The failed promise of AI resumes
I've been talking to my customer today about the potential of AI resumes in 2023, and how it was supposed to be a game-changer for job seekers.
It's such a tempting technology. It's completely free. You input an old resume with a few easy prompts. And out pops a new, ready-to-go resume.
My customer just reached his 1-year anniversary of being unemployed, and he secured zero (zero!!!) interviews this past year. He told me today how he would regularly receive rejection emails almost as fast as he'd apply to jobs. Being rejected was now something he came to expect.
At the end of the day, what did AI do for him? What did that year do for his confidence?
What's especially frustrating is that my customer is a really good guy who understands his industry, knows the game backwards and forwards, and has an outstanding track record to prove his value.
But AI hid all his brilliance. Hiring decision-makers weren't able to see it.
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Write a resume that will make you look outstanding to every reader
How to write a resume that will make you look outstanding to every person who reads it:
1. Start by understanding that the game you're playing is a game of status and desirability. We want to be impressed with what we're reading. We aren't interested in the mediocre.
2. Think about all the ways that you could impress your reader. What are your big career achievements? Why do those achievements matter?
3. Write your resume with confidence. Don't shrink the language, and never give away your power with wishy-washy language. Own that you've done important work for every company you've worked for.
🌊 Deeper Dive: Practice the art of walking in your expertise without caring if a single person acknowledges you. That kind of energy can be deeply attractive to readers: the self-assuredness of a person who knows exactly who they are.
4. Avoid using flashy, gimmicky templates for your resume. Stick to designs an executive would use: clean, simple lines with a dignified font. Let the reader know that you're someone to be taken seriously.
5. Page length isn't important, but relevance is. From beginning to end, let every line of your resume mean something.
🌟 Pro-Tip: The best resumes, just like the best stories, capture your interest from the first line and never let the interest drop until the end. Give as much attention to the older jobs as you give the most recent jobs on your resume. Show that you've always been an opportunity-creating individual.
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How to negotiate for the highest salary in a range
I specialize in salary negotiations, and my clients see their salaries increase by an average of USD $8,500. Today, I want to talk about how exactly my clients are able to negotiate these higher salaries.
1. It all starts with the resume. That's where the meat of the negotiation comes from. We begin with the assumption that my client is going to go for the highest salary listed in the range, and then we ask what an employee with that highest salary looks like on paper.
2. We impress from the very beginning with our attention to detail and our thoughtful application answers, even down to the design of the resume and cover letter template. If we're aiming for a middle manager role, we look like a director. If we're aiming for a director role, we look like a VP.
3. We put our entire focus on adding value and increasing ROI. I'll sometimes ask my clients to think about the many ways they've generated revenue for their companies, above and beyond their JD, and how much income they've brought in compared to the salaries they received.
Once we've established how our applications are going to look and sound, and after we've stripped away the emotional energy of the negotiation by showing our value on paper, we declare our salary.
We don't need to prove ourselves further, because our resume and application have already done the heavy lifting for us. And we don't give our power away by saying we'll accept anything within a range. We tell the interviewer exactly what we want, and then we stop talking. We give our interviewer calm, quiet, and unhurried breathing space to make their decision.
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Ways a resume can be helpful outside of a job search
I've been thinking about the times when a customer asked me to write a resume for reasons other than starting a job search. Resumes can do a surprising amount of heavy lifting.
1. Want to join the board of directors for a non-profit? I once had a customer reach out specifically for a resume that would impress the leadership of a green energy non-profit. Every member of the board would be receiving a copy of his resume ahead of their vote.
2. Interested in volunteering as a mentor for a youth leadership program? Mentors are often required to apply to these programs with an up-to-date resume. They'll go through a formal interview process, just like with a regular job. They'll need to show how their experience could be beneficial to future mentees.
3. It's happened several times to my customers where they were recommended for a promotion or a professional opportunity because of the resume they used to join their organization. A manager or HR leader would pull up the older resume already on file, and then they'd reach out to my customer with the news.
4. We often forget that resumes are legal documents and can be used to protect against liability. Legal teams can submit resumes in court to establish credibility or demonstrate character. Anyone who's ever been in divorce court knows the importance of an accurate and up-to-date resume.
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What’s on my mind this evening
1. I think about the AI-generated resumes my customers have given me since ChatGPT first arrived on the scene. With all of those projects, we've had to go back to first principles before starting a brand-new, from-scratch resume.
2. I sometimes think that we (as a society) have forgotten the whole point of interpersonal communication. It was always about humans speaking to humans, and receiving ideas from humans. AI talking to AI can only be performative. Nothing gets solved. Nothing gets hashed out or broken down or digested.
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The hardest job search
1. Apply to 100 jobs on LinkedIn.
2. Start with the Easy Apply jobs.
3. Leave the Workday jobs for last.
4. Let AI write your resume.
5. Let AI write your application answers.
6. Ignore the optional cover letters.
7. Rinse and repeat the next day.
This is the process that many job seekers follow. But this is also the process that performs the worst across the board: for getting callbacks, for avoiding scams, for time invested in a job search.
So why do so many job seekers commit to this process?
1. It's easy to do. You can mindlessly apply to as many jobs as are available, and you never need to think about your situation.
2. It feels productive. It feels good to say that you apply to 100 jobs each day. It shows that you're hardworking and dedicated.
3. It gives you something to blame. After all, it's not your fault that the job search isn't working. Look at how much work you're putting in, every single day, for weeks and months and maybe even years.
I have a tremendous amount of compassion for my job seekers. More compassion than I can express with words alone.
And if this is the path that you've chosen, I want you to feel my words through this screen. There's a better way to do your job search.
It will require different muscles than you're used to using. It might feel uncomfortable at first, especially if you aren't used to putting yourself in front of others.
But the results make it worthwhile.
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Job Searching in 2026
Job searches have always evolved with the times. The strategies I recommended in 2015 were different from what I recommended in 2021. And now they're changing again in 2026.
1. When submitting an application for a job, aim to apply via the company's website as often as possible. For larger organizations, you'll most often be inputting information into Workday. If you see a job on LinkedIn, but can't find its twin on the company's career page, assume the job isn't real. If the job poster has an odd-looking profile, with very few connections, or a Gmail address for the contact info, assume the job isn't real.
2. For every application submitted, aim to connect with three employees of the company you're targeting. They could be future colleagues. They could be managers or directors or members of the C-suite. Start a conversation with these people. Get to know them, ask questions. Be open about your job search and your interest in the company.
3. For every application submitted, write one public post on LinkedIn that showcases your expertise. Write about your professional history. Write about the problems you've solved in your career. Write your thoughts on your industry, or share how you troubleshoot challenges, or talk about lessons learned.
Pro-Tip 1: Your new connections will see your posts - take advantage of the visibility! Make yourself as memorable as possible to your future colleagues. Give them a reason to recommend you as a potential employee of their company.
Pro-Tip 2: Some companies reward employees for bringing in referrals. Those companies will give their employees a unique referral link to share with potential candidates. If you tell your new connection about a job you're interested in, they might send over a referral link for that specific job. It can sometimes be worth holding off on submitting an application to see if a referral program exists first.
Find a visual of my approach to job searching in 2026 by clicking on the link here: Gabrielle Turmelle’s Miro Board
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Prediction for the future of hiring
I have a feeling that in another month or so, employers are going to start putting out notices saying they won't allow AI-generated resumes to be submitted with job applications.
LinkedIn sets the tone for modern-day hiring. If they're getting rid of "AI Slop" on the feed, and if they've removed their AI content creation tools from the platform, then Workday and Greenhouse are next in line for these changes.
I'm so glad that I stuck to my intuition when ChatGPT first made its appearance on the internet. I've never used or allowed AI in any part of my business. Every product and message and content piece is written entirely by me.
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How to answer “How do you use AI in your current role?” in an interview
During your next interview, you might be asked, "How do you use AI in your current role?" Here are a few different ways to answer this question.
1. Productivity and performance:
Is your company requiring you to use Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude in your day-to-day activities? Are you expected to track and demonstrate how these AI tools make your work faster or easier or simpler to complete? Talk about this process in the interview. Mention how your KPIs and task metrics improved. Bonus points if you can tell an interesting story about how the AI tools made you more creative in your work.
2. Implementation:
Has leadership instructed you to implement AI tools and track their usage among your team? Bring up your team's pre-AI workflows and post-AI workflows, and share how you guided the team during the transition. Mention how velocity improved or how project delays were reduced. Tell a story about an unexpected improvement or solution that arose within the team.
Pro-Tip: Does the interviewer seem intrigued by your answer? Could that unexpected improvement or solution benefit the company where you're interviewing? Keep the conversation flowing and find out.
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How to answer “Why is there a gap in your resume?” in an interview
I love so much that some of these traditional questions ("Why is there a gap in your resume?") are falling out of favor in the hiring world.
If you ever come across a hiring manager who does ask the question, it might be possible that they're playing from an outdated rule book. They might even be required to ask about employment gaps as part of the company's hiring rules. Whatever the reason, if they do ask the question, the recommended course of action is to answer honestly, but succinctly.
Were you job hunting? Were you on an extended trip? If you don't want to give any personal details, you could even just say, "I needed to step away from my job to handle a personal situation at home," and leave it at that.
The hiring manager isn't going to look for a perfect answer. Instead, they want an answer that's honest, clear, and self-assured.
Being nervous or rambling or telling long-winded stories isn't the strategy to use with this particular question. ;)
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My take on why hiring practices now come with a lot of red tape
I have a bit of a controversial theory on why these frustrating hiring practices have become the norm. The misleading instructions, the abnormally long vetting and interviewing periods. I think that this is all being done to create an additional layer of psychological panic among job seekers, all in a bid to get them to accept a lower salary and/or discourage them from job-hopping if they're offered a job.
The reason why I call it a controversial theory: if you ask any hiring decision-maker how they feel about modern-day hiring, the two big complaints are almost always around "grandiose" salary expectations or the "cost" of hiring, only to lose the candidate six months later. But if you then ask if that's the reason why hiring practices have changed across the board, they start to act a bit squiggly. They'll change gears and start giving you very corporate-friendly answers.
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Origin story, Pt. 2
Between 2015 and 2019, I doubled my salary. Right as I was leaving my first job in the pharmaceuticals, I was earning $32,000. And by the time I left pharma completely in 2019, I was making $64,000.
During the time that I was helping my first customers advance in their careers, I was using the same strategies I was teaching to also advance myself, to "walk the walk."
1. Every company I worked for had a hierarchy of groups, and within each group you could usually see how various responsibilities were distributed. Within each group was a go-to person who did the "expensive" tasks. I would connect with the people doing the expensive tasks and learn exactly how they acquired the responsibility. Then I would find ways to be trained in those tasks.
2. I kept my resume accessible at all times on my laptop, and every time I was trained in an expensive task, I captured both the task and the benefit of the task for the company. It wasn't enough to just write what I could do. I wanted to find out how my contribution translated to dollars earned, or dollars saved, or additional opportunities for the company.
3. I knew that I wanted to be a project manager one day, so I networked extensively to find out how to make it happen. But I didn't want to just be competitive. I wanted to be highly desirable. I learned that less than half of the pharma PMs had real-world lab experience. Some had PMPs, and few had advanced degrees. Once I realized what it would take to stand out as a PM among PMs, I repositioned my resume and shifted the language for the world I wanted to inhabit.
4. I never stayed at a company for long, and every time I joined a new company, I negotiated for a higher salary. I used my expensive skills as leverage. I used the benefits of those skills as leverage. And I never accepted a counter salary, even if the counter was just a thousand dollars less than what I'd asked. I wanted the salary that I wanted, and I made a compelling argument for it. My hiring managers seemed to respect my moxie, and so they'd agree to my terms.
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Origin story, Pt. 1
It was November 2014, and I'd just returned to my apartment from a dinner I had with three of my colleagues. We were all scientists in the pharmaceutical industry. Two worked in the lab adjacent to me, and one worked in a different building. They had treated me to dinner because all three of them had successfully interviewed and secured new roles within quality, lab management, and project management. Everybody had negotiated a pay bump of $2-$3,000 at my recommendation. And starting in December, they were off to do bigger and better things.
These were the first three testimonials I'd secured for my company, although my company didn't exist at the time. I didn't know what to do with the testimonials, so I saved them to my Facebook page. The following month, I had a connection request from a business development professional, a colleague of my colleague.
His dream was to leave pharma, and so we rebuilt his resume and created an online portfolio. Not long after we finished working together, he secured a role at a Fortune 500 based in Minneapolis. Then it happened again - an email this time, from a business development professional at that Minneapolis company, asking if I could work on his resume and job search. He also walked away happy. He left Minnesota and moved to the West Coast to work for a different Fortune 500.
And again and again it kept happening: managers and project managers and engineers and scientists, all sending me emails and all asking for the same thing, a way out of their situation and into something better. Then I landed my first CEO at a huge software firm. Then for a short time, it seemed like all I did was work with CEOs and members of the C-suite.
Then came my international clients: Chiefs of Party, government officials, diplomats, TED speakers. Everyone still wanted the same thing. A way off of their professional plateau. A better salary. Opportunities that would give them a chance to use their gifts.
When I stop to think about what exactly it is that I'm doing for these people, it comes down to the same steps:
1. I rewrite their resumes to give them an entirely new positioning. The facts stay the same, but the narrative is almost always entirely reconstructed.
2. I look for any value-adds and points of leverage that haven't already been tapped into. I interview the customer first, and then I dig into the target industry's ecosystem.
3. I reduce as much risk as I can for any hiring decision-maker who's interested in my customer. The professionals with the lowest perceived risk are almost always the professionals who earn the highest salaries.
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There is no such thing as paying to get your resume prioritized
Two big things on my mind today:
1. SourceHire is a known scam organization. The "Priority Review" feature doesn't exist - there is no such thing as paying to get your resume seen as of today, August 6, 2026. The only thing that Priority Review activates is a box for you to input your credit card information. The ranking system is a random number generator. Job seekers who use SourceHire are essentially giving away their money and their data to SourceHire.
2. If the latest LinkedIn push to remove AI content isn't enough to wake up our job market, then consider this: LinkedIn is a major figure in the modern job market, and LinkedIn has a lot of power in setting the tone within hiring. LinkedIn was the first to push skills-based hiring. LinkedIn successfully intertwined itself with Workday and Greenhouse. And now LinkedIn is putting the brakes on AI content.
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Cover Letters
My philosophy when it comes to cover letters: the hiring decision-makers who want to read your cover letter are going to want a cover letter that doesn't waste their time. Try to write your cover letters for these people.
I like to think of a resume as covering the past, and the cover letter as covering the future. Resumes are reflection documents - they document the evidence of your experience and expertise. The best cover letters are future-leaning - they can document your critical thinking and your storytelling abilities. They can show how you approach problems, especially if (pro-tip!) those problems look like the problems you'll likely face in the role you're applying to.
Cover letters can give your decision-maker a taste of the person you would be if they took a chance in hiring you. I'm a huge believer in cover letters, and I encourage every job seeker to make a regular habit of writing them.
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The next evolution of job search strategy
LinkedIn’s agentic operating layer and the necessity of providing sufficient career data to affect relevance scoring
Today’s post gets a pretty big title!
Two days ago, Google rolled out what they describe as their biggest Search upgrade in over 25 years: an interactive, AI-powered conversational assistant that (essentially) allows users to utilize Google Search the way they’ve been utilizing ChatGPT over the past year and a half. (My words.)
Last year, LinkedIn released its first AI agent, Hiring Assistant, for recruiters on the LinkedIn Recruiter platform (not Recruiter Lite). Rumor has it that Facebook/Meta is coming out with their own AI conversational agent called Hatch in the very near future.
What’s interesting about these AI agents is that they “wrap” their platforms in the way you might think of human skin wrapping the muscles, nerves, veins, and bones of the body. Users are separated from the raw data that’s being used to generate our “AI insights” by layers and layers of information that each carry a specific function and maintain specific rules.
That agentic operating layer can produce some mind-boggling insights and interpretations - especially when you ask it to analyze a job seeker’s LinkedIn profile and online presence. It amazes me what these AI agents can infer from a very basic LinkedIn profile, with bare-bones information and maybe one or two public posts about landing a new job.
The problem - and the reason why I’m writing this post - is that as smart as these AI agents might seem, they’re only as smart as the raw data they’re given. What’s more, the amount and quality of the data available is mattering more and more with each AI model update.
Providing sufficient career data to affect relevance scoring
Customers of mine have heard me talk about LinkedIn rankings for years, and that if you wanted to rank higher within LinkedIn Recruiter Search, you needed to do a few things:
You needed to have a properly filled-out LinkedIn profile, from the banner down to the Education section.
You needed to have plenty of keyword-rich sentences on your profile that were relevant to your target industry and profession, but without “keyword-stuffing” or making your profile look spammy.
You needed metrics, accomplishments, and awards on your profile. Testimonials could also be very helpful if the testimonial itself talked about your metrics/accomplishments/awards.
You needed to properly fill in the Skills section, plus any area on the profile that asked for relevant Skills, such as the Experience and About sections.
And then, over time, I would try to push my philosophies on writing posts and articles on LinkedIn, especially if you were getting ready to start a job search.
Posts and articles could cover a variety of topics, so long as they were relevant to your target industry and profession. You could:
Talk about your professional history, and share the story of how you got to where you are today.
Give advice to a younger professional looking to succeed in your industry.
Talk about your biggest professional challenges and how you overcame them.
Talk about the future of your industry niche and where you likely see things heading.
And in addition to posting, I also wanted my customers to engage with their feeds - leave comments, make new connections with people in your target industry and profession, and then have real conversations with those connections in LinkedIn Messaging.
I had strict rules on never publishing anything political or controversial - not because I think that we shouldn’t hold opinions or express ourselves freely on the internet. At the time, I was seeing undeniable proof that job seekers were being turned away from jobs, interviews, and even simple phone screenings because they held a particular political view on the internet. The rationale was that if these candidates could be divisive on social media, they could also be divisive in the workplace, and their posts could affect a company’s reputation, damage business opportunities, etc.
I bring up all of this - the filled-out profile, the posts and articles, the engagement, the networking, and the appropriate content to have - because all this raw data is being used by LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant to determine your relevance score.
Your relevance score is being calculated based on how much high-quality, career-oriented data you are providing to LinkedIn - and that relevance score is what’s making you recommendable to hiring decision-makers by AI agents. And if you really want to see how far this goes, LinkedIn recently went on the record to say that “LinkedIn’s recruitment capabilities can integrate with popular HR platforms and applicant tracking systems (ATS) such as Workday and SuccessFactors, blending LinkedIn profile data with an enterprise’s candidate records.“ What used to be a closed system can now pull outside, AI-generated information from LinkedIn to help hiring decision-makers choose candidates.
The next evolution of job search strategy
My job - as a resume writer and salary negotiation coach - is to study the job market playing field and find as many advantages as possible for my customers. I think about what’s available today, and I think about what’s coming down the pipeline, and I use all the material available to develop job search strategies that are specific to a customer’s needs.
The next evolution of job search strategy, at least here at Gabrielle Turmelle LLC, is that every job search must now incorporate LinkedIn as its backbone. All LinkedIn content pieces must be deliberately chosen to put the job seeker in the best possible light and give them the highest possible relevance score. Half-filled-out LinkedIn profiles with wishy-washy skills? These will no longer be tolerated here. ;)
And, finally, all customers who sign up for a Resume Package will do so with the understanding that a job search that doesn’t put LinkedIn first is a job search that will likely fail.
For my part, I’ll be happy to provide just a resume or resume/cover letter combo if that’s all a particular job seeker truly needs. I’m planning to keep the Lite and Standard packages available for purchase for this specific reason. But whether you take LinkedIn guidance from me, or you find guidance from another source, the LinkedIn component cannot be ignored any longer.
For better or worse, this is the future of the North American job search.
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What prevents an employer from recognizing a person’s value?
When a job seeker has been struggling with the job market for some time, a common frustration I’ll hear usually centers around feeling undervalued in some way.
“Why can’t I get these recruiters to see how valuable I am?” - Common when a job seeker fits the bill perfectly with a job posting’s wants and asks, but nobody calls.
“How do I communicate my value on my application?” - Common when a job seeker knows that they bring a lot to the table, but struggles with writing about themselves.
Then there’s the frustration about needing to feel valuable at all, when survivability is on the line.
“Don’t these people realize that if I can’t find a job, I’m going to lose my home? I’m going to lose my car?”
So, I want to take a few minutes today and do a few thought experiments with you on how I approach the problem of recognizing value.
Let’s set the stage.
With the continuation of AI’s grip on the corporate world - and particularly within hiring - it’s been eye-opening to see how many of the little things we took for granted in job searches have been affected.
The mass recruitment and talent acquisition layoffs we saw in 2023 and 2024 never fully recovered, and it’s likely that they never will. Fewer hiring decision-makers are around, and yet they’re being asked to do more than ever before. What’s more, hiring decision-makers are being asked to incorporate AI into their tasks and workflows as much as possible, adding layers of complexity to their day-to-day.
Hiring rates are not what they used to be. A common theme of 2026 is that employers are now hiring “cautiously,” especially in white-collar sectors. Employers will post jobs just to test the waters. Employers will take a candidate through an interview process and never reveal that the job doesn’t exist.
Workday and Greenhouse have leaned hard into predictive intelligence across their platforms, all to make candidate ranking and sorting easier than ever. Applicant screening is faster and more decisive than ever before, yet hyper-realistic bot applicants with AI-written applications continue to flood the dashboard.
The little things - having enough people around to support the candidate journey, believing that a job posting is real, and believing that you’ll be getting a reasonable, human-centric evaluation from an employer - all look very different today thanks to AI.
Now, let’s go back to the problem of an employer recognizing value.
Let’s say that you are a fantastic, highly qualified candidate, with a flawless resume, filled with metrics and accomplishments and awards, and all typed out by your human hand. And let’s say that you do all the right things - you’re an early applicant, you’ve written a real cover letter, and you’ve properly typed out all the application questions. (No “see resume” answers!)
But in spite of all the value you bring and you display in your application, nobody gives you a call.
Why - in the world - would you think that your value is the thing that’s lacking in this situation?
I’ve just shown you a sampling of the hurdles that you need to overcome - all the things that need to be aligned in your favor - in order to land a simple phone screening, let alone a job.
I’ve also just shown you how impersonal hiring has become thanks to AI - and which will likely get worse with time.
And yet you’re beating yourself up - and even questioning your value, your worthiness, your employability - over systems and structures that were never designed to support you.
So, where do we go from here?
There will be times when I’ll look at a job seeker’s job search tools - their resumes, cover letter templates, portfolios - and I’ll recommend changes for communicating value or positioning themselves more effectively for the roles they’re after.
But there are also times when I’ll look at the job search tools and think, wow, this is great work.
To those individuals, I do my very best to not let them dwell over their value, or fret over tiny details on their resume, or think less of themselves because they aren’t getting a callback for a job.
Instead, I spend our energies in redesigning their job search strategies from the ground up. I’ll ask about their online job application history, but I’ll also ask questions about their network, their online presence, and how they’re utilizing LinkedIn. We’ll look at opportunities for referrals, opportunities to connect with decision-makers, and ways that we can put our expertise on display.
Employers gravitate to candidates that they feel they can know, like, and ultimately trust - and it’s that know/like/trust factor that we want to exploit to the best of our abilities.
Perhaps we decide that giving value to your industry or target profession could be the right way to bring visibility to your job search. Maybe sharing your professional story in a series of LinkedIn posts could be the right first step in creating interest from hiring decision-makers. There’s also an emotional layer to hiring that doesn’t get talked about enough. (The next time you get a chance, ask one of the senior leaders at your company how often they rely on “gut instinct” when making a hiring decision. You’ll be surprised by the answer.)
There’s so much to explore regarding job search strategy - and once a job seeker starts seeing that initial traction in their job search, any doubt they ever had about being valued or being seen as valuable almost always goes away.
If you’re interested in working together on your job search strategy, don’t hesitate to send me a message on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at hello@gabbyturmelle.com.
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LinkedIn-Centered Strategy
If you've been applying to job boards and getting little traction for your job search, you should strongly consider switching to a LinkedIn-centered strategy.
How I define a LinkedIn-centered strategy:
1. Rewriting your LinkedIn profile so that it positions you for the jobs you want to pursue.
2. Networking with people you'd like to have as future colleagues, supervisors, and allies/advocates.
3. Talking about yourself and your abilities in LinkedIn posts.
4. Leaving comments on the posts of people who contribute to your target industry. (Thought leaders, vendors, and senior leaders.)
The idea is that every time you engage with someone on LinkedIn, you provide value. Value = sharing knowledge, giving useful advice, offering a new way to think about a problem, sharing stories from your career, etc.
After providing value, let the people you engage with know that you're on a job search, and ask them to keep an eye out for any opportunities for you.
This is what I do with my job seekers. It takes a lot of work and a lot of mental energy, and I almost always get pushback on pursuing a LinkedIn-centered strategy.
What's more, it's not enough to just "try" a LinkedIn-centered strategy. The job seekers who benefit the most from LinkedIn are the ones who commit to it.
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Hard work
One of the big frustrations that I hear from job seekers is that they've always been hard workers. They do the work that nobody else wants to do. They stay late or put in extra effort to complete critical tasks.
When it's time for them to start a job search, they feel lost - even cheated - because they don't know how to talk about why employers should hire them.
Their work didn't win them any awards. They received very little recognition for their efforts.
What's more, they feel like they won't be competitive in the job market, because employers won't see their value as hard workers.
"Work harder, not smarter."
"Hard work doesn't guarantee success."
"The reward for hard work isn't a promotion; it's more hard work."
I have a completely different take on the hard work conversation.
Working with job seekers - from all industries and all walks of life - has taught me that there's tremendous value to uncover from people who consider themselves to be hard workers.
1. Their hard work often saves a company from losing customers, dollars, or time.
2. Their hard work often creates new opportunities for their teams - new avenues to explore, or maybe new products or services.
3. Their hard work enables a company to earn more revenue than they would've earned if the extra effort hadn't been made.
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We made these 3 fixes to his CV
The first time I worked on a job search with a TED speaker, I was taken completely by surprise. During my pharma days, I would spend my lunch breaks watching TED talks with my coworkers. I had a tremendous respect for the organization and for the people who gave these talks.
It's 2019, and I log into my LinkedIn account to see a message from someone whose name I recognized. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I wondered if it might be a fake account, but it wasn't. Here was a TED speaker whom I deeply admired, and he was messaging me for guidance on his job search.
So, I did my best to set aside my star-struck mind, and I put on my career coaching hat, and we talked about what was going on with his search.
He was trying to land a job in California, where he could use his skills to serve product teams in the tech space. He'd applied to countless jobs, and gave each application plenty of time and care, but nobody was calling him.
He was a person who'd been given an award by the prime minister of his country. He had patents and accolades and a talk that was viewed by half a million people. You'd think someone as genuinely impressive as him would be able to land at least one interview, but that wasn't the case.
I asked him to give me his CV, and I studied his LinkedIn profile. These were the fixes that I recommended:
1. I asked him to change his address from the small island where he lived to San Francisco, the city where he wanted to relocate. I asked him if he was willing to move at the drop of a hat should he land his ideal job. He said yes - he had dual citizenship, he was authorized to work in the U.S. I had him change his address on both his CV and LinkedIn profile and specifically write, "Relocating to San Francisco, CA."
2. I asked him to make major changes to his CV and, even better, switch to a 2 or 3-page resume. He gave me pushback, because he was proud of his CV. (And understandably so!) On the first page, he listed every award he'd ever received, including the honor given to him by his prime minister. My argument was that as impressive as his accomplishments were, and as hard as he worked to obtain these accomplishments, they weren't serving him in the way he thought they were.
3. I asked him to take his experience in building products and platforms and place it all on page 1 of his resume. I wanted him to think like the teams he was hoping to work with. What exactly would these people care about? What skills, abilities, and knowledge did he have that would actually bring value to his future teams? These were all page 1 items. Everything else could go on subsequent pages.
The result? Not even 30 days after our Zoom call, he and his wife were packing their bags and moving to their new residence in Central California, signed job offer in hand.
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