 So, today is going to include three sections first resume writing basics and then part to going from good to great. And then last some information about cover letter writing and an online job search. And if there's time at the end we have about 90 minutes. If anyone wants to volunteer their resume for a live review. We can do that so just think about it. Okay, so part one. So, there are two main types of resume formats out there one that people are probably most familiar with is the chronological one. And there's another kind called functional or categorical and I'll kind of explained it a little today we're mostly focusing on chronological. I just want to let you know that the other version is out there for those to whom it might apply. But for chronological you typically have your contact information at the top, followed by an objective or a sentence that describes who you are as a professional. And then there's a skills summary section, and then that is followed by places of employment and job functions and achievements you had at each with the most recent jobs being at the top and the least recent being at the bottom. And then your education and certifications can come after that. And then lastly you can include miscellaneous sections like volunteer work or civic affiliations awards and interests. So that the way that the functional resume is different is here highlighted in purple where instead of listing out your places of employment you're actually listing out your job functions by categories that are common to your field. So if you see job postings that typically have them broken down by category, you would be taking those categories and then detailing those out and then you just have your places of employment and achievements at each as a short list after that. And I'll show two examples. Okay, so here we have the typical chronological resume. So, at the top, the person has all their jobs at the different hospitals where they worked and they were a lead business analyst, most recently, and before they were a business analyst and a business analyst. And this, you know, underneath each they have the title underneath each of the titles they have the functions that they had. This is an example of the categorical one so here you see they have administrative support customer service and reception management and supervision as the main categories and then they've bulleted out what they did under each of those. And at the end, they listed their employment history with job titles and employers, and to which I would add dates. But basically, this one is maybe good for about 10% of people but it's good for people who have potentially had the same job title, and the same responsibilities but at a bunch of different employers. So if you've gone from place to place and typically had the same type of responsibilities. This could be a good way to consolidate it so that the person who's reading your resume has a quicker view of the different categories that you've worked in, and they can easily see quickly that you've done certain things such as managed and supervised stuff. So just something to think about. And then they just can see quickly who you've been employed with at the bottom. But to jump back to a typical chronological resume. So the top in this top section you want to have your name large, your phone number, your email address, and for address I think people used to list out their whole street address but since there is you know you want to protect your personal information for a couple of days, especially with stuff being all online and who knows who has access to it. You can just list out the city and zip code, you know where you live and save the full address for when you actually fill out their employment application if you're moving forward in the hiring process. So you also want to include an online profile, such as LinkedIn or some other place where they can find you online so they're not just googling you and finding what they find you actually want to give them where to find you online. You can also include a headline. So, for example, these are some headlines, and it's basically a one phrase a short, you know, a short phrase of who you are as a job seeker. So potential structure is just your field, and then the level that you're looking for, or the level that you have been or are trying to get to. So, for example, you can say if you're in business and finance you can say business and finance professional automotive professional, you know information systems analyst research associate research manager research director based on what level you're looking for. So basically it's it's just like at a quick glance the person who's reading it can see what you're aiming to be or who you are before they even get into reading the details below. So just think about, you know, what is the field you're looking to be in or what does the field that you studied and want to move into, and then just tack on on the back of it, what level you're you're trying to get. In terms of online profiles, there are several options out there so hopefully everyone has a LinkedIn because that is what a lot of employers are using these days to even recruit for jobs take job applications. Post jobs and just to see your resume sometimes they're using it in place of an online in place of a paper resume. But I still, I get it depends on what field you're applying to but I use it in two ways. One is I have a bare bones LinkedIn that doesn't get into the details of each job. One is has like a general description of like the department I was working in or what the organization mission is. And then I use my own resume PDF that I'm creating to actually detail out what things are specific to the job that I'm applying for, because that's really what I want them to know and it, you know, each time you're applying to a different job you want to vary the content of your resume because you want to make it really match what they're talking about and asking about and just, you want to answer their questions and not make it just your generic resume that has irrelevant information in it from old jobs. I had LinkedIn there's other places where you can have an online profile so portfolio.com let you build an online profile with some of these writing samples presentations spreadsheets and things that you've had from, you know, work or school projects, and finance.net at the bottom has a portfolio building for visual and creative people who have, you know, like photos or graphic design or videography or that kind of materials. Every in the middle we believe Wix and WordPress are all kind of website building websites. So, it's kind of like drag and drop places to put text places to put images, and then. Yeah, and WordPress is more text based so if you have writing samples or, you know, a blog that you keep or articles that you've written it's nice to just have it ready in advance, especially if you know they're going to ask for that, just to prepare it in advance. Okay, so next section down is the objective. So this is where you have a one sentence summary and you want it to be specific to your background. The things that it can include are the audiences and constituents that you've previously worked with in your companies, the scope or scale of the work that you've done or the companies that you've worked for your fields of expertise and your years of work. So we could take a minute right now if you have your resume pulled up or if you have a piece of paper. Basically, this is a good basic structure that you can use for creating a strong objective. Recently reviewing someone's resume and they their objective was pretty generic, and they're like, yeah, this is who I am, but then it's like, you know, that's who you are but that's also who everyone else is who is on this call. What you really want to do is make it specific to only you so that you're setting yourself apart as a candidate compared to everyone else in the pool. So you can start off with your, you know, the headline that you created right so I'm a business and finance professional with over X years of what kind of experience do you have is it if geography is important, such as you've been working internationally or internationally or regionally and you're depending on where you're applying right if you're applying to a local nonprofit, then you want to say like, you want to emphasize your local nonprofit work, or if you're applying to a regional public company, you want to focus on your regional work, or if you're applying to some sort of national or multinational corporation, you really want to focus on that so that, you know, you're just making it easy for them to see to and to equals your a qualified candidate for their role. And then the next section experience in related fields. So, you know, you have your headline fields or industries but then you can also say, you know, I've worked specifically with X sector, and the other sector. So like maybe nonprofits and governments or specifically worked with be to be companies business business, or be to see companies business consumer. And basically just making it so that the wording is kind of giving them an idea of what sectors you've done that are similar to what they're asking for or who they are. And then you can say pursuing a blank job title, the job title that you're applying for so just, you know, make it really specific to them. That kind of a role in a blank type of organization so I've put some descriptor examples at the bottom like social justice organization educational technological public service. You know, whatever it is right just you just want to make it specific. Okay. So I got a question in the chat. I've been working as an accounting clerk for 15 years graduated in May with my BS and accounting I wanted to work as an entry level accountant to get my foot in the door and get an experience what's the best type of resume to use. Oh, actually so you may want to consider. Let me just go back here. You may want to consider a categorical resume if your job title has been the same from job to job, then it would be helpful, especially for trying to get in as an entry level to kind of detail out the different categories that you've worked in and what types of work you've done in each. Okay, and I think we have one person who is interested in the resume review. Okay, great. Okay, so just to get back to the objective. The important here is so, you know, if we pretend to be the hiring manager and you look at these two candidates, you can see what a difference it makes right so candidate a on the left looking for an organization where I can contribute my background skills and experience to a team. Everybody here and doesn't help the reader distinguish you from any of the other candidates I know people like to make it super generic so they could just send out the resume really quickly. But, you know, it's a competitive job market and anything you could do to give yourself an advantage is is highly recommended in this environment. So, I would definitely say take the extra three minutes and make your objective specific so candidate be government affairs professional over 10 years of international experience governance and emerging technology is pursuing a policy leadership role in a social justice focus organization like, wow, I'm going to call that person first. Okay, so the next section is the skills summary. Here you want to make it concrete and not subjective so this is setting yourself apart by removing generic words. Again, like team player organized good communicator, you know, unless you're applying for a communications job or something or organization know something job, but you want to add specific technical industry keywords. So here's just again a candidate comparison right. So candidacy made it really easy for us to read their skills we can see the categories of skills that they have. They broke it down into how long they've had those skills so we can see that they're very experienced or intermediate experienced. And they also listed the specific tools, which are important keywords. So any keywords that you see in the job description that aligned with skills you have you want to make sure you just stated explicitly. So candidate D kind of kept it more generic right and candidate D is probably the majority of candidates that we have applying to our job, because that's the nature of our role right they need the certain skills. So that doesn't help distinguish you from others versus candidate C here actually has specific software tools, specific categories of their skills, specific languages that they speak and even levels of fluency in the skills. So here's an example of somebody's resume where they have specific skills. So quantitative and statistical analysis, demographic analysis and working with census data GIS software Adobe creative suite Photoshop illustrator in design. HTML CSS Python, etc. And they even listed how many years they've had these skills and approximately how proficient they are in them. So it's just really helpful right if you're the employer reading through resumes and you see that oh this person has these skills that's great. For you, just think about your universe of technical possibilities. So beyond languages spoken, there are the specific lines of business you've worked in specific departments you've worked in typically departments are good keywords for putting your resume. And then, as I kind of mentioned before there's the types of audience or constituents your employer serves. So, you know, were you serving businesses were you serving consumers. Was it senior focused or were you doing things for adult populations or families or youth populations, and then the sector of your employer. And then there's the typical ones which are the categorizable aptitudes. So like data analysis writing project management, and things that they ask for in the job description. But then there's also software programs on office tools and levels of proficiency. There's also hardware tools like 3D printer or laser cutters and see, you know, just any industry specific procedures that you have. And then there are, you know, certifications that are required for your industry. List them out and don't just assume that I mean you can list the specific certification but also not just assume that people are going to know what is what that specific certification entails. So, for example, if they say, I mean, if, if an HR person looks at your resume first before handing it off to somebody who is in the department that's hiring, then you want to make sure that all of the different readers just see all of the keywords and can comprehend like hey this person is qualified. And then there's leadership roles or, you know, any roles you've had as a trainer or a supervisor or manager or instructor, and then drivers license classifications if that's relevant. You know, if you're reading through job descriptions, you'll kind of get an idea of what some of the skills are that everyone is asking for. And you want to be able to list the skills that are related that you have on your resume. And really you want to get, if you see that you're missing some that people keep asking for but that's really the job path that you want to apply for. Try to get those skills onto your resume somehow. So, either do an internship or volunteer somewhere where they'll help you develop that skill, or you could take a certification or free course online, which actually really shows that you can be competitive. So, for example, one time we were hiring for a graphic design role, and that person didn't have a degree in any graphic design related field, but they had taken over 10 online courses that were, you know, like these courses that you could apply for subscription services online in the different graphic design softwares. So, we still invited that person in for a phone interview because they showed initiative and that that could really hop in and be able to do the job or, you know, we could help train them on some things but that they would still be a good potentially good candidate. So SF Public Library, it's nice because you can access these e-learning resources for free with your library, with your library card. So, for example, if you go online to SFPL.org, under Research and Learn, you can go to e-learning. And then you can see some of the tools here. So, here's Gail online courses, for example. And the nice thing about Gail is that you can see they have all these accounting and finance, business, college, readiness, computer applications, design and composition, healthcare, law and legal. So, they have a bunch of different topics and it's nice because you just plug in your library card and you can access the subscription service for free. So, that is one resource. And then if you prefer in-person, you can also use community colleges or extended learning programs. And I also actually highly recommend looking up your local industry conference. So, for example, if you just type in, you know, National Professional Association for XYZ Industry. So, here's where your industry is and just check and see if they have a local chapter here in the Bay Area and see if that local chapter or even if the national chapter hosts an industry conference. It's a really great way to kind of plug into a bunch of seminars that are all on topics of interest in the industry right now. And sometimes they have institutes where you can learn extra like a quick learn session that you could list on your resume and find, you know, that's one great way to get a certain skill on your resume is like, you know, took a seminar on search engine optimization or something. And yeah, so that is one great tool I would recommend checking out and just seeing it's worth it. And then it also sometimes they have exhibitors and you have the chance to kind of chat with people one on one. And typically a lot of these places are hiring at the time so it's just a nice way to get be in a non like not a job fair but still an environment where you have less pressure and just chat with people get more information from people in the industry. Okay, and then the fourth section is work experience. So for work experience you want to list each job and include the locations like the city and state. Your start and end dates which don't have to be a specific date it could just be the month and year. And some people just list the year. And then it's helpful if you can include the employer's website, especially if it's a place that maybe some people haven't heard of LinkedIn kind of does it automatically for you by linking to the employer. But on your paper resume you want to just help provide that extra information. And then you want to list your job functions your projects and your achievements at each. And really the goal with that is that you want to list those out in a way that is not redundant and in a way that they feel organized. So I recommend bullet points instead of narrative. And the bullet points kind of fall into these three categories naturally. So one thing that you can do with your own resume is to just take it and read it sentence by sentence and see whether each sentence is a project or a function or an achievement. And once you start noting that out what you'll see is like maybe it's not organized well because you're just going jumping back and forth between achievements projects and functions. And so just, you know, do an initial check on your resume and see what the sentence orders are and then maybe consider reordering them so that they're all clustered. And also what helps is that once you have it in this bullet point form, when you apply to new jobs in the future, you can easily delete some or add some in. And then you can, if all the projects are what's most relevant put those at the top, or if the functions are most relevant put those at the top, because, for example, we had one applicant who had some relevant experience but it was all the way at the bottom of their work experience because I think we were hiring for an HR position and they had both customer service and HR experience from their prior role. They had all the customer service stuff at the top and fortunately, as we were reading quickly through all the resumes we did catch the relevant experience that was towards the bottom. But you might not always have somebody that reads all the way to the bottom and then, you know, maybe you're like oh this is not relevant and skip to the next candidate. So you just want to give yourself that extra leg up by reordering it for what's most relevant and actually even possibly deleting the bullets completely that have nothing to do with the job you're applying for because it's good for you to know and you can keep it on this for a copy of your resume that you have that have all the ways that you would talk about any of the bullets, but you for the targeted resume that you're sending to a specific employer you just want to narrow it down to what they want to hear about and not other stuff. So how can you tell if it's a function or project or an achievement. Basically the job functions are the things that you did regularly or daily, even on a recurring schedule so like annual events or something semi annual or quarterly. Projects are the things that had a beginning a middle and an end you started it you executed it and then maybe you did a post evaluation. You know projects are often a good thing to practice talking about for interview questions because they ask you about like explain the time when you had a challenging situation and how you overcame it, or explain a time when you had to work together with other people and what if you didn't do well what were the outcomes, you know just like having specific examples of things like that typically comes out of projects. And what's helpful with projects to is if you describe your role relative to others because, for example, maybe you're working on a project that has 20 people, and all 20 people have that project on their resume and if two of you are applying for a job and competing against someone like oh were you the team lead on your side and the other person was just a participant or you know just what was your role, and then some things you can include are the duration of the project or tools that you used. This is a good way to back up what you list in your skills section by putting it under the projects that you did so people can see like, oh okay I see where this person used Salesforce or where they used Microsoft Dynamics or something. By plugging it in here. And then achievements could include key performance indicators or KPIs that you achieved if your company has those or if they have, you know, like a strategic plan and you're reaching some of those goals or if you have performance goals that you met or processes that you improved. So typically this is what people already have on their resume that has, you know, quantifiable information and you do want to add like numbers to these wherever you can so that there's some sort of frequency number or some sort of volume number, which just puts your work into context for the hiring manager that's reading your resume. So not just doing that in achievements but also doing that for projects and your job functions. And then if you are a student or somebody who's trying to transition from a different field. Depending on like internships after school jobs and work study positions that you can write out some other things that could be in your work experience section which you can rename to just experience includes volunteering. So maybe you had some leadership roles or you had some tools that you learned or use and you know if you built relationships and stuff you can list that under here. And then projects like projects on your own or projects for school independent projects. For those you can describe what you did what tools you use and people that you worked with etc. And then if you're part of any clubs or activities or committees. This is a good spot to highlight leadership or ways that you participated in helping with logistics or designing programming and also include some sort of duration that's longer maybe than some of your other activities. Great to go get a question about length and I would say two page resumes are ideal and you just want to keep the font size readable so 10 to 12 point font and follow any special instructions they give you but I would say you don't have to squeeze everything into one page which is sometimes what people here. And at the same time three or four pages is too long and that's kind of like you're basically including things that might not be relevant and you want to consider what to take out because people may be reading your resume really quickly like just imagine somebody taking a game notice so they're leaving and now you're trying to recruit for their position and you're still doing your own job, plus reading through all these resumes and they give you a stack of 30 resumes to read through, which is just crazy like all you can do with 30 resumes in front of you is skim really fast and check for keywords check for like, you know, things that are top of mind to you. And so you might only be looking at each resume for two minutes, or something. So, yeah, you just want to make sure that everything that that person's going to see is relevant to the job that you're applying for I know it's a lot of work but it all, if you think you're qualified for the job I would say it's worth it to just take the extra time to custom tailor your resume. And the next section underneath it would be education and certifications. So here you can list your schooling. If you didn't complete your degree you could just list the number of units you completed, and then you can you want to list it from most recent to least recent or will actually whatever is most relevant to the job that you're applying for. Okay, if your degrees were a long time ago it's helpful if you've had some sort of, you know, seminars that you've attended recently or online courses that you've done, and put them at the top as really relevant, such as, you know, like anything that you've done in the last five to seven years it's helpful if you have some sort of recent education so just looks like you're keeping up with your skills. Just a note that for students or people who actually aren't working in what they studied but trying to move into work that is more relevant to what they studied. You can consider bringing this education section up to the top of your resume and make that be the first thing and really detail it out and expand it and you can cut out the irrelevant stuff from your work experience that doesn't apply to what you're applying for now and add in instead relevant coursework your thesis projects that you did any publications you had scholarships you had other recognitions you had and anything that has key words that might be of interest to the employer, because sometimes in your mind it you're putting two and two together that like oh hey it makes sense that I had all these studies and that's why I'm applying for this now even though my resume doesn't look like it's in it, but for them they have no idea right they're just getting candidate resumes and other people have more relevant work experience but you're trying to say like oh no I actually have an interest in a passion look at my education. And so the only way to do that is to bring your education section to the top and make it really big and have all the details that are relevant to what you're applying for. It makes someone more easily understand why you're applying for this job, even if the rest of your resume is kind of in a different direction, so just think about it. And then the last section is where you can have things like your volunteer work, your civic affiliations, you want to showcase leadership, if you can. And you really this is a good chance to demonstrate longevity and dedication so maybe you've played an instrument for a really long time, or you were part of an association for a really long time. Sometimes it just happens that people in their work experience end up jumping from job to job every two or three years. It tends to be a flag to employers because you're you're looking at it and you're like oh this person's going to get trained and then leave us. And so it's hard. I mean it's hard to avoid that bias when you have these short term work experiences. So one way to get around it is to just make sure that somewhere else on your resume it shows that you really had like a dedicated period of time to a certain thing so that like hey if I'm in the right place I could say for a long time is people don't want necessarily candidates that are always just going to be leaving. And also you can use this as a space to highlight any other keywords that would be helpful to your application. And just think about it. If you have to some of these categories can become your work experience if if you really are in that transition period or just don't have the right experience from work roles but really want to get into doing that type of work. Okay, any other questions. None yet. Okay, so I will move on to part two which is going from the basics to making it a really great resume. And what we want to do is again put on our hiring manager hat. And why this matters is because if you look at this, you know, this circle could be a company right and then if you imagine each little pebble is a person in a department, what the hiring manager or the HR human resources department is doing is trying to fill a little gap within the company, but when they get resumes and applications what they get is this, you know, it's a hodgepodge of applicants and it's hard to tell who's actually qualified until you start sifting through every single resume you got. So what your resume to do for you is really pluck you out of this pile of everybody else. And you know in the depths of the housing crisis recession back in 089 and 10. There were like 4000 applicants for city jobs, like for one city job. These days I hope it's not as bad, but it's just, it's, it's still something to think about right like how many other candidates are applying and you know you don't want to get down about it like oh wow there's already 100 people that applied to this. Some of some people are just shooting in resumes wherever so really like maybe half of them are not qualified. Half of them didn't do any of this extra tailoring of their resume to be specific to the job. And then yeah so if I think if you think you're a strong candidate for a role it's really worth it to do this extra, you know, making sure that they can see that. So, because you know there's these other factors to that you're up against which is like maybe people have the job multiple times they worked at several companies in the industry and you're coming from outside. Or people had exactly the same job before and you didn't, or they know the same software as you same degrees. But you can still sound more competitive based on how you present yourself in your resume and I think not everyone is doing this so it's so good for you being here and it's to your advantage really to just think hard about your cover letter and your how you're saying things in your resume. Also because what I was saying before, right, so it could be an HR person looking at your resume or not maybe it's the exact it maybe it's the person hiring for the role, maybe it's someone in different department handing it off. And also they could be looking at it on a computer, or they could be printing it out and giving it to the next person so that's why it's important to make sure it's legible in any instance. Or it could be that there's not even a human reading it first it's getting computer screened for those keywords. So that's why wherever you can plug in their words instead of, you know, like maybe your employer called it something before but really the rest of the people in the field call it something else. You want to just use the terminology that the industry uses and just, you know, double check for that. But basically in most instances people are short staff that's why they're hiring for this role. And so they're just reading it really fast and you want to make it easy for them to see that you're the right candidate. And so these are some additional next level strategies that I'm going to go through. So one is making sure you add numbers to your resume wherever you can. That's a big one, and I'll show you why it makes such difference. Number two is aligning your vocabulary to match the words from their job description. Number three is just pretend to be the reader and read it read competitions resumes as well. And then number four, write a non generic cover letter as well, like you can still start off from a template but just you want to make your cover letter also as custom tailored as your resume. So the first one here is adding numbers. So if we just look at these two candidates, right? I don't know if people want to vote in the chat. Actually, I don't know if you can chat. Oh yeah, you can chat to me directly. Which of these two candidates would you call first? If you were a hiring manager, you only had time to call one of them. Would you call candidate E first or would you call candidate F first? Let's give us a second. One of them. And the trick question here is like they both have the same years of experience in the same city, same job title, and really the only difference is that, yeah, one gave us some quantities and the other did not, right? So candidate F was more generic about what they did and candidate E really tells us like, hey, this is how much I did. This is how frequently I did it. This is how many times how many people and I personally as a hiring manager would call candidate E first. Yes, I got some votes for E. Because they really showcase, you know, the scale of their role. So just think about your own resume. Where can you add numbers? Because it does make a difference, right? Like what quantities, scales, volumes or frequencies can you add? Just imagine that I'm standing there asking you how many or how often or how many times, like, what was the volume? In the previous examples that I showed, you can see where, for example, in this sentence, they said identified key roadblocks and proposed effective solutions for a $55 million project that saved the hospital almost $1 million. They could have said that sentence without the number, right? But then you wouldn't have the context. Like $55 million is that a large project or a small scale project depends on where you're applying, right? But if it's a number that would be valuable to the place where you're applying, definitely include it. If their revenue is the same size as your revenue where you've worked at before, or if their client base is the same number of clients that where you worked at before, those are things that you want to highlight for them so that they see that, oh, yeah, this person can just jump right into this job or conversely, it might be like, oh, this person is overqualified for this job or underqualified. So it's really, you know, pick the numbers that make sense to provide to them. And then the one in the bottom, they provided telephone support, investigated and resolved billing problems for an 18 member manufacturers buying group. So 18 members sounds like a lot. They were supporting a lot of people in the office as opposed to just supporting like a two or three member group. What they didn't include was how they said they trained and supervised part-time staff and interns, but like how many they didn't say or how frequently they didn't say either. So if someone else says that it's really helpful sounding. But just these are some places where you can add numbers right so to your for your job functions. It's like how many people did you process how many people did you train. I don't know. And people want to share in the chat like what industry you're working in or what industry, or you're trying to apply for a job in. I feel free to drop it there. Because I'm curious, but for projects, you could talk about what the outcomes were like how many people or offices or teams did you have to work with or how many did it impact. I think one big one these days right is, are you working if you're working hybrid how often, or if you're working, like, you know remote versus in person, or if you're having to coordinate with offices across the globe. How many countries are you having to coordinate time zones with. Yeah, there's question in the chat if this is going is if this is recorded, and yes, this will get sent out to everyone who's registered for today's seminar. And then under achievements some things that you can talk about where, you know how much was earned how much was saved, and then what percent increase or decrease was realized. And you really want to use these numbers to just show leadership again, and your ability to handle high volumes, your depth and your role, and your ability to be efficient. So the next exercise is aligning your vocabulary in your resume and cover letter to the words from their job description. So what's helpful. Sometimes I get asked to help review resume, but my first question is what job are you applying for, because that will really determine the feedback on the resume, right. So what you want to do is make sure that you are inserting keywords from the job description into your resume and using the language that they're using. So, I'm going to go. And here's just one example where it's that government affairs position right. These are some of the keywords that I would highlight from this job description. So, they are in SF and they're piloting policy frameworks and governance protocols with governments companies civil society and other stakeholders around the world in order to shape the trajectory of emerging technology so that they benefit society. And this role will do these things with governments and academic institutions in geographies around the world, etc. So I'll highlight so what I would do is once you're looking at job descriptions just copy and paste them or, you know, save them into a Google Doc or something or email them to yourself but that's your chance to just read through them once and just highlight the keywords that you see being mentioned so that you remind yourself to mention them in your materials where you can, and also so you don't have to keep rereading the job description as you're updating your resume. It's helpful to just do it one time. Take the notes all at once. And, and then it's also good for your cover letter to to just do that double check like hey I highlighted all these things in the job description did I mention them somewhere in my cover letter or my resume. So, here for example is the next two candidates so if I was the hiring manager and I'm reading through these resumes and I get these two one person actually worked. These could be the same person actually right but one person is telling me that they actually worked on policy and governance specific topics, and they helped these interviews that they helped with were for academic and governmental partners, and they managed these social media accounts to engage civil society, like they're speaking my language right, and I'm going to, I mean, I could take a poll of everyone, but if you were going to call one of these two candidates first you only had time to call one of them. You know the first one that's going to get the phone call is the one on the left, even though these could be the exact same person. Okay, so next exercise to do while you're looking through your resume is to just, you know, pretend to be the reader. So, you always want to take this into consideration because I think some people they just apply apply apply at places and become frustrated because they're not hearing back. I think if this is happening to you it's a flag to you to just consider like what are you saying in your resume. How are you saying it, and how are other people saying it who are applying for the same job. Right, because one thing is that you're you're looking at it from your perspective but you have to look at it from the perspective of the hiring managers. But two resumes where one person sounds like they sound like a stretch versus the other person really sounds qualified. They're going to take the person who sounds qualified and call them first unless it sounds like that person has had like a thousand jobs lined up and is, you know, just going to move on to the next thing. But so you want to make yourself sound like that happy medium of qualified and I'm telling you everything of why I'm qualified like call me. So, things to make sure you're talking about like are your skills similar or better than others. I mean, we went through that skill section earlier of how you can make sure that they sound better than others. And then is each section easy to read quickly because then people are reading super fast. So, the last bullet is really important are irrelevant details, any of the functions or the projects or achievements you're talking about. Deleted, because you, you don't need to talk about stuff I know some people they spent like 15 years or 20 years working at a place so it has 15 or 20 years worth of space on their resume. But if that's not what you're applying it for anymore, you have to cut that down like you have to cut that down to only a few bullet points and really pump up what is relevant. So if you're volunteering is what's most relevant, give that the most bullet points or if your education is what's most relevant, give that the most bullet points and put it at the top. So you have to look at your resume from the outsider's view and really see like, is this person more qualified than other resumes I'm going to get for this role. And it only really works if you're deleting the irrelevant details and putting in what makes sense. The common question that I get is what if I'm trying to change into a new field and like what do I keep on my resume. I would say volunteer more in relevant, you know, relevant organizations and emphasize your education, and make sure you're doing all relevant work, like for example, I knew someone who's trying to apply for like it roles and more computer based stuff but had previously worked in a lot of customer service. And all of the roles on the resume were customer service related, but you know, they were doing a lot of personal projects for family members like rebuilding their computer troubleshooting their tech problems. And that really needed a place on the resume in order to verify why you could even consider this as being a relevant application right. And that's where your cover letter really comes into play where you can explain that, and where your interest section or your personal project section is something that you should detail out to really explain to people like oh yeah even though I worked in all of these. I'm actually trying to work in this now and here's all my relevant experience even if it's not traditional employers. And then again this common mistake, giving irrelevant details too much space. That had nothing to do with what you're applying for it just you can keep the employer and the, you know the dates but then really delete everything else below like no bullet points or just one bullet point of something you did there that was relevant. But there's no point in mentioning it if you can give that space to other things that are more relevant. So here's an example right this person in their education section if you look so. It's interesting because they were an intern they had one job as a planner designer and then they were a graduate teaching assistant. They had these experiences from their jobs, but what they didn't have up there is things that they were able to detail out as relevant projects and coursework so they have significant projects where they did GIS C level rise analysis and improvement plan, urban design research on desalinization sustainability right so it sounds like this person is kind of focused on seas and oceans and so if you're applying for that type of a role. You would be shooting it yourself in the foot not to explain these projects from school because just because you didn't work on it with an employer doesn't mean that you don't have relevant experience. So it's helpful to detail out so that you have these keywords climate change adaptation plan or solar plant panel adoption plan. Like, if you can get those keywords from your education then make sure they're on your resume because don't just leave it to your work experience section. And then one other shooting yourself in the foot thing is like sometimes people have their different promotions listed separately, or they have their different like projects listed separately. And what you want to make sure is that you're visually consolidating those as the umbrella of one main company, and then having like the promotions all batched underneath the umbrella of the larger time period. And then same for if you were working with clients as a consultant and you had different ones like that's it all under the client consulting umbrella with the larger date range, and then you can list the sub projects underneath. But just visually as people are reading it fast you don't want it to make it look like two years three years one year two years, but and then turns out you were actually getting promoted but to them it looks like you're changing jobs. So, you just want it to be that whole chunk of like five years or eight years, and then just highlighting underneath that like hey, these were actually promotions over the time of the course that I was there. So, overall, this takes a lot of time I know but it, as I said, you know, it really changes the impression on the reader on the other side so I would say for each job that you're really interested in and feel qualified for you want to dedicate just two to three hours to update your resume and really tailor it to what you're doing, and it will pay off. And then the last part is yes write a couple of letter. So, for writing a cover letter, again, just use the skills and keywords directly mentioned in the job description. And, you know, I used to start my used to start my cover letter off with like an anecdotal story of why I want to apply here. But you got from my sister actually she would just like they asked for this she would say like you asked for this I need it like this this this and you asked for that and I need it like that that that. And really when you think about it, for example, Disney right everyone wants to work at Disney or everyone wants to work at Apple and so they start off like I love Apple or I love Disney that doesn't separate you from other people. That's what really separates you is the most concrete strengths you bring to the job that they're asking you to do. So it's better to start off with the most concrete strengths upfront, they asked for it and you have it, and they asked for something and you exceed it. And then you get into something interesting about any relevant work or education or affiliations so it's not like, so yes you meet the job, plus you're like just interested in them and the industry. And then you can go into why you like that specific organization which is helpful because sometimes you know, people are just applying anywhere. And when they have the option between, maybe they have a research who wants to work here and a research associate who just wants to work anywhere. They are going to pick, they're going to call first the research associate that sounds strong that wants to work here. So it's just helpful to include number three. And then sometimes you know they, they can email you first or they can call you first based on your preferred method so it doesn't hurt to say it. And this is just short like half a page or less, each paragraph is maybe two sentences, because you're really just trying to highlight the high points for them and not, it's nothing no long narrative your resume always already stands for itself this is more just giving your voice to it and also throwing in anything that you need to explain. So here's a sample where you start off. Oh, and it's sometimes it's helpful to tell them where you heard about the job because everyone's always like oh yeah we're trying to post here and we're trying to use that thing and it's you know they always want to know like how did you hear about this. And then, again, remember the keywords so you've been doing these things related to these keywords for so many years. Matching their job description and then something like recently you did something of interest more keywords and you know it kind of overlapped with what they're doing. And then at the end it's been a goal of mine to work here and why. And then close. So, just very simple cover letter template but you know, you really want to cater it to who you're applying for and not just make it a generic one because nobody has time to read generic stuff anymore. And so just a few things about when you're searching online for a job. There's a lot of resources out there. There are general search engines but then there are some job specific job boards. So the ones that are in bold with the triangle I personally like to use more so craigslist.org for example. Which you know sometimes craigslist can be iffy where you know anyone can post anything for free but at least on the job section. There's a little bit of a screening mechanism because you have to pay for the post I forgot how much like $75 for 90 days or something. But at least it's a little bit screen but just make sure it, you know, especially if they include their name then you can look them up and you can maybe look up the job description on their website. And I can just show a quick search right now but basically. And you want to make sure you spell it correctly because sometimes it takes you to spammy sites if you don't but you can do SF Bay for the Bay area craigslist craigslist.org. And then kind of just come here to the job section instead of clicking into one of these I would just use the general the overall section so you can see everything and right now you see there's 5700 posts that's too many to look through. And here's where we use technology to improve our lives. So for example, maybe I know I just I need to ride muni to get to work I'm going to stay in San Francisco. And yeah you instead of filtering for a specific one you can come down to the left side over here. You can actually change the settings here. So you can show all the categories and you can deselect this so that you're only picking the categories of interest to you. So I don't know what people said here that they work in. I'm just going to pick a few as an example. So maybe I work in nonprofits and I'm interested in real estate and architecture art and maybe web design. Okay, so and then you keep scrolling down and what's nice is you can also choose neighborhood so maybe you need to go somewhere where Bart goes. Let's see maybe I will go along the Bart stations financial district land park downtown civic center. Maybe Hayes Valley is close enough for too far. Okay, and then Mission District and Tenderloin kind of. All right, so can we just say I don't click these in case they're, you know, it depends on who filled out the form and if they filled out all the spots but otherwise then you just say apply. Hey, there's only 11 but basically you just play with the filters and once you get to a point here where it's actually like jobs that you would be interested in applying for just book market so you don't have to run the filters again. So you just book market here, and you just say, you know, whatever my job search for this type of blah blah blah save it in your bookmarks bar, and then next week whenever you have your one or two hours of job searching. You just click it run it it runs the exact same search but with all the new postings so it's really convenient. And then another trick that I like using is, for example, if I don't know specifically what field I want to work in I'm just I'm just overseeing what's out there. Sometimes they ask you for they ask you for a keyword or a job title, but what I like to do is just type in the level so for example manager or director, and then you can put your industry if that's helpful or not but even just put any the level that you're looking for, you can kind of see what pops up and there's director of this director of that. It's just kind of nice to search that way instead of typing in specific keywords so just two tips for your online job search. And then besides it's job search engines a few field specific job search boards. So for startups, you can use angel.co for design related jobs you can use course 77.com. Someone saying there's a lot of spam on dice.com but that was an IT resource and then for nonprofits there's idealist. Of course, you know they post elsewhere and especially on LinkedIn, but just in terms of field specific job boards. And then there's also government and public sector so that covers a lot of fields so don't forget about that. Calops.org is the one for California for cities and regional bodies that don't have their own website so city of San Francisco has its own website. SFDHR.org and I think there's another site too, but for example the daily cities and the Brisbane's of the world post on Calops.org. And then I think what's really important is to just bookmark specific company sites of places where you want to work so sometimes people just do their whole job search looking at what's available right now. And I think what's more helpful is if you do that industry research that I was talking about about going out like the industry conference and who goes to that. You can get kind of a gist of who the main employers are in that industry and just go to their individual websites, their career pages and run a search there and bookmark those. So when I was trying to work in affordable housing and at the time I was working in transit. I just booked, I went and researched a bunch of the affordable housing companies in the Bay Area, and kind of went through all their websites for the career pages and then save them as bookmarks in a folder. And then so every time I was looking for new postings I would just click through and see what was recently posted because you don't know what job boards they're using. I mean a lot of them are using LinkedIn and Craigslist and indeed, but maybe they're not and maybe they're not where you're looking, but maybe it's a place that you would want to apply to. So it's just helpful to do that search yourself and then you who knows what will pop up, but just something to keep in your back pocket. And then on the right side, these are more just like in your time if you're unemployed or underemployed and want to just look through there's some e learning resources. There's some tutorials like computer tutorials on GCF global.org. And then there's the sites where you can create your own online profile. Social media, people are pretty familiar. And then just it's good to stay inspired because sometimes you're just so tired of the slog of job hunting. But yeah, break it up. I mean, job hunting, especially if you're unemployed, it's like a full time job in itself and you don't want to burn yourself out. So just, you know, give yourself four hours a day or something where you're doing that but then do other stuff and like just cut yourself off because you could apply to jobs forever. But head.com has a bunch of inspirational videos on a variety of topics, which is nice. And then even Twitter if you start following certain sources like you can follow job seeker resources you can follow the San Francisco Public Library but just different areas so that you're keeping on top of the most recent news. And then there's these networking websites where you can go to events on event pride or meet up or volunteer match.org is how I'm here because I had a job that was part time so I decided what am I going to do on my day off and I'll look for some volunteering opportunity and found one at the library in San Mateo and then switch to the library in San Francisco when I moved there so it's just, you know, it's a good way to and then now I have these years of just development training that I could put on my resume for if I ever apply for a job in that direction. So, you know, just look for all the ways to help improve your resume. And so we just did this SFBA.crankslist.org search. And then this is what the SF website looks like and for city jobs it's nice because you can go and see the classifications of every single job that they would ever hire for. So, and you can do that for, I think a lot of cities have that where it's not just the current jobs that are open but you can sign up for alerts for future jobs that could open up. So that's what's nice about the public sector instead of private sector because private sector you don't know what jobs are out there except for what job titles people currently have right now. So that's nice for the public sector you can actually see all the job titles all the classifications, even salary ranges. So that's a nice resource, even if you're not planning to work in the public sector it's just a good place to check for information. So that's the one that I was talking about earlier. The careers pages bottom of other company websites. And indeed, instead of typing in a keyword at the top you can also go to the bottom and just browse jobs, which is nice. Oh, I jumped ahead of myself. Okay, well, here is this is online on my blog for this presentation which is resume workshop SF.wordpress.com and Angela will send out the information again afterwards. Just a final reminder when submitting your resume to run a spell check on it, since it looks bad when you have typos and this is your first impression. And then also just have someone else review it so that you make sure that the language that you're using is an insider lingo. And for your email have an e have a formal email address because you might have a funny one that you like but just save that for your personal contacts until they know you this is still just your first impression and if they get a formal person versus an informal person, you know, you might call the formal person first and put the job title. Oh, okay, so sometimes, you know, if you're applying to a job on Craigslist and you're just emailing in your resume. We would post a job on a Friday and coming on Monday morning and just have an inbox full of responses. And so it's helpful if you just add your name in the subject line instead of just, you know, whatever job we posted like maintenance supervisor. Just put your name in there so it stands out a little bit in case they remember you and liked you use proper punctuation capitalization. And what I like to do is, once I've finished editing my resume, I save it as a PDF, so that it retains the formatting but it's still readable and just send it as a PDF. And then, after you've written your cover letter you can just put your cover letter into the body of the email so you don't have to say please see attached and so your cover letter just becomes your email. And I would organize save the file that you sent them because, you know, they'll call you back and sometimes they call you back soon because they're in the middle of interviewing and hiring, or sometimes they're very slow and they call you back to or three months later. And at that time you already forgot where you applied, and then you have to go back in your own files and find the one that you sent to them so that you know what they're looking at so you know what you could talk about. Yes, this happened to me. So just it's good to keep good records for your own sake and just keep your long version of your resume so that if those jobs are relevant. In the future you know how you would describe them, but if they're not you could cut it out and just have it saved somewhere else. And so, oh this is kind of what I was mentioning about Twitter you could follow. Oh, actually what's helpful is once you've applied to places you're following them so that you you get their PR updates like their press releases media releases so that once you're at the interview. Round, you've hopefully reviewed their website thoroughly so you could talk about what they do, but also you know what their most recent news is which might not even be on their website might only be on their social media. So that's just one helpful thing to consider. Okay, and then so on the blog there's also some other articles about making a resume chronological or functional. So you just feel free to check it out if you want more information but you'll get a copy of this presentation and I think it gets posted to the library's YouTube. So, thank you. And if there's any questions, let me know. We will conclude the recording.