard of it. This is sarcasm called LinkedIn, right? Of course. And I feel like our digital resume is constantly available. It is constantly looked at whether we're really seeking a new opportunity or not. So I feel like this digital resume, like it has moved beyond even sending it into a possible employment opportunity. It resides as really our like trophy case, if you will, online. How does that play a role as a reference? I wanna say to job seekers. Sure. I think that LinkedIn has become a wonderful resource in terms of getting information about candidates very quickly to hiring managers and getting information to job seekers too for my money because we're on the staffing end. I think that where it can become tricky is when people are utilizing LinkedIn in place of an actual CV or resume. So for example, I'll have candidates contact me and say, I'm interested in hearing about what jobs you have or I'm interested in moving into a new position this year. Here's my LinkedIn profile and not attached to resume at all. And so I think there are some people who are sort of ahead of the curve and using LinkedIn in place of a resume and then you've got people that don't have enough information on LinkedIn. I think my goal when I'm working with a candidate is to make sure that the resume, the actual hard copy resume that you're sending in places and the LinkedIn record tell the same story. So where LinkedIn has a lot more visual aids where LinkedIn you can get more of a snapshot, you don't want it to be so incongruent with what your actual resume is that people are asking you for a CV after they look at your LinkedIn and then it's kind of a completely different focus on your resume or vice versa. Because when you send your resume in nine times out of 10 hiring managers are probably going to your LinkedIn and then reviewing your information there at least at some point during the interview process. It might not be from moment one when they get your resume or even on the first interview but eventually they're going to be looking for it and expecting to see one as well. I think there's some candidates too that have websites devoted to their freelance work like let's say if you're in marketing or communications it's super helpful to have an online presence. And what I would say is that what's most important is making sure that all of those sources tell the same story about your background and what it is that you want to be doing next. So if you are wanting to move into let's say higher management, upper management within a nonprofit and your LinkedIn profile doesn't reflect that it's hard for people to sort of see you in that next position that you're applying to get promoted into. So I think for transitional candidates it's really pivotal. I think when you're head hunting someone who is a CEO and has been for the past 10 years or something it can be something where you can kind of have some flexibility but I really I love LinkedIn. I think it has become a bit of a social media minefield like people are posting things that are not business related so much anymore but I do think that the core of it is still super helpful for job seekers and hiring managers alike. But yeah, it's interesting to see how people are utilizing a LinkedIn profile almost as they're calling card. Instead of business cards, like you said physical business cards I would go to luncheons with and things. Now it's just find me on LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn, message me there. And you can scan and do all these things. Well, it brings me to the quality versus quantity. I mean, even I as a consultant am asked for my resume and I will say I just use the PDF version of LinkedIn because it's up to date and that's kind of what I'm doing but I'm not seeking true full-time employment. So for those that are talk to us about the two cues and how they battle one another. So quality versus the quantity what does that look like now when it comes to sending our resumes? Sure. I think in previous years when you were let's say even mailing a resume in I used to get them by hard mail and into the office when I was a candidate recruiter this was back in 2007 to faxing resumes to having to print resumes out. There was a cost associated with being a candidate and sending out resumes and having to print them and send them. And I think people proofread very, very carefully. They made sure that the resumes were in the absolute best shape possible because they knew that it was gonna cost them money to have these applications put out there. I think that with the digital age and things becoming so accessible some of the quality has waned to some degree because I'll get hundreds of resumes and whereas I may only see one resume with a typo or a spelling or a grammatical error I'm seeing swaths of them with mistakes in them per like let's say hundred resumes I'm seeing. And I think some of that is just that we're all quick on the phone, we're doing things fast we're spelling things quickly we have spell check for most things we're texting and so we're using slang and certain acronyms and things that sometimes fall into business emails and resumes. And I think that can dilute people's applications because even with me catching everything I was an English major so it's a little bit easier for me than some people even with me looking out for things some things are gonna fall through the cracks and it can be the difference between you getting an interview for a job or not. So that said how I feel about making if you're in the position where you're looking for a new full-time salaried position and you know that those are competitive to get and you're in the midst of the job search I would rather send out five really high quality well thought out tailored resumes to the particular job you're applying to then if you're able to crank out 2025 in a week just to get 20 to 25 out because it's more about the retention or the response rate so you know how we judge emails now marketing emails by how many people opened it how many people responded back that's the kind of data that we're crunching right and most companies are it's the same thing with the resumes I think it's much more important to see how like what percentage of resumes that you send out are getting a hit back versus that you're sending out you know so many a week and if you're not hearing back that's when you can kind of diagnose there's something going on with the way that I'm submitting my resumes. I often will advise candidates that I'm speaking with to tailor their resume to the particular job because inevitably what ends up happening is that someone will apply for a job and because I'm a recruiter I have more time than most hiring managers to be on the phone speaking with them about the job right because most hiring managers they're only talking to the top few people that they really think are fit so most people don't get a callback so because I have a little bit more time I can spend a little bit more time like kind of judging the resume and talking to them about their background inevitably people will tell me things like well I actually did work at an organization like that it was five years ago but it's not on my resume because blah blah blah blah there's always like a slew of reasons why they didn't put it in and my question is always like well if you knew you were applying to this job before you sent your resume why is that not incorporated and their response is usually always I just didn't think to or during this conversation with you is when I sort of remembered this volunteer experience that I have that pertains to this or if it's an international organization oh I actually lived there for six months you know in the region that this international organization works with those are things that need to be in your cover letter in the resume incorporated into your email to the clients and the hiring managers so that they can actually see that because if it's not on your resume it's as good as if you never did it because you may not get to the next round to mention it and so that but then I am sympathetic because I do understand that takes a lot of time as a job seeker to sit and tailor each resume and really tailor each cover letter because what I'm usually getting are sort of canned cover letters with a different name you know applied each time in a different address but the content is usually pretty much the same I proclaim not a huge fan of cover letters but that's neither here nor there so for all of that I would say if you spend the time that you would spend applying to 50 jobs to really taking your time and thinking about okay here's what this job is requiring here's what this organization says there about how can the things I would say during an interview someone were to call me now saying hey I want to meet with you about this job that's what I they need to see in my resume and where you can incorporate it more than once so for example if you're applying to something that has to do with database work or some sort of technical skill mentioning it once in the skills section is great but what would be even better is if it's in the skills section and you have a bullet point about it on the job that you use the software and outlining what you did with it day to day what version it was where you were trained on it at a previous job you know having it so that when they're looking for that database or for a certain technical skill it's coming up three to four times on your resume they're gonna call you if they see your resume if it's that compelling but if you just mentioned it once or not at all and people will have things not on their resume at all and say that they know something or have skills in something and so it's hard to reconcile that both on my end and also when I submit a resume to a client the pushback I'll often get is I just don't feel this person has expertise in this if it's not on their resume and then I can't get the person in an interview even if they do have the experience so that's why it's important you know it's such a fascinating topic and especially when we think about the amount of time we spend on the nonprofit show talking about relationships talking about relationships and fundraising keeping our staff I mean serving our clients and I'm wondering if when we back up a little bit on the quantity versus the quality issue how do you feel about follow-up you know doing that did you get my resume versus just sending it off and you know the pray and spray kind of concept hoping that somebody responds what's your sense of that like are you like get away from me I'll let you know if I'm interested or does that bump that person up? I think it can go both ways as you're describing I think that if you're working with a recruiter we're used to hearing back from candidates far more often than actual hiring managers with internally at a nonprofit and since we are sort of an impartial third party I encourage candidates to follow up with me if they ever are like concerned or if they're worried about their application 99.9% of the time the issue is just that I have not heard back yet and so they're going to get a quick answer for me saying hey I haven't heard back yet I will let you know as soon as I do but I don't mind that because I understand that they've been engaged and we've submitted their resume and I have no problem hearing from them I think it's tricky when you're applying on your own to something you don't want to follow up too much and become a pest and you don't want to follow up too soon because I think the thing to remember is most people are not recruiters and so they don't have all day to work on hiring the way I do so they're doing all of their other job duties and then on top of that they have two positions in the department that they're working on so responding to resumes is important for them but it's not the number one job duty that they're completing at any one time and so it can take them some time to go through those responses so just being patient with them I would say following up no sooner than like a week since you've applied maybe even two weeks I would say if you've looked at a job listing and it has a specific email address that you sent your resume to since it's going to a specific person I think following up after a week and then waiting a couple more weeks and then maybe sending one last check-in I think could be good I think that any more than that and you're really going to become a pest and plug up their inbox versus something that's sort of reasonable but again it depends on the hiring manager their personality if they're somebody who wants let's say it's a development job where being persistent is part of the job they might look to see people that follow up if it's a position that's more administrative or in finance or something Right the hiring manager may find it more off-putting so unfortunately there's not like a can like answer for this but I would say that most hiring managers and most job ads now are doing a better job of outlining what the process will be for the hiring so if it says in the email we will contact you if we're interested that's a sign that you don't need to follow up if it doesn't say anything like that I would say a week or two afterwards and you follow up one time perhaps a second time to follow up and then that's it I think that's more than reasonable and sometimes I do look at somebody followed up and they send a nice message and they say that they're very interested maybe give me a specific reason they're really interested and that's why they wanted to follow up that's something that I may say okay let me bump this person out because they're clearly engaged and they've done their research and looked into the job description thoroughly and said hey I'm really excited about this about the job and I wanted to follow up with you that again it goes back to quality versus quantity like if you're just sending out hey I sent my resume last week please let me know sincerely so and so means far less than a very specific email that's addressed particularly to a person and has more details in it So it was part and parcel to that we got a question that just came in and the question is how do you follow up if you did not get an interview or you didn't get the job? You know back in the day it was like a handwritten note thank you for seeing me and you know think about it and so where does that live? Does that type of communication still exist or do we just need to be like next? I think that it's nice to have some touches some contact touches as we say so for example if they engaged you by phone and did a phone interview but then let you know you didn't get the job shooting an email saying thank you so much for your time I hope do we consider it for future positions I think it's totally fine if you came in in person and met with the hiring managers or at least in this day and age like a Zoomer or Google Meets like virtual interview I think it's more than fine to contact them to just thank them for their time and I think most hiring managers are actually kind of looking for that to kind of close the loop but I would say if you have heard back that you haven't received the position following up months later or like repeatedly not so much but certainly having that one touch base of just to thank the person for interviewing you expressing again why you were interested in the position wishing them luck on the placement because honestly people start jobs and they don't necessarily continue with them for whatever that reason may be people have reasons they have to leave town unexpectedly people have illnesses emergencies within their family like you never know when that job will reopen and so if you really close the loop and have left things in very good standing with the people that you interviewed with you could be the first call that they make when the job is reopened or when they have another job with another department but within the same organization you'll be someone if an organization is diligent about hiring and keeping track of who they've spoken with and have a database of candidates which almost all are now I think back in the day they really were kind of relying on pens and paper and not keeping track of those types of things and now even with Excel people can do it so I often talk to clients who are saying well we have our database of candidates the people that have applied before so we'll be able to cross check who you're sending us to make sure it's not somebody that we already have so most people are able to do that now in which case you wanna be one of those people that had reached out to them to thank them I think a handwritten note isn't necessary anymore if anything if you've interviewed like three or four times in person for a job and they didn't give you the job I would think more so they would be giving you a thank you note as an employer so it's also give and take I always am telling candidates you don't have to feel like it's just about you being evaluated and judged it's also a chance for you to evaluate the organization and the only way you can evaluate it is by the interactions you have with their staff and through the interview process so it goes both ways I love that you said that we don't have a lot of time I wanna make sure that we get to the formatting issue and again because people are doing this online in a digital capacity formatting talk to us about this cause you're saying use reverse chronology and then you mentioned this earlier but making sure that you link back to the duties and the tasks to drill down more efficiently what you're capable of doing right sure I cannot stress how much a reverse chronological resume that's very straightforward it's so much easier and quicker to read and evaluate than functional resumes where the issue is and I think sometimes when I'm talking to candidates with those types of formats it saves space yes which is great but what ends up happening is as the person reviewing the resume you're trying to piece together when this person did this job duty for all I know if you've just listed your jobs in the year it could have been 15 years ago that you did this particular job duty right and as recruiters what I'm evaluating is what job duties and what skills you have most recently what things have been done in the past and how that lines up with the goals of the organization and what requirements the organization has given me and the easiest way for me to see that is to see very comprehensively what you've been doing most recently so the easiest way to do that is to reverse chronology start with your current or most recent position list in a bulleted format the duties and tasks that you are responsible for including any technical responsibilities or database management any Microsoft systems that you use on the job and in what capacity like all of that can be there and as you go down the resume and we're looking at a job on maybe the second page that's from 2005 maybe it has less bullet points than the ones that are higher up like I think the most robust descriptions if you're worried about space are gonna be the ones that are the most recent and then you can kind of pair it back if it's for a job that's from your distant past or start to weed some of those jobs off if they don't apply to the particular job that you're applying to like if it's, as I was saying before if it's something that you would say during the interview it's great to have it on your resume even if it is old information but if it really doesn't pertain to the particular job and you are looking to save space I'd rather have more information on your most recent job and less on jobs that you've had previously. So then that kind of dovetails to highlighting some of these other things and you know, Jared and I are always coming up with connecting to people that are in professional organizations that really do continuing education within their professional organizations. This doesn't seem to be something that we used to really spend time on and again, maybe it was like a space issue but share with us in the few minutes we have left how you see this going. Sure. I think that this is really crucial for people who are trying to career shifters who are moving into the nonprofit sector. How else do you show an interest or passion within a sector that you've never worked in? One way is through volunteering professional organizations and groups like women in development or association of fundraising professionals any networking groups you belong to certifications that you've received courses at the foundation center or higher education that you take in professional development courses all of those things when it comes to nonprofits are really important. The corporate side I think that they also can be important but I would be less familiar with what those particular things are but for nonprofits volunteering isn't just a hobby it's something that helps the organization run. And so if you've been doing that at your church or synagogue or if you've been volunteering for Dress for Success every year for the past 10 years those are things that are actually quite valuable on a resume. And I don't think that you have to belabor the point they can be in one small section where you describe all of your networking experience all of your volunteer experience and it doesn't have to take up a lot of space but it's great to have it on there. Again, it's something that you would highlight during an interview and it's something that you would say hey, you know what I'm actually interested in your organization because I've done XYZ with this other organization that's something that you can use for your cover letter we're always looking for fodder for a cover letter rather than again sending a canned letter those are the types of things to incorporate in them. Okay, I have one last question for you. Sure. And that is to put a picture on or not to put a picture on what is the standard now? European resumes often come over with photos attached to them and I usually give them if I see that they've worked in Europe I give them a pass on that. I think it's dangerous territory because it's that formatting culture there. I think for us for the most part, no pictures no identifiers about your personal demographics anything like that. I think for the most part it's not viewed as professional and also it just is sort of asking for some level of discrimination not that people would ever intend to have discriminatory practices but it can lead to that even just in the fact that you're unfamiliar with the general professional formatting of resumes it's unusual. And nowadays you can save it for LinkedIn because almost all the hiring managers are gonna go there anyway. Great. Well, I feel like we need a part two because we went really fast over the last two and both Julie and I had way more questions to ask you and I'm grateful that we even had one of our viewers chime in this is exactly what this format is for. So please check out Dana Skirlock and Staffing Boutique that is staffingboutique.org Director of Recruitment Dana thank you you're always fantastic to, you know me nerd out with it's always great and I do think that this topic is something that we need to continue because the market is changing just as fast as technology is changing and so we need to stay on you know ahead of that when it comes to our resumes and seeking fruitful employment. So thank you for being here today. No problem, it's always a pleasure. So good to see you both. Thank you so much Dana. Again, I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself Jared R. Ransom CEO of the Raven Group. Again, amazing sponsors that joined us today to have this conversation with Dana. They include Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique your part-time controller 180 Management Group Fundraising Academy at National University JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out as we come up upon Jared Drumroll our 1000th show. I know March 5th, it's right around the corner right around the corner. All right everybody, we like to end every episode of the nonprofit show with this message and it goes like this, to stay well so you can do well.