 Thank you for joining us today. It's another episode of the nonprofit show. We are so grateful to have the support of Staffing Boutique. And today, Dana Skirlock joins us. Dana has been on quite a few times and we are thrilled to have you on the show today, Dana, to talk to us about creating powerful resumes. So stay with us. Dana's got some really good insight to share with you. We wanna acknowledge Julia Patrick. Thank you, Julia, for creating this platform. She's the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and has the day off today. So I get to nerd out solely with you, Dana. I'm Jarrett Ransom, the nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and honored to be here, day in and day out to be nerdy. But I also wanna give a shout out to our best friends and presenting sponsors. So grateful to have their ongoing contribution, not only here to the episode, but truly to the sector at large. So thank you, thank you, thank you to our friends at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, where Dana joins us from, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader as well as the nonprofit nerd. These companies, mwah, they are fantastic. They're here to help you move your mission towards the goal that you seek for your organization. So essentially their mission is to help your mission do more good. So please do check them out, they are fantastic. They also allow us to put these episodes on archives for Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Fire TV, but wait, there's more. There's also the nonprofit show on podcasts. So wherever you stream your podcast, you can queue us up there as well. And Dana, today's episode in just a matter of a few hours will be on all of those channels. So I want to officially welcome you back. Again, those of you watching and listening, Dana Skirlock is here, Director of Recruitment at Staffing Boutique. So welcome. Thank you so much for having me again. It's always a pleasure. It is a pleasure and I'm so glad that the feeling is mutual. I learned so much from you every time you're here and I've learned so much from Staffing Boutique and I'm really grateful to have your partnership. For those that maybe not be familiar with Staffing Boutique, would you give us a little bit of what the organization is doing and how the company serves the nonprofit community? Of course. Well, thank you so much for the lovely intro, first of all. And yes, I have been with Staffing Boutique for over five years. Our CEO, Katie Warnock, began the company over 10 years ago. We just had the anniversary last year. So we're a woman-owned third-party staffing firm, meaning when organizations have a search, whether it's a permanent search or a temporary job that they don't have time to fill themselves or simply have had trouble in the market finding what they need, they come to someone like us. We've got the time and the expertise to focus on what they need. And we go out into the job market and identify candidates on their behalf and do the initial screening and just basically assist everybody with the recruitment process. And by everybody, I mean both the candidates and for the client that's looking to hire. Our niche is that we only staff for nonprofit organizations. So our entire practice is focused. Yes, I know, right? You love that. We're industry-focused. So we could be working on any type of position, but it's all for nonprofit organizations. And that's what makes our expertise special is that if you're at a nonprofit and you do need assistance with hiring, we have experience working with probably the type of mission you have, the budget size that you're working within. We've placed that type of staff member before. I think with a lot of other third-party firms, the tricky thing is, is that they may have done recruitment before, of course, but they may not have done recruitment of specialized things like development or programs, the way that we have. And so that's what kind of sets us apart. Fantastic. And Staffing Boutique has been with us from the very beginning of these episodes and one of our first presenting sponsors. So we have been fortunate to have you alongside us, Dana, to talk about truly the workforce in general, how we're faring across the nation. At the beginning, it was like, hang on to your job and don't let go. And then there was a lot of letting go and shifting around. So today we're talking about that shift and really talking about creating those powerful resumes. So the first tip that you're gonna dive into is sharing the crucial information that absolutely needs to be included on those resumes. So what is this crucial info, Dana? Well, well, well, well, I have, just to preface this, probably seen, I would say 5,000 resumes in the 15 years I've been recruiting. I mean, just, and the one thing I would say to people, and this is what I say to every candidate that has a question about a resume. Hiring managers are looking at your resume for, I mean, the figures were a few years ago, probably about 30 seconds. So you have to capture their attention and give them a reason out of the 500 response that they've gotten on Indeed or idealists or NIFA or any of the other job sites. You have to excite and interest them and put your resume in the pile of, let's call that person at some point for this process. And so I think a good thing to just preface looking at your resume with is, this has to be viewable and be interesting enough within a 30 second view, because most hiring managers simply don't have the time to review the resumes with a fine tooth comb. So if you put information at the bottom, that's crucial to the job or if you've sort of buried things on the second page that are important or a skills section that you think might relate to that job, that's something that you have to think about, I would only be seeing this for about 15 to 30 seconds to start what would that look like? The second thing I would say is, so the most crucial information is going to be your most recent 10 years, of course, of experience, although I say that with a caveat because a lot of times I'm talking to candidates and I'm trying to vet them for a particular position. And they'll say to me, well, I did this exact type of thing that you're describing, I only did it for four months at this place so I didn't put it on my resume. So then I have to kind of go in and say, okay, you have experience that pertains to this job that you applied to, but you sent a resume that doesn't have it on there. So what I would say the crucial information on the resume is anything you want the client or the hiring organization to know about your background, it has to be on the resume. You can't wait until you get an interview to mention the thing that the volunteer experience that you actually have that pertains to the job. So what I would actually advise is to tailor your resume to every job listing that you apply to. I would rather send out five very tailored resumes that highlight the things that pertain to that particular position that you applied to than 15 or 20 spamming resumes as is. Cause that's something that I think that a lot of people do, you can tell they haven't, the cover letter is just cut and pasted. The resume looks the same as they probably send it to everyone. The objective at the top of the resume has a different job on it. So you can tell they're not for your specific position. You can tell that it's just a general thing because they're in a hurry and they're applying to so many things at once. I actually think you have better luck as a job seeker by tailoring your resume to each individual job and taking a bit more time on each one. So that was from the crucial info would be anything that applies to the particular position you're applying to. That makes a lot of sense. And then also to that point D, they're lucky, I feel, if they even get to an interview to talk about that thing that wasn't highlighted on their resume, like otherwise in that short amount of time, as you said, they're gonna be overlooked for the next candidate that does have that tailored mention. It exactly. And things that, that also means reading the job description carefully and the things that you would answer during an interview and say, oh, I have experience with that or I did do that. I did take a seminar on that. Those are things to put in the cover letter to incorporate into your resume somehow, like so that they are something that catches the hiring manager's attention. Now, I mean, just aside housekeeping note, crucial information is also going to include your correct name. I often am having resumes where it's like, I'm not sure what their name is because they're listing nicknames or they go by something else and their email says one thing and their resume says something else. The label of the resume doesn't indicate whose resume it is or it'll, I'll get resumes that say like my resume or 2023 resume, you know, instead of, it should really be like your name or initial and name resume or what have you, but like, you know, something that if I were to pull it out of the email and save it somewhere, let's say I'm a hiring manager and I have it on my desktop, I want to be able to see, then know what document it is when I'm looking at it. And so if you send sort of your personalized labels on your, on your documents, that can sometimes impede that and you may just get lost in the sauce due to that. Oh, that is a good tip. Yeah, so the crucial information goes beyond the resume into how we save our files and maybe even the such a line of what we sent in. That's really good to talk about. What about the length? You touched on this and you said, you know, if this is on your second page and I remember back in the day, Dana, it was like, you must, you must commit to one page, no more than, no more than one page. So what is the length now for a strong resume? Well, I like you, Jared, grew up in the one page resume mantra that we got taught from, you know, home ec type classes in high school to college, you know, and then they were prepping us to start, you know, going out in job interviews and things like that. They all said only have one page. What I have found since recruiting in 2006 is that so much is digitized now that it's not as big of a deal if I'm looking at a resume that goes over to a second page. It really doesn't because I'm not printing them. When I first started recruiting, my child was as a candidate recruiter, I would print out probably 50 to 60 resumes and just sit there and go through each one and read it and then slowly go through and call the ones. I mean, A pile, B pile, you know, all this kind of stuff. That's really gone by the wayside. We've got Google Docs, we've got, I mean, so I wouldn't worry so much about the physical length if it's within two pages. Like I don't think that it's as much of a thing of like, let's not have more than one page. It's impossible to include everything that you needed to include, I think, on one page. Now that said, if you're a recent college graduate, if you just don't have that much work history, something like that. Then I would say you wanna be as distinct as possible and clear and if that fits into one page versus one page in a tiny smidge on a second page, for visuals sake, yes, let's maybe consolidate it to one page, but you shouldn't feel like it's a hard and fast rule. It's really not because we're not wasting any paper by having it cut over into, you know, a second page. Now that said, if you are somebody who is trying to put together like 25, 30 years of a resume, when it starts to fall into like three and four pages, that I think is what gets to be excessive. What I would do is I would have supplemental information. So I would have a resume and then I would have writing samples. Sometimes people, if they have their PhD or things, they're listing publications that they have on their resume and things like that. I think you can have that as like a supplemental document. So you can list a list of publications. Here's my resume list of publications, a letter of recommendation and here's a writing sample. And then the resume itself is maybe a clean, the past 10 to 15 years. Again, if you're a senior person that's been working for 30 years, let's say 10 to 15 years of your information, keeping in mind, or work history I should say, but keeping in mind how much of this pertains to the job I'm applying to. So if that means going through your resume and saying, okay, let me take off, you know, a few bullet points from here and a full point bullet points from there and then adding in a job that was in the past but it pertains to the job I'm applying to, it might be worth it to do that. So you have to really kind of be your own marketer, you know, you have to kind of copy at it, your resume. And I know that's, I know there's people at home going, I don't have time to sit there and tailor every resume. That sounds like so much work. And I get it, you know, it is more time consuming, but so is job searching for three or four months because you're not getting the interviews off your resume. So to me, I would rather spend the time on the onset, really fighting hard to get those initial points of contact from a hiring manager, meaning like a callback, a first interview, et cetera, so that you can then go in and sell them on your personality, on the other information and experiences that you may have that aren't on your resume, you know, you just want to get that first callback. Absolutely. But length of our strong resume is flexible at this point. Okay, flexibility is good. Getting their attention is the name of the game that we're looking for. Now you mentioned, you know, the digital submissions and I'm really curious about the layout requirements for digital submissions. This takes me into like so many different rabbit holes, Dana. One would be like keywords. I know some places use that keyword search. Another one I've seen on a group that I'm with with nonprofits is many of these submissions are being set aside because of the layout, because it's so wonky that like they're being overlooked because the hiring manager just doesn't look at that resume. So what do we need to do for the layout of digital submissions? Sure. I think that one of the good things about the digital age is that people have become, you know, very savvy. People know how to use Photoshop and a lot of other design oriented programs. And so they can really come up with quite, you know, visually appealing resumes. I think that that is helpful to a point. I think that if you are applying for a position that is marketing or graphic design or communications or something where your layout skills and aesthetic tastes would play into your position, it might be worth it to show sort of a graphic resume that I've even seen like pie charts and things on people's resumes that sometimes can be effective. I think you just have to be careful and use that, you know, temper your usage of that. Because really what we're looking for is not a bunch of fancy like visuals, but we're really just looking for the meat and potatoes of like what you've done and what you've done in the past five to 10 years, really. My biggest thing about formatting with resumes is that it just needs to be consistent. So for example, if you have, let's say the title of your job and then the place you worked, the name of the organization and then the years and then your bullet points, that's what I wanna see repeated throughout the other jobs that you have on your resume. Believe it or not, I get a lot of resumes where it's clear that they made the resume a while ago for the older jobs. And then they've been adding things to it as they've gained more experience, but they're not following the same format as the older things on the resume. And so what you see is this inconsistency in the design. So I'm totally okay with a very simple resume. Your name, your correct contact information and then dive right into your experience. I have no problem with like a no-frills resume, but if you have bullet points at one indention, make sure they're all indented at the same place. Don't have sections that are not designed and lined up with inconsistent with the other parts of your resume because it really stands out. If you have periods at the end of your bullet points, those sentences, I'm not a big stickler about like they have to have periods, but if they do, have them all of them. If you don't have periods at the end, don't have periods, you know, do you don't want to mix and match? That's part of it is just making it like simple, clean and easy to read. If you want to add a banner, if you want to add, you know, you know, I see things on the, you know, in the margins of the resume that, you know, show off some of their, the candidates like design skills because part of the job is making newsletters or, you know, marketing materials for the organization. I'm totally on board with that, but I think the simpler, the better. The other, I think major thing with resumes is that there's two main versions of a resume you can make. There's the regular reverse chronological resume, which is the most useful for me and the most, where you're just listing, here's my most recent job. Here's the job that came before that and on down. Very simple to the point. I think that that is much more effective than what we call functional resume. And some people do like to use those, especially as they get later on into their career and they have so many jobs. In lieu of having sometimes like a third or fourth page, they'll do a functional resume where they're just listing all their skills and then listing what jobs they've held in just one line. I hope that makes sense for viewers, but if you see a resume like this, you'll see what I'm talking about. Just like a long list of different skills that they have experienced because some of them duplicate multiple jobs, so you only have to list them once and then they'll just have one blurb at the bottom listing their titles and where they worked in the years and no additional details. Yes, it does save space. However, a functional resume to me is not as helpful because it doesn't tell me when you did those skills, when you learned them, when you used that software or at what organization you did those things and all of those things are relevant. So like what you did at a small budget organization versus a larger budget organization, that matters. So if you just have the skills there floating and I can't tell which organization you did that at, I may just pass your resume or put it in the call later pile instead of the call right away pile. And those are the small differences that could make the difference between you getting the job or not. Even in this market, and I still think that it's very candidate driven, meaning like candidates are the ones in the driver's seat, there's more positions than there are trained, experienced staff for some of the higher level positions. Even with that, there's still a lot of competition for these roles, especially higher paying positions. So to me, a lot of organizations are struggling with the reality that salaries have to increase. And part of their reticence is that they're seeing resumes with grammatical mistakes, with formatting mistakes and they're going, and you're telling me I have to pay more, and I'm getting resumes that aren't looking any better or they should be perfect then if you're telling me I have to go up to X amount of money for this mid bubble position. And I think that that's fair to a degree. I think I'm a candidate advocate, salaries need to increase to reflect the current cost of living and inflation. I also think clients are in organizations and hiring managers are being more than fair, demanding to get really top talent then to offset that or to match that. Yeah, the layout I can see, like there's so many opportunities for our digital space now. I'm a user component for Canva. I mean, I use that it's very user friendly. You could save it as a PDF, maybe upload it that way. But I love what you've shared here, Dana, because there is so much to think about it, especially at these different levels. To the pay point, I saw an internship on LinkedIn the other day, and it was touting $26 an hour for paid interns. Like phenomenal, I think. I know, I just thought, wow, this is a very progressive organization. Yes, that's new. That is very new. I thought, well, if I was at internship level, I would be interested in this one. Absolutely. You talked a little bit about that digital submission, and I feel like we might have prepped into some of the resume style guidelines, but nerd out with me more on this, Dana, because there are so many guidelines. I love how you talked about, because if I were a free agent now and I were to go out and have to do a resume, I'm one of those like 20 years of experience, what am I gonna knock out? What am I not gonna put on there? So talk to us a little bit more about these resume style guidelines. I think that it's a slippery slope. Like you wanna put as much information as you can into a couple of pages, maybe if you've got a lot of experience, two and a half pages, but I think two is plenty. I think you really have to go in to the bullet points and really like say, okay, I'm gonna keep this job that's from 10 years ago to four or five bullet points, very specific. And even if you try to consolidate the language too, you can sometimes put a lot of bullet points together. And when I say put the bullet points together, I just mean put the information into one line so that it only takes up one bullet point instead of two or three to describe what you're trying to say. Like the more succinct you can make the language, the more space you're gonna get. In terms of like the style, I think again, I don't mind what format you use, just make sure that it's consistent. So the biggest thing, like there are plenty of resume styles that you can download off of CareerBuilder, every website. I mean, even if you just Google resume format, you're going to get many, many options. Excuse me, I think the biggest thing is just being consistent within that format. But I think the simplest thing to do is to make sure that you either bold or italicized, emphasize the name of the organization, your title, and then have the years that you worked there, the months that you can do it, that would be ideal, but if you just have the years that you've totally buy, but make sure that those stand out and then the bullet points underneath it that are indented. Sometimes I'm seeing bullet points that are right underneath the name of the organization and the title, which it's not that it's terrible but it doesn't look as good. Yeah, and then it's not. The whole point of a bullet point is to indent it over so that it's a little easier to read. So that's what I would suggest is definitely use bullet points, highlight italicizer bold, the name of the organization in your title in some way so that that's easy to read and then be succinct with the language, consolidate bullet points as you can and then leave yourself room for, I knew you mentioned like, there's a lot of those big employers who use keywords to find resumes. And that's a really, you know, a real reality for a lot of job seekers that are looking to get into, I hate to name drop people and accuse them, but like Columbia, you know, a lot of the hospitals, they have these huge portals, people complain, they don't hear back, you know, those types of things. Higher ed, I see that a lot in the higher ed. Yeah, exactly. And so people often ask me like, how do we get, you know, how do I get my resume seen by them? How do we get through that? I know it is, it's tricky. So what, because you're relying on a computer system to pull up resumes for you, that match what you're looking for. And we have a database of candidates that as a recruitment firm, that probably works similarly to their portal. We're just devoted to recruiting 100% of the time. So we're probably getting back to more people. So what I would say is if you look at a job and it requires a certain program, training, you know, computer software, make sure that that appears a couple of times in your resume. Even if you have it in your skills section, a lot of people will put that at the bottom of their resume, computer skills, or, you know, special skills, et cetera. And they might list it there. Also put it in the bullet points of the job where you use that software. So for example, if you used Razor's Edge at your last job to, you know, provide data entry, gift entry, processing and doing reports and queries, make that a bullet point in that job so that it doesn't just come up with the other duties and then Razor's Edge is at a scale, it lists Razor's Edge twice. So you're gonna come up higher in that search, especially on those big portals, because you have that software listed more than once. So it's also someone about being savvy, looking at the actual job description and seeing what the organization has emphasized in the job description and then tailing your resume to that. Again, it might take a little bit more time. You might end up having, you know, I mean, I call in general, they call a resume like sort of a living document, which simply means that it is something that needs to be adjusted, changed and live all the time. So like you may have sort of a master version of your resume and then you have a version that you're constantly tweaking for the next job and the next job and the next job. And then that one is, you know, you may not keep it all the time because it went out for that one job and then you go back to the master and then when you get another listing, you change it and then send that one off. So once you get organized, it sounds like it's, you know, to tailor it for each job sounds very complicated. Once you get going, I think it's actually not. And once you get used to, I think the thing is, is like, I adjust thousands of resumes, so it's old hat to me. I can fix a resume in five, 10 minutes. Most people are looking at their resume and writing it once and then feeling like they never have to touch it again. Right. But they never have to update it or adjust it or worry about it. And copy and paste it and send it off to anyone. And my mantra is you need to be, it's a living document. It needs to be tweaked every time it's being sent out. Well, the crucial information, the consistency, right? Like be flexible in some of these areas. I have to ask Dana as I pull up your contact information here. Sure. What about that LinkedIn resume? Cause there's a button on LinkedIn and you hit that button and it populates it. What are you seeing for that in all of these, right? Providing the crucial information, the link, the digital submission, the style. As we wrap up today's conversation, what does Dana say about that? Well, I'm actually a big fan of LinkedIn. I think that the landscape has changed to be a little bit more social and personal than it was initially. And I've noticed that change, especially since the pandemic, I think people just didn't have much to do. And so we started posting our cats and kids and stuff on LinkedIn, which I think is- There's our co-worker named Spot, yeah. I know and like feel good articles and things like that that were usually relegated for more like Facebook. So it's been an interesting change. However, they have also added a lot of features over the past couple of years, like being able to add your resume. And as an employer, what I'm seeing on the portal on the backend is that I can download a resume or at least view the candidate's resume fairly easily. I think that if you had your master resume up, that is recent, I'm not saying put a three year old one up there and leave it, but would you need to tailor it every day on LinkedIn? Of course not. Like you could have sort of a master version that you have that's always set up there and that people can view. I, when I'm looking on LinkedIn, I'm looking more at the person's profile as well. So it's more about like the synopsis they come up for themselves that they have a professional photo. There's been a tab on LinkedIn now that you can list yourself as like that you're in the market for a job and there's a little green banner that comes up as a job, a placer, that's very helpful. I don't think it would preclude people from getting a job by not having it up there, but it is useful if you are able to get on there and figure out how to do that. And then, but again, I would say like, when I'm looking at LinkedIn, I'm looking at the things that they have populated in their overall profile first. And so that's gonna include like, usually it's like your most previous job and then, you know, whatever synopsis you wanna put about yourself. So that's something to kind of think about like not just kind of throwing up whatever or throwing up a few lines, but really thinking about how to tailor like a really strong, succinct, specific paragraph about yourself and what you're seeking for a new job. I think when I see profiles where I read something where I go, I feel like I've learned a little bit about this candidate and they know exactly what they're looking for. And they, you know, it's also a chance to show up your writing skills. Like, is this a nice clean professional paragraph? That's gonna be somebody that I'm gonna, you know, reach out to right away. So everything I'm gonna do is, mm-hmm. I was gonna say, we wanna be on that A list, that A pile, because I learned that from you, you know, whether we're printing out those resumes or kind of doing it digitally, we're really looking at this. Dana, you always show up, my friend, with such amazing information. And today as we talk about, you know, resumes and I heard you say it's still a candidate market. So thank you for what you do as you dedicate your time to our sector. Dana serves as the director of recruitment at Staffing Boutique and check her out on Legion. She does have a fantastic profile and so grateful to have Staffing Boutique supporting us as one of our amazing sponsors. We could go on and on, but the good news is we always have either Dana or Katie here each month to talk about, you know, what's trending in the space. So Julie and I are so very lucky to have you ladies on our team as well as our presenting sponsors. So thank you. I will start off by saying, you know, thanks to you and Katie and the rest of your Staffing Boutique team. We also wanna say thank you to your part-time controller, American Nonprofit Academy, Bloomerang Fundraising Academy at National University, non-profit thought leader as well as the non-profit nerd. These companies are here for you just as Dana and Staffing Boutique is here for you. Day in, day out, we offer these conversations and I loved that we got super nerdy Dana when it comes to the resumes. This is not an area of expertise for me. Thankfully, I'm several years out of the job market but I have seen it take, you know, shape over the last couple of years. So thank you for imparting your wisdom and sharing your valuable time with us. Not a problem at all. Always a pleasure to see you. Yeah, so hey, check out Staffing Boutique and we hope that you'll all join us again tomorrow. And as we end every episode, we want to remind you to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks Dana and stay warm.