130: Creating an Effective Candidate Brand with Daniel Lorenzo

I’m so jazzed to welcome our latest guest to the Career Clarity Show, Daniel Lorenzo. Daniel is the Marketing Director for Let’s Eat, Grandma where he uses his creativity to help professionals land their dream jobs with better resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles.

Daniel and I are breaking down how to present your professional face to the world if you’re a career changer who is on the cusp of making your move, and you want to figure out exactly what considerations you should be bringing into your professional profile. If you’re considering a career change, and you know that you’re going to have to reposition yourself or think about talking about your skills or capabilities or experiences a little bit differently, this episode is for you.

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

Show Notes:

• Let’s Eat, Grandma
• Instagram: Let’s Eat, Grandma
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04   

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host, and each week we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, and welcome back to the Career Clarity Show. I’m your host, Lisa Miller, and I am delighted that you are with us today. On today’s episode of the podcast, we are gonna have a tactical episode for you today. And while I like to talk strategy in a lot of my episodes, I honestly believe this might be one of the most valuable episodes that we have ever created on the Career Clarity Show. And here is why. Today on the podcast, we are talking about how to present your professional face to the world if you’re a career changer. And we’ve had tons of people on the podcast talking about telling your professional story, or creating a resume or thinking about things like that. But we have never in the history of this freakin show, then an episode on how to update your resume and or your LinkedIn or any other professional materials you may have with specific considerations as a career changer. So I am so jazzed and so thrilled that we are finally creating this for you. So if you are a career changer who is on the cusp of making your move, and you want to figure out exactly what considerations you should be bringing into your professional profile, this episode is for you. And if you’re considering a career change, and you know that you’re going to have to reposition yourself or think about talking about your skills or capabilities or experiences a little bit differently. Definitely keep on listening to today’s episode of the podcast, you will not be disappointed. Now, some of my jubilation on recording this episode today is also because of our guests. We are having a friend of the show friend of Career Clarity Show on the podcast for the first time himself, but as one of several delegates from his company who have been on the show. Today’s guest is Daniel Lorenzo. Daniel is the marketing director for Let’s eat grandma, where he uses his creativity to help professionals land their dream jobs with better resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles. He has reached hundreds of 1000s of people through the company blog and has been heard by hundreds of job seekers on webinars, podcasts and live events around the country, including where Daniel and I met each other pre pandemic, many moons ago, a journalism graduate from the University of Denver, he loves the Mile High City and loves taking advantage of all the coffee, hiking and music it has to offer. Daniel, welcome to the Career Clarity Show. 

Daniel Lorenzo  2:55  

Thanks for having me, Lisa. So glad to be here. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  2:57  

Well, I am pleased as punch to have you on as our guest expert today. And knowing that you are from let’s eat grandma, which is a phenomenal resume writing and support company, I’d love to have you start out with some of the general pieces of creating an effective candidate brand for yourself. So before we dive into the considerations that are special for our career changer, what are things? Absolutely. Everybody needs to be thinking about and addressing in their resume, LinkedIn, or cover letters when they’re searching for a role. 

Daniel Lorenzo  3:32  

Mm hmm. Would love to square one fundamentals? Let’s clear it all the way first. So when it comes to your resume, a few of the the basic things that everybody needs to take note of that we write for all of our resumes, let’s see grandma, and that really any resume needs to be competitive. There are a few things and number one, one that we always say for some people, this might seem a little obvious, but for you’d be surprised at how many people it’s really not for. And for those people, it changes everything. The number one is focusing your resume on your accomplishments instead of your responsibilities. Right. The one of the biggest kind of misconceptions about the resume is that it’s sort of a formality or that I’d say, overview of your entire career. And it’s really not It’s not I like to say your resume is not a book report on everything you’ve done. It’s a sales pitch about one particular thing you do for one particular job for one particular company, right? So in order to do that, it’s not just a document of what you’ve done in the day to day and each job that you have, right it is a brief overview of your biggest accomplishments at each of those positions, right. So a few things come with that. That means you need to have tangible quantifiable results in your bullet points whenever possible, you know, you should have a an active verb, a specific contribution and a specific result with a metric whenever possible, in all of your bullet points as well as your professional summary, even your skill section. That’s really square one. is shifting your mindset from this is some of the things I’ve done, please, if any of it kind of strikes you, you know, please take a chance on me, you know, cross your fingers that these responsibilities are over it really, no instead, it’s here are here is everything that I’ve accomplished that’s most relevant to the job. And this is exactly why you should hire me to do this particular job, which gets into fundamental number two, which is tailoring your resume to a specific job. It used to be the case with resumes, you know, you would hear people talking about, you know, I’ve sent my resume out to 100 companies, right, or I have this one resume that I just shoot over to people, right? That is not the case anymore, right? In a job market where you can be competing with dozens to hundreds of other applicants, for any given job, your resume really needs to stand out for that particular opportunity. Right. And with a lot of the jobs today, and a lot of the really a lot of the job functions that people are in, I’m even thinking of my job right now, there’s so many different things that I do. And there are so many different aspects to my job that I could focus on. And so to land an opportunity that you want, this is any opportunity in any industry, your resume needs to be tailored to that particular job description, you know, to not just the industry, not just the title, but oftentimes the individual actual job that you’re applying for, it needs to speak to what is most relevant to that particular job. Because a lot of the people listening right now you’re going to have enough experience where it’s you could fill up three whole pages, right? With everything you’ve done every job. But not everything in all of those pages is going to be relevant to what you’re applying to right now. And so this affects everything in your resume. This affects the order of your sections, the length of your sections, which jobs, you include which bullet points you include for those jobs, all of that needs to come from a place of tailoring your resume to the particular job at hand. And people get overwhelmed when they hear that sometimes they think like, Oh, am I going to have to write 100 different resumes? No, that’s that’s not the case. You know, you can and we can dig into this much further when we get into the career changer tips. But you don’t have to read a completely new resume every time but you want to make sure that you are tweaking it, and really making sure it presents the best case possible for that one job.

Lisa Lewis Miller  7:14  

Well, I think that that’s those two principles are so important as the foundational groundwork for a strong job search and a strong candidate brand that I’m so glad we started with that. And as one quick clarification in that very first point that Daniel you brought up, you’re talking about adding metrics. And I know that there are some books in some types of industries where the idea of metrics, particularly metrics, if we think about them through the lens of being numbers, where that feels really intimidating or uncomfortable, either there aren’t numbers that are measured on your team, or you don’t have access to the numbers because they were at a different level of the organization, and you just didn’t have the permissions to get those numbers. And so I want to clarify for anybody listening that if you heard metrics and broke out in a cold sweat, metrics can be any measurable way to show a change that you’re responsible for. And qualitative ones can be just as powerful as quantitative ones. So even if you feel like you can’t put an exact number on something, showing that morale improved, or the amount of stress or friction between teams decreased, can sometimes be really powerful in and of itself. And I would encourage you to think about any possible ways that you could put a number into describing what you did. Even if let’s say that you’re a people manager, and you’re wanting to talk about the work that you did. Maybe some numbers could be the number of people that you manage the number of years that you manage them for the amount of attrition that you had year over year, you know, what was your retention rate? Were there any workplace satisfaction statistics that you had access to, you know, either if it’s, again, qualitative, because you had 100% of your team reporting that they were satisfied in their position to you directly. Or if it’s actually quantitative, in that there was some sort of workplace survey where you got feedback that 86% of the employees on your team were satisfied or extremely satisfied with you as a leader. So wanted to make sure we add in that clarification, because I think, Daniel, your point is so powerful. But let’s come to part number two, where you’re talking about tailoring your professional candidacy on paper in your resume, to match up with jobs. Because if you are a career changer. The biggest worry and wonder that you have is I’m wanting to pivot into something new. And my previous background shows a whole lot of experience and accomplishments in a different world. Whether that is a different industry, a different role, a different department. How on earth can I show that that part of my life is relevant towards this new direction I’m wanting to pivot into

Daniel Lorenzo  9:58  

Yeah, great question. There’s a lot, there’s a lot there. There is, there are many ways you can do that. And I first just want to kind of affirm like how challenging that can seem right? Like I imagine for, I mean, a career change is hard enough, right? You know, when you’re, you’re imagining all the different directions, you can go. And then you’re putting together all of these, putting together this big clarity puzzle and getting all the pieces together. And then you actually sit down and look at your documents and think like, Oh, crap, you know, I just want to like, really affirm and resonate with that feeling of like, it’s really hard feeling like you need a ticket in, you know, and you’re not sure how to make that ticket for yourself. You can be really difficult, but it is not by any means impossible. We’ve worked with plenty of career changers that let’s eat grandma. And there are plenty of, of really practical strategies that you can use for this. So when it comes to tailoring, I would always say, for career changers, especially I would say, when it comes to tailoring. The biggest thing is to do all of your clarity work and your strategy work first. One of the biggest mistakes that we see people making is not having a clear target for their resume when they start out to write it. If you so there are so many pieces to a job search, especially when your career changing. It’s very holistic process, and you’ve got clarity and strategy and networking, and then and then the resume and then the cover letter and LinkedIn and then interviewing. And a lot of times people try to do all of those steps together. And I would say that it’s really important to have a list of target job titles, target companies, and doing all of that with the clarity work that you do, Lisa, doing all of that first is really clear, so that when you sit down to write your resume, you know exactly what you’re going to what parts of your strengths you want to show, right. So that’s square one. When it comes to sitting down and looking at job descriptions, I would say in that previous clarity work that you’re doing, hopefully you’re looking through some job descriptions for the job titles and the general industry that you’re looking at. Job descriptions are really going to be like your kind of a scripture in a way like it’s really going to be something that you really just add here to is something that you really that’s what you’re the language in the job posting is what you always want to come back to when you’re tailoring. So I would recommend going through when you’re looking for your transferable skills, you know skills from your own career path that are going to transfer into this new career path, you really want to go through and do a detailed read of each job description and see in the required qualifications, preferred qualifications, the day to day responsibilities section, even in some cases, the information that they have about the company and job postings, you really want to do like a deep analysis of that I really recommend. When I read resumes, for Lindsey Graham, I really recommended, I was a big fan of highlighting things in different colors on the job description, you know, actually just copying, pasting job description, or printed out if you’re more of an analog person, and highlight the main skills that it looks like they’re looking for. And then do that same kind of analysis with your own resume, I recommend, you know, you might have a resume that you’ve been working with for your previous career, I recommend turning that into kind of a master resume, you know, going through and writing out everything that you can about each job. And this is not a resume that you would submit, right, this might be three or four pages, whatever the point is just to get everything down. And then do that same analysis side by side with the job description and see, okay, which of these jobs match up? And then on a more micro level, which of these bullet points match up? You know, go through your career and basically see, okay, where are you play, kind of connect the dots game between your old resume and the job description, and know what you want to focus on. And then when it comes to finding those transferable skills.

One piece of advice is to to really do deep analysis into what is this job? What is this this language that they’re using in the job description for this skill? What is it that they’re really getting at, you know, they might see, they might say, you know, proficiency with Salesforce is required, you know, or like, we need a master of Salesforce or something. And you might think that be like, Oh, crap, I’ve never used Salesforce, maybe what they’re really getting at is they just want you to be able to manage a CRM, you know, they they really want to make sure that you’re going to be able to handle a large database of customer data. And maybe that’s something you’ve done before. You know, maybe you haven’t done that exactly in Salesforce for not for a for profit corporation, but maybe you used you know, razor’s edge or like another fundraising database in a nonprofit that you worked with before, right? So look at the core of what it is that they’re asking, they might not be asking for. On the surface, the language might say, We want somebody who’s excellent in this particular thing. But think about the core and the core of this skill and try to say like, nine times out of 10, you’re going to be able to say okay, what I think they really want there is just proof that I can manage data or proof I can collaborate well with it. or proof that I can resolve conflict, you know, and then look through all of your other jobs and see where see where you’ve done that even if you haven’t done the exact, even if you haven’t done the exact skill or haven’t had the exact experience, look for where the core of it is the same. And then you can tailor the language in your resume to fit the language of the job description.

Lisa Lewis Miller  15:23  

Daniel, you’re making a really important point right now about pulling your own strengths and capabilities out of the tasks. So pulling out the transferable things that kind of transcend a particular job duty. But then also doing the same practice when you’re looking at a job description and kind of pulling out the specific strengths that transcend perhaps the particular arena they’re wanting to see it applied in to start to make some of those connections. There’s a study that came out I think, from I think LinkedIn, and Microsoft and did a study together earlier this year about how in most cases, when you’re trying to make a career change and switch into a new role or a new industry, you typically have more than 70% of the capabilities and the experiences that the employer is looking for already. It’s just a question of how you surface that information to the employer in your resume and or your link in profile or any other places that you might be displaying that. So I think that thinking about what traits of what you’ve done in the past actually are a little bit more universal, right, that fall into this transferable skills bucket. But then also looking at a job description and asking, like, what’s the transferable piece of this can help make it feel a little bit easier to connect the dots. Because Daniel, the example that you were giving about Salesforce is such a good one, because it’s so discouraging, when you’re a career changer to be looking at a job description and see, oh, Salesforce experience is required. And think to yourself, Well, I’ve never used Salesforce, but I have used you know, insert XYZ other database software’s, you know, in my previous life, and if you can make that connection of, okay, Salesforce is a database, that’s a CRM. So when have I used CRMs, or databases, or even just manage data, even if it was in a real big honkin Excel spreadsheet, where I might be able to bring some of those capabilities to the table as transferable skills in a way that shows that, you know, maybe I’ve never administrated a Salesforce instance myself, and I don’t know the ins and outs of naming custom fields and a new object. But I know all the principles of good data governance and how to keep things clean, and how to manage complicated spreadsheets, especially if multiple people are going to be in and out of them. And being able to create that I’m almost envisioning here like, like, connecting these cognitive breadcrumbs to get from where you are to where they want you to be, is, is the key. And it’s, you know, when we think about the burden of proof, when you are a job seeker, the burden of proof is on you to prove to the employer that you can do the things that they want you to do. And does that feel frustrating? And unfair? And like a lot? Yeah. And if you’re willing to lean into that, Daniel, and do exactly what you just described in our practice, the dividends that can pay off from that are pretty profound.

Daniel Lorenzo  18:38  

Absolutely, yeah, I would say at least if that’s, we can cut it there. I mean, that’s, that’s if you walk away with with with nothing else from that, from this podcast, I would say that’s, that’s precisely it, leaving the cognitive breadcrumbs I love that term that you used. That’s exactly it. If you, you have a mission on your resume and all of your documents, your resume cover letter, LinkedIn, you have a mission to connect the dots for the employer between your current skills, and what it is that they want you to do. And things like particular technologies or even jargon, you know, that can make it intimidating. But you have to remember that if you give them that 70% If you make it abundantly clear, when they look at your resume that you have that 70% Then they can teach you the other 30. Right. You know, if you show that you have the principles if you show that you and not just that you have the principles, but that you’ve kicked butt with those principals at your previous jobs with your specific results and metrics, like we just talked about, that it’s going to make it a no brainer for them to see that like oh, okay, we can we can teach this person something.

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:42  

Well, you just said something really important there that I want to dig into, which is that metrics and not metrics are jargon and specific software’s when you see them listed on a job description can feel really intimidating and discouraging. What’s the process that you would suggest a career changer goes through it? They look at a job description, and they’re thinking, I should be able to do this. But I have no idea what some of these words in the job description actually mean.

Daniel Lorenzo  20:09  

Yeah, so when you’re looking at the jargon in the job description, I would say just to to Google, any terms that you’re unfamiliar with, and start to get a sense of start to get a sense of what the category of that jargon is, you know, and start to get a sense of of is, you know, how specific is, is this just a term? I don’t know yet? Or is this a term that’s really specific to the industry? And if it’s term that’s really specific to the industry, try to think about where, you know, try to think about like, what are some synonyms for this, you know, what is a what is A? Trying to think of a good example here, you maybe you can help me out with a good example, Lisa, but we’ve, it’s a term that’s specific to the industry try to figure out what it is that they’re actually the core of what they’re actually trying to say. And then maybe you can say, like, oh, that’s, like what we’re doing here. You know, I mean, there are a lot of terms and a lot of terms and processes that can be like really specific to the like, project management or UX UI space, things like Scrum, and agile and waterfall, you know, over methodologies. And you can try to see, you know, even if you’ve never had a particular training in that, you can try to think of like, okay, well, how have I done stick like Scrum, for example, you know, how have I led things that could be equivalent to like, sprints, you know, or or keeping everybody on task, you know, how have I managed different long term projects in the past? Because just about everybody has, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s really matter what industry, you’re in managing a project as managing a project, right, you know, hurting people and keeping everybody in line. That’s a that’s a pretty universal skill, right?

Lisa Lewis Miller  21:46  

Absolutely. And the one thing I’d also add to that is that if you do the googling of whatever the the jargon is, you know, whatever the software, the tool is, and you realize, okay, I actually don’t have any experience with that particular thing. But I think my skills might be transferable. You ought to see how fast and cheap and painless it could be to take, take a thing, whether that is like a a one hour YouTube intro course, whether that is a LinkedIn learning course, where you can get a certificate that you can put on your LinkedIn profile, whether it’s looking at platforms like edX, or Udemy, or Coursera, for whatever their free or low cost offerings are around that particular skill set. Because if you run into jargon like that, right, like say that they want you to be a scrum master to apply for a role. And you realize, like, well, goodness, I’ve done a lot of project management. But I’ve never done anything in Agile methodology. You could always just go take in like the one hour intro to Agile LinkedIn learning course, complete that, add that sort of certificate to the bottom of your LinkedIn profile. And then add a certifications and training section to your resume. And then put that on there. So that even if you’ve never led scrums, and sprints, and whatnot, you know, everything that falls into the jargon of that particular style of project management, that you are familiar enough with the lingo. And you’ve done enough project management that’s similar in Elk on your own time, that you can, again, help to connect the dots for a future employer, to see that you got enough of a foundation that it wouldn’t be hard to upskill you and pop you into a role like that. And by taking the single hour to go take that online course, it’s going to set you apart from any other project manager who’s trying to do the same thing that you are, but who didn’t take the initiative to just add this one additional certification or training to their profile.

Daniel Lorenzo  23:52  

Exactly. And that’s what it’s all about. Lisa, what she just said certifications are about, they’re not necessarily about proving that you’re a master, they’re about showing that you can hang right, they’re about showing that you are taking the initiative to make this transition and educate yourself as much as you can about the industry that you want to get into. That’s really attractive. See, the other thing I would say there, too, is if you’re so if you Yeah, any any kind, of course you can take is great. If it’s a full on, like certificate awarding course on Udemy or edX or Coursera, and everything like that, that’s fantastic. But even if you know say you don’t have the means or the time to do that, anything any kind of like LinkedIn learning course, or anything that you can do to familiarize yourself is to familiarize yourself with that lingo and and know that you can put it on your resume and you’ll be able to, you’ll be familiar enough that you can talk about it in the interview. Anything like that is going to be valuable, but especially any kind of certification that even if it’s a certification that you might not have room for on your resume. You know, there’s always kind of a certification stone, or you might not always have have room for certifications, or they might not be quite powerful enough to really sway people on your resume. But they can always go on LinkedIn. One of the beautiful things about LinkedIn is that it has a lot more space and time for your resume than your resume. Right? You know, you can load that up with as many certifications as you want, because people can click around it with as much time as they want.

Lisa Lewis Miller  25:19  

Well, so Daniel, now that you brought up LinkedIn, let me ask you this. So LinkedIn has an almost unlimited amount of space for you to be adding in bullet points and text descriptors, and more certifications and all kinds of stuff to build up your candidate brand. But one of the big challenges for a career changer is that because it has unlimited space, most of us started building our LinkedIn profiles at the beginning of our careers. And if you’ve made a career change, some of that previous experience, may not look or may not feel quite as relevant to what you want to go do. But given that LinkedIn has so much space, and that your LinkedIn profile is essentially like your search optimization playground to try to become discoverable and findable for headhunters and recruiters and potential future employers. How do you handle the challenge of whether or not to start omitting stuff off of your LinkedIn profile, because it’s not as relevant versus leaving it because it might help to create connection or to make you more discoverable in search?

Daniel Lorenzo  26:24  

Yeah, that is a that is a tricky realm. And what I would say is, what I would say for LinkedIn is kind of go section by section and go case by case I if if, let’s say grandma was all in a physical office, we’re remote company mostly. But if we were all in a physical office, I would love to get like a giant banner up on the wall that says it depends. Because virtually, I can guarantee you every one of our writers has said that on a call, when it comes to resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn ads, a lot of this comes down to the particular experience that you’re talking about. And there are all many different factors you can weigh for that. So what some of those factors look like, in in LinkedIn, as we’re talking about LinkedIn, specifically, I would say it depends on the section. So certain things your about section and your headline, you want to be really targeted to your current career, you know, to your to your current, your current target, your headline, of course, because the first thing people see on your profile, they see it, that’s your first impression before they even click on your profile, you know, that should really clearly say, this is what this is, the kind of work I want to be doing is just should especially not be your current job title, if you’re still employed, that’s the default. always change it from the default. It’s a shame that LinkedIn still does that. But the about section two is where you really want to be about sections, you can be meaty, you know, you’ve got a whole 2600 characters, that’s, that’s a lot, that’s probably more than a cover letter, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s probably more than some cover letters. It can, you can contain a lot in there. But you want to make sure that your hook and the meat of your accomplishments are targeted towards your current need the current skill set that you want to present, that’s where you want to put those, you want to lead with those branding statements about yourself that say, who you are now and what you want to do now. But that said, you know, basically, when it comes to the about section, this applies to cover letters to the elements of your past career that are still like interesting, or that have still like particularly formed your current skill set, you could make mention of them, you know, maybe your third or fourth paragraph down in the about section. You know, I also really enjoyed my career as a chef, you know, or like, in a past life, I was a teacher and as a teacher, I learned X and Y and those filled me with joy, and prepared me to do what it is I’m doing now, you know, but you always want to make it a brief mention, you want to tie it back, you don’t want to present a picture of yourself as like this jack of all trades, or somebody that could do anything you know, or somebody that’s kind of like living two lives, you know, you want to make sure that your target is presented. But you have some of those when you when it comes to the profile optimization that you were talking about. The best section for that is your skill section, your skill section, you get 50 skills, which is a lot more than you’re probably going to have on your resume. 50 is a lot and the great thing about the skill section is you can choose your top three. So you can choose the top three that are most representative of what you have your current target. The other 50 are the other 47. That is nobody’s going to be reading through all of them, they can click to expand and they can browse to see the ones that they want. So we really recommend loading up your skills section. And when it comes to maybe older things that you’ve done, one great place where you might see some value in including some of those is education and volunteering, any kind of supplemental work in addition to your main career is really valuable to have on your LinkedIn. Because again, that problem, it’s likely that a lot of that will make the cut for your resume, because your resume does have to be so short. But with the extra space that you have on LinkedIn, and also with the nature of LinkedIn being a social network, that can be something that’s really valuable even for it can be valuable for recruiters or for really anybody who wants to network with you. If somebody sees like, Oh, I saw you volunteered for that animal shelter, oh, you worked with this church, you know, for a few years, you know, even if it was like 10 years ago, you know, oh, I know that church, I know that shelter. I know, a person who did, who did the Peace Corps Teach for America, or America or two, you know, those are all things that can, in kindle a little bit more of a connection between you and the person who’s reading your profile. And that’s one of the brilliant things about LinkedIn is that you can foster those actual connections and make people want to message you.

Lisa Lewis Miller  30:54  

Absolutely. And, you know, the other thing about that the volunteer section that can sometimes be really powerful is that for a lot of us who have made career changes, we may not have known, we were interested in making a career change. But if you look at the volunteer things that we would raise our hands for, sometimes you can see like a secret blueprint for trying to make a transition. Like for example, if you work in finance all day, every day. But in the volunteer work that you did, you were doing a lot of mentoring and working as like the director of communications or director of PR for 5k, or for a softball team or something like that. You may have some secret, highly relevant experiences that you did for the fun of it for free, or low Bono, right pro bono or low Bono in a season, that can be really helpful to continue to paint the picture of Actually, the thing that might look like a big career change on its face is really just more of a course correction and a pivot. And it’s actually a very natural growth outcropping of who I am and what I’ve been exploring over time.

Daniel Lorenzo  32:03  

Mm hmm. And that tells a story, which, again, is another brilliant thing about LinkedIn in particular, is it you can craft a whole narrative for yourself, because you have so much space and you have the more casual tone of like the first person kind of social network language, you can really show people, you know, here’s where I started. Here’s how I got here. And here’s how I built this career that I want to transition into. And I agree, volunteering is of great way to show that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  32:30  

Well, so since you’ve brought up storytelling, let’s talk about that. Because I know for career changers, this is one of the most uncomfortable pieces of a game. Because when you have had one singular fairly linear career, telling the story of who you are, as a candidate, kind of becomes like a play by play of, of your life and your career moves. You know, I started out doing I don’t know, marketing as an account executive at Porter Novelli and then I went on to become an account supervisor at Edelman and then I went on to become a VP at Ketchum, you know, do whatever, like you just, you can create a very like this, then this, then this, then this linear. And I mean, frankly, a little bit boring story about who you are as a professional. Yeah, when you’re trying to make a career change. That tactic doesn’t fly. Because when you tell the story that way, it immediately brings up the question for the interviewer or for the hiring manager of home. Why are you looking to do this? Now, if you have this linear background in accounting, or in project management, or you were an educator for 10 years, why are you applying for this customer support manager role? Is a question you don’t want the hiring manager to be asking. You want for them to feel like, oh, that story makes perfect sense. I would love to talk to you. I bet your non traditional experience makes you uniquely qualified person to do this job and brings awesome fresh perspective and fresh eyes. But Daniel, as you and I both know, telling that story, because it’s not so linear, can feel really vulnerable and really tricky to tell in a confident way. So when you’re working with somebody who’s a career changer who’s trying to to re envision and retell their professional story in a way that’s not quite as linear and boring, but that feels a little bit more exposed because it has some twists and turns to it. What some of the advice or the suggestions that you give folks.

Daniel Lorenzo  34:47  

Yeah, I would say all comes down to similar to and it’s just as just as tricky to pull off in in business but it comes down to a similar you know, kind of a sales marketing principle to is that you want to show your why the why not just the letter like, you want to, you want to make it clear. At every step of the journey you want to when you’re telling your story, you want to make the Why did I move from this to this clear, at every step of the way. And you don’t want to say it’s tricky, because you don’t want to spend too much time on the why, when it comes to especially here, we’re talking about your cover letter, and the about section of your LinkedIn, those are the most why heavy pieces of your whole application suite of suite of documents. You don’t want to go on for too long, you don’t want to give like a novel, you know, that’s like I was born wanting to do this. And then I went to college, and then I wanted to do this, and then I you know, and then I got to being 26. And I wanted to do this, you want to make it clear what it was about each of about each step in the journey that made you want to take the next step. And you want to focus on those that had a positive trajectory, right. So you don’t want to what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to use language just like oh, this just wasn’t for me, or like, you know, you don’t want to use language like Oh, or I didn’t fit in with this company culture, I, you know, just realize that I you know, you don’t want to paint it too much in the past was negative. So I want a brighter future. But you want to you want to show essentially, this was what I learned here, you know, this was what you what was unique about what I learned here that informed my entire skill set. And this is, this is how I want to take it even further in the future. This is how I want to maybe adapt this talent that I spent a lot of time building a foundation in, this is where I want to, this is where I want to take it, you know, because I’m more passionate about it or because I am more. You know, this fits my lifestyle, better things like that, you basically want to make it in a very subtle way you want to talk about yourself in a way that’s not talking about yourself as much as it is talking about what you can solve for them. Right? I think when you’re talking about and try and come up with a particular example here, but say when you’re talking about let’s let’s take the accounting example that you had earlier, you know, where it’s, I’m in the finance world, and he moved on from this accountant position to this account executive position, you know, at this firm, and this firm, this firm, talk about what it was, rather than just saying, you know, just I got bored of accounting, or, you know, I got bored of finance, which might be the case and is totally valid, you know, rather than saying just that, say I built a foundation in, you know, the business principles that guided me to the next step, and got me promoted, and basically gave me this upward trajectory, where I was able to use the skills that I learned to really tangibly affect companies and basically become this master of accounting. And now, I’d like to use those talents to I’d like to bring those talents to the nonprofit sector, or I’d like to use that talent of detail, detail oriented project management, to become a UX designer, you know, again, connecting the dots, right?

Lisa Lewis Miller  38:19  

And one of the things that that you’re bringing up is that the the way you tell that story connecting the dots has chapters to it, but they’re they’re brief chapters, but there’s kind of like the foundations like, where did I start my career? And there’s a chapter of what have I been doing most recently, and kind of how did that set me up for where I want to go. And then the last chapter is, here’s where I’m wanting to move next. And you did that so naturally, so organically through the way that you are giving that example, Danielle, but I want to call that out, in particular for listeners, because I think that when you think about the way that you tell your story as really just being three peeny chapters, that you’re stringing together to create the the story of who you are, as a candidate, it takes some of the pressure off to do the linear like, first I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this, like, an interviewer does not actually care about that they can already see that on your resume or on your LinkedIn. So they don’t need you to rehash the things that they can already read. But when you tell the why it can be so much more compelling, right? So if we take the the accountant, accountant example here, we talk about an accountant who might want to move into communications. You know, Daniel, to the point that you just made, you can start out by saying, you know, I’ve always been interested in businesses and how they communicate information. And in the first chapter of my career, I was doing that in accounting and helping them to communicate numbers and financial details. And then I moved into management and in that chapter of my career, I was helping to do the communication with respect to managing individuals, and ensuring that we as a unit, were communicating what the business needed from us. But what I realized in that chapter was that I would love to move into a more expansive communications role to help support organizations in all different aspects of how they talk about themselves, rather than just this limited piece around the numbers. So that’s why in this next chapter, I’m applying for the, you know, the the director of employee communications role, or whatever it is for the company so that I can take my background in, effectively communicating about the numbers and some of the things that make people scared and uncomfortable around business, in addition to all the other things that we need for the day to day. So it’s this nice kind of narrative that has a sort of like golden connective thread that goes through the pieces. So even if somebody was looking at your resume and thinking, why the heck is an accountant applying for this director of communications role? It answers that question through the whys. And through showing just like you were talking about those decision points, and the motivations and what you learned in the last role that became the, like the launching pad or the springboard into the next chapter of your learning and growth.

Daniel Lorenzo  41:08  

Yeah, beautifully poorly. So that was, that was a heck of an example that he gave, I can’t believe you just spun that out. That was awesome. That’s the what I loved about that is it shows gratitude, and it shows purpose for each of those previous steps in your career. It’s not looking at your old career is just dead weight as just like, oh, well, I was an accountant input. I guess that doesn’t really have anything to do with communications, it says, and it doesn’t also doesn’t say, you know, sorry, I was an accountant, but I’m sure I’ll be a good communications person, you know, it shows no, I learned a heck of a lot as an accountant. And that’s gonna make me an awesome communications person, you know, it validates and, and gives a clear purpose. And again, to use the same word, you know, a clear target to each step of the journey.

Lisa Lewis Miller  41:53  

Love that. And, Daniel, your use of the phrase dead weight is so so important, because I think so many career changers can get stuck in this limiting belief that my past work was a liability, that it’s a problem that it’s going to make me an unappealing candidate. And that is only true if that’s the story that you tell about yourself. When you can tell that story that is rooted in purpose and gratitude, and a target. an untraditional background can become an asset that helps you to stand out from anybody else who has the more sort of linear and maybe even boring career trajectory. Now, Daniel, let me ask you one more question, because I know we’re getting close to the end of our episode. So you early on in our conversation today, just off the cuff mentioned professional summary sections on resumes. And we’ve been talking about this idea of telling your candidate story, in some of the places where you have a little bit more spaciousness, like a cover letter or like LinkedIn. If you have a professional summary section built into the top of your resume, it’s gonna be what two sentences maximum? How do you best tell your story there?

Daniel Lorenzo  43:11  

Oof, love me a good summary section. I think the summary is one of the most underrated sections on a resume. And it can be so powerful, especially for career changers. And the reason why is that it’s the first thing they see, you know, it’s the top third of your resume, that’s prime real estate, for you to key them in to exactly what it is that you want them to notice in the rest of your resume, especially if you’re a career changer and have some non traditional, you know, have it have a non traditional nonlinear path that they might not be able to notice right away, you know, that they they if you have any jobs that otherwise might make them think like, Why is this person applying for this job, your summary tells them right away before they even get to the jobs. So and to be clear here when we’re talking about summary. This is not an objective statement. And objective statement can be kind of tempting for career changers. Do not put an objective statement on your resume. There’s there very few like hard and fast things that I like to say for resumes. And that’s, that’s one of them, the objective statement is, is outdated, it’s very hard to spend well, our professional summary is a little bit different. It focuses more on what you can do for the company. And so for some practical tips for the summary, yeah, like you said, they say keep it really short, you know, maybe a couple sentences, maybe three to four lines. If you’re somebody who is further along in your career, you know, say you’ve had more than like 10 or 15 years of experience, you’ve had a really long career. You can also do what we do for some let’s see grandma clients is right kind of a hybrid summary where there’s a paragraph and then there’s maybe three bullet points of like key career accomplishments, you know, three of maybe like your greatest hits, that you can put into a bullet point map there beneath a few lines of summary. But basically what you want to do with your summary is in paragraph and or bullet form Say what is what is the overarching principle of my career? You know, you can think about that in the same way of like a personal branding statement or like an elevator pitch, you know, what is the thing that I most want to be known for? And then what is and then how have I shown them? You know, what is my biggest skill? How long have I been doing it? And what they’re when we say, like, you know, if you’re giving it years of experience figure for career changers count, however many years you’ve been doing anything that’s relevant to the current job, right? You know, don’t just leave it at one year of experience, or whatever it lets you, you have more experience than that, right? So you want to say, you know, here is what I want to be known for, here’s maybe how long I’ve been doing it. And here’s a brief example of how it’s been shown in my career, because then that will keep them into this is where I see like, you know, as demonstrated by, you know, building companies in the the FinTech space or something like that. And then that cues them into see Oh, FinTech, okay, let’s pay particular attention to those FinTech jobs that I’m going to see later on it defrays, any red flags, it comes out with a really strong proposition out of the gate. And it basically just makes a bold claim that you then back up with the rest of your professional experience.

Lisa Lewis Miller  46:19  

Yeah, I almost think about that professional summary for a career changer as like, this is where your burden of proof comes to a head. And you should essentially be writing a thesis statement, This is who I’m going to prove to you that I am. And it sort of teaches the hiring manager how to read your resume. Exactly, you can say, you know, from my experience, my 10 years of experience in accounting, I learned, you know, acumen with business communications regarding numbers that will serve me in this role, you know, doing the, I don’t know that the financial communications for the company, and telling them like, don’t read this, as accounting, read this as preparation to do financial communications. And that kind of really subtle thesis statement, like the burden of proof statement can be so helpful in allowing you to feel more comfortable and competent, and teaching someone how to read your resume to actually understand who you are and what you’re all about.

Daniel Lorenzo  47:23  

Exactly, it’s, I’m glad you mentioned that, Lisa, that that this is one of the few places where you really have full sentences on your resume, you know, when you’re not constrained by the bullet point format, because bullets are great, they’re easy to skim, we love bullets. But when in those instances where you have full sentences and your summary and your cover letter and your LinkedIn about section, really make use of all of those words, really make use of of the, for the freedom that you have to really explicitly spell out things and say, in those exact words, you know, I, my experience in X would be valuable in x, right?

Lisa Lewis Miller  47:58  

Love that. Well, Daniel, if you could give one parting piece of advice to a career changer who is about to begin their job application journey, and is kind of refreshing their personal and professional brand?

Daniel Lorenzo  48:11  

What would it be? Just one Oh, that is so tough.

Lisa Lewis Miller  48:16  

Put me on the spot here. No.

Daniel Lorenzo  48:20  

Oh, my goodness. Well, I already said the things about, you know, accomplishments and tailoring to the job description. If it was specifically for a career changer. I mean, we’ve really covered it all. Lisa, I was gonna say the summary, but we just talked about the summary. I would say, okay, I can lump in a few things with this one, I would say be aware of myths. Do your research, when it comes to all of your documents. Resumes are constantly evolving documents, there’s a lot about them, that has changed in the past 1510, maybe even five years there, there might have been a lot that has changed. When it comes to, you know, there might have been a lot that’s changed since the last time you sat down to write your resume. So be aware of things like the functional resume format, be aware of when it comes to there’s a lot of myths there out there about applicant tracking systems, beware of like super flashy, you know, quote, unquote, modern resume templates that are really just confusing for recruiters. really carefully. Do your research, try to stay away from stay away from seemingly Hot Trends and listen to what recruiters and hiring professionals on LinkedIn are saying is there’s an awful lot of things in the resume cover letter and LinkedIn world that a lot of people would love to sell as the hot new thing but recruiters actually don’t care about.

Lisa Lewis Miller  49:50  

Such such good advice. Well, then you think Daniel, Daniel, where did that come from? Daniel, thank you for coming on the Career Clarity Show Today, and for anybody who has been listening to this, who is saying that Daniel seems real smart, I would love for him and his company to take a look at my resume. Where can they find out more about you and what you do?

Daniel Lorenzo  50:11  

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Lisa, it’s been such a pleasure, you can find out about us at Let’s eat grandma.com That’s our website, I’m sure the link there in the show notes. You can also follow us on Instagram. Let’s eat coma grandma, the word coma spelled out there, you can follow us on LinkedIn too. And I would encourage you to if you are interested in maybe revamping your resume or your cover letter or your LinkedIn profile for your career change, I would encourage you to check out we have a wealth of free resources. On our website, we have our own podcasts, the career warrior podcast, we also have a blog that we update every week, we have a free ebook on writing better bullet points, and all of that. All of that can help you out for free. And then you can also give you a taste of what working with lightest is like if you do want to end up having us rewrite your resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile if you’d like to work one on one with a resume writer. That’s our specialty is is personalization and collaboration with the client. So we love working with career changers.

Lisa Lewis Miller  51:11  

Awesome. Well, Daniel, thank you again for coming on the Career Clarity Show today and sharing all of these tactical practical, actionable tips for career changers. 

Daniel Lorenzo  51:20  

My pleasure, Lisa, thanks for having me. Take care.

Lisa Lewis Miller  51:29  

And that’s a wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. Leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests and topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity: Finally Finds The Work That Fits Your Values and Lifestyle for the link to order it go to GetCareerClarity.com/book And don’t forget to get your other tools resources and helpful goodies at GetCareerClarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the Career Clarity Show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.