147:  Trends in Professional Branding with Allison Hamscher

Welcome back to the Career Clarity show! Host Jenn Smith is here with Allison Hamscher talking about all things professional branding. If you’re a listener who is trying to keep up with all the latest and greatest trends when it comes to professional branding and resumes, then you’re going to want to tune into today’s episode. 

Allison is the founder of Elevated Resumes and an in-house design expert. She combines a background in visual arts and a passion for presenting value through design for her clients to help them stand out from the crowd and land the job they deserve. 

Show Notes:

• Elevated Resumes
• LinkedIn: Allison Hamscher
• LinkedIn: Elevated Resumes 
• Font Squirrel – free fonts to modernize your resume
• 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.

Jenn Smith  0:30  

Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Career Clarity Show. I’m your host Career Clarity Show coach Jenn Smith. If you’re a listener who is trying to keep up with all the latest and greatest trends when it comes to professional branding and resumes, then you’re going to want to tune into today’s episode. Today’s guest is Allison Hamscher, founder of elevated resumes, Allison and I connected out on the internet waves of all things career and resume over the last couple years. And I’m delighted to have her as a guest on today’s show. So along with founding elevated resumes, Alison is also the in house design expert. So she combines a background in visual arts and a passion for presenting value through design for her clients to get noticed, Alison elevates each client’s visual brands to help them stand out from the crowd and land the job they deserve. Alison, welcome to the show.

Allison Hamscher  1:38  

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Jenn Smith  1:40  

So to kick us off, I’d love to hear a little bit about your career story. So before we hit record, we were talking that nobody really grows up thinking they want to be a resume writer designer. So let’s talk a little bit about your career story.

Allison Hamscher  1:56  

Sure. So I kind of I’ve joked that I started a resume business, and I don’t write resumes. But my background really started with the passion for design. So I went to school at UPenn studied visual studies, but also got a minor in consumer psychology. So I always was interested in why people are influenced to buy something or market something or be attracted to something through visuals. So I took a job out of school that I actually wasn’t too happy with and decided that I was going to make this super creative resume to apply for a startup in New York City. And the startups brand was pink. And so I made this pink resume that, like I mean, the joke of was the Elle Woods, thing, making a thing resume to apply for Harvard. And anyways, it got a lot of attention. And a lot of people wanted to start talking about the resume and I ended up kind of snowballing into its own business because someone would see my resume, and they’re like, Wow, that made you memorable, can you work on mine, and then I worked on their cousins, and then their cousin Dan, and then we’re really proud. In the seven years of business, we’ve grown year over year, and now we’re just about 100% referral based. But I don’t get all the credit, absolutely not. As I mentioned, my expertise is on the design side. So with our team at elevated resumes, we have writers that handle the content and strategy. And then I step in to do the Design and Format to help improve the readability of the resume, but also to make the client memorable.

Jenn Smith  3:41  

Yes, I love that I think there is so much to be said for visual design. And I come from a family of designers and graphic designers and artists. And so I’m probably a little bit biased here. But I totally believe in it, when you see a resume that’s well designed and easily skimmable it’s a lot different than you know, just like three pages of text, you know, black and white tags on a, you know, on a piece of paper. And so, I love that you also leaned into your strength around design, and then, you know, kind of have woven that into a very successful business over the years. So I feel like a lot of times if people go to school for visual design, you know, or graphic design or whatever that is they think they have to go be a graphic designer, and they have to work for a company and I love how you kind of fell into this and have been able to use that strength, you know, throughout your throughout your career in starting your business. So

Allison Hamscher  4:34  

yeah, appreciate it. I mean, there’s, there’s so much science behind it. There’s so many studies that show that people can process images, I think it’s like 40,000 or 40,000 times faster than text. So not saying that a resume shouldn’t have any text. It absolutely should have text, and the text should really be what’s leading this engagement. But how can you actually retain that attention to someone actually reads because people don’t they skim now they don’t read too much. So how, when people are flipping through resumes and looking at resumes all day long, how can you create pause. And you can do that through professional branding and kind of professional formatting. And so not saying that all of our clients get super creative, but there’s, there’s ways to improve the format. And again, that kind of flow and readability of your document that helps you stand out from everyone else’s template that they’re just downloading the Times New Roman one. It’s funny that if he told companies that their branding all had to be the same, and they had to follow a certain color code and font style, because they’re not allowed to stand out from everyone else, like, that doesn’t make any sense, like so if you’re branding yourself and selling yourself to a company, why shouldn’t you be allowed to stand out? So that’s kind of where, where our logic came. And now, as we’ve grown year over year, we have all the case studies, we work clients around the world, all the way up to the executive level, all the like fortune 500 companies. So now I don’t even when people come and they’re like, Are you sure this is going to work for my level at my industry, I like we have the case study. So we’re, we’re, we’re pretty confident, because we’ve just seen the the results.

Jenn Smith  6:16  

Love it. And I love this idea of like creating a pause and making someone memorable. So I’ll tell you from my inside view, in my recruiting days, there was something in our applicant tracking system, there’s something called Speed browse, where we’re literally looking at seven resumes side by side on our computer screen. And if if it doesn’t create that pause, or at least grab my attention with the design or the words, then I’m skin, I’m skinning right on by

Allison Hamscher  6:48  

that quote up there where they say you have six seconds, some sometimes you have less than six.

Jenn Smith  6:54  

It’s not a joke, I’m telling you, seven resumes. That’s right. That’s right. So and especially as a recruiter, when you have hundreds of applicants for one job, and then you probably have 30, to 40 to 50 jobs that you’re recruiting for at once, you know, depending on what you’re doing, and the industry that you’re working in, it can be overwhelming. And so creating that pause and being memorable through the design and the content of your resume is super important. So talk to me about resume trends. So there’s been a lot of change in resume content design, professional branding is certainly a buzz term. So I’d love for you to share just kind of what you’ve seen over the years that’s changed, and maybe a little bit around what’s worked, what hasn’t worked?

Allison Hamscher  7:40  

Sure, I think I’m a big piece that kind of comes into play now is it’s not just about your resume anymore. It’s about really your digital presence, because LinkedIn plays a huge factor. So what messaging Are you sharing on LinkedIn? Because as recruiters, they’re bringing up your LinkedIn. So if that doesn’t align with your resume strategy, there can be some confusion. Also not saying I mean social media, it’s it’s a thing your brand is out there. So what are you portraying on social media? But when it comes to resumes? Are? There’s a few things and we take such a custom approach to our clients? It’s not saying that your resume these days absolutely has to be one page? Because I would say, maybe not. I mean, we work with clients that have 20 plus years of experience, and they deserve a second page. And if you are doing it correctly, and your content is relevant, then yes, we are going to have a second page resume, whereas you’ll see some websites out there that say resumes have to be one page. And we might not agree with that same deal with your photo on your resume. That used to be a huge No, no, but now we’re seeing it happen more and more because it is part of your brand. LinkedIn, if you don’t have a photo on LinkedIn, that’s almost like a weird red flag. So if you’re supposed to have on LinkedIn, but you’re not allowed to have on your resume, like what’s that all about? So depending on the client, depending on the industry, depending on the level, sometimes we are incorporating their photo on their resume. So that’s a trend. I mean, there’s common ones like obviously, objectives are done, kind of like an old trend. And we’re writing more really want that professional summer that the way we really go about writing resumes is we want you to focus on your core theme. So we try to nail it down to your top three core themes. Because those themes should be consistent across your brand. And so those themes when someone’s looking at your resume, those themes should also be carried over to your LinkedIn because, again, the way people process and how we can process I think I forget what the role is, but we can retain like seven bits of information at a time but only three of those really retain well in our memory. So if you’re looking at it in like a scientific way, give people three things To focus on when they’re reading your resume. So when we’re writing a resume, we want to talk about those three themes. In your summary, we want to capture them in your core expertise. And we want them to be captured again, in your professional experience. So through, you want to kind of prove that these are my themes, because these are all the things I’ve done with those seem so like an example of a theme could be relationship building. So you’re a person that you maybe you’re not so sales driven, numbers driven, but you build relationships and build teams. So we want to capture that throughout your, your resume. And then we want to carry that over onto your LinkedIn and any additional kind of branding tools. So I guess that’s kind of hard, because for each client resumes, we kind of tailor things differently. But I would say an overall kind of piece of advice is that you, you want it to represent you. And we always tell our clients, don’t be afraid of the no pile. So if you’re writing that resume, and you are so proud of it, and so excited about it, and a recruiter looks at it, and they immediately put you in the no pile, then good job, because you probably don’t want to work for that company. So you know that you stuck to your guns, this is you on paper, you’re not selling someone else you’re selling yourself, then you’re gonna attract the right the right company and the right culture. And then it is set you up for a career, not just a job.

Jenn Smith  11:28  

Yeah, I love that. And I love this notion of kind of, you know, this overarching career story, you know, so obviously, I help folks with their resumes and their branding and everything. And so I love this notion of the overarching career story. And then make sure making sure it comes across loud and clear in your resume and in your LinkedIn, and that they complement each other. And so, you know, as a recruiter, the first thing I did when I got somebody’s resume, the first thing I did was click into LinkedIn. And so you want them to tell a cohesive story, and so many times they don’t. And that’s where it’s confusing, you know, it’s confusing to someone that’s trying to understand, you know, what you want and how you’d be a good fit in an organization without, you know, having that story jump out from from both of those tools. So I think that that is really important. And the other notion, this kind of ties back to what you were mentioning around your first resume that you did that was pink, and like the Elle Woods, the woods notion here, but tell me what you think about so I’m always a fan of let’s let’s design your professional brand, as a combination of where you’ve been with where you want to go. So we’re going to use the relevant skills and experiences as it matches where you want to go. So kind of like you branded, you use color to, you know, match an organization. So do you have any thoughts around that and how that kind of works together?

Allison Hamscher  12:52  

I mean, your content comes into play there, too, we deal with a ton of senior leaders that want to be executives. So if your resume is reading as not executive yet, like the the content needs to change, because once you get to that executive level, it’s not so much about what you did, it’s how you’re going to do it in the future. So you are kind of making this pitch of this is what I’ve done, but I promise you, this is what I can do. And so you want to kind of pivot that content. And that’s where I kind of lean heavy on our writers to come up with that strategy. When it comes to design, you can kind of think of that the same way. So if you’re, you want to position yourself for executive leadership, that’s not necessarily saying you have to be very buttoned up and your design has to be super conservative. You want it to show that you’re, you’re kind of with the trends of like, I’m not falling behind on what it used to be I see that things are moving, things are changing. And my resume kind of reflects that because my resume doesn’t look like everyone else’s. I’m like ahead of the curve. So it kind of shows that you’re kind of with it with the new technology and, and whatnot. But I don’t know. I mean, I, some of our clients really, when it comes to design have a clear vision of like, this is me, like this is the color code I use for like all my branding. And when I go to an interview, I always have this pop of color. And I want to carry that across my resume. Some clients aren’t as like, attuned to kind of like their visual cues. I think me naturally I just visuals are such a big part of my life that I’m like, What do you mean you don’t have a favorite color? Some people just don’t and that’s okay. But yeah, I would say it. In the end, we want what you’re presenting to make you excited because if you’re excited and proud to show it off, that’s going to come across in interviews, that’s gonna open up doors that so you’re not just applying online, you’re sharing it with friends because you’re like, Damn, look at my resume. Like I’m so excited to show it off like I would hire myself and a deal So yeah, I would say stick to your guns stick to something that that you’re excited about. Because if you are creating a design and you’re looking at it, you’re like, that’s not me. I don’t think you’re going to go into your interview as competently, as you should.

Jenn Smith  15:14  

Yeah, I love that. And that’s one of the reasons that I actually enjoy working on professional branding and resumes with clients is the competence factor is when someone sees their career on a piece of paper that looks beautiful, and they’re excited about, it literally sparks something inside that really can ignite the whole job search process, you know, if they’re changing jobs, or if they’re up for promotion, or whatever that is, and it’s really exciting to see, you know, the phrase that comes to mind that I’ve heard from people is, I can’t believe this is me on paper. Hmm, yep. Right. They love it, you know, and so and they should, you should be excited to share your story. And so, you know, it takes a lot of confidence, like a lot of our listeners are career changers, it takes a lot of confidence to go out and make a career change in general. And then when you can articulate yourself and your career story on a piece of paper and be excited about that, it’s really going to spark that momentum and help you dive into a new a new position. So and I’ll go ahead, oh, I

Allison Hamscher  16:17  

was just gonna say, that’s a conversation I have with people almost every day and them saying like, they’re a little bashful that they weren’t able to write their own resume. And I always say, I’m like, it’s difficult that we deal with people that are so successful, and at the executive level, and they struggle with it, too. Sometimes, it’s hard to kind of take a step back and put 1520, even 10 years of professional experience on paper. So don’t feel bad that that sometimes you have to lean on an expert, I think it’s a great thing to invest in yourself, invest in your future. We always say say that with clients that work with us where we know where an investment, but you’re investing in yourself and the ROI will be there. It’s just getting to exactly that point where you look at the paper and you’re like, I can’t believe that to me, but it is you because you put in that hard work, we just we just helped you put on paper.

Jenn Smith  17:11  

That’s exactly right. And I love your notion to around like the leadership branding. So like when you’re when you’re moving into a leadership role, and you’re kind of up leveling and upskilling. And having a leader brand as you go into those conversations, and you’re able to articulate that leader brand, on a resume and on your LinkedIn profile really starts to elevate you as you know, as a candidate for those for those bigger jobs. So I think I actually think like in the future, and now and going into the future, that’s going to be a key piece of organizations making decisions on on leaders and making sure they have that leader brand. And they know what they stand for. And they can articulate what they stand for. And it is hard. It’s so hard to talk about yourself. I know it’s hard for me to talk about myself. It’s just hard in general. And so when you do get that outside objective opinion that sees you for all your accomplishments and doesn’t know you outside of that, I think can be really helpful when you’re trying to pull together this overarching career story. point. So, Allison, when it comes to designing a resume, since that’s your area of expertise, what are three things a job seeker should think about?

Allison Hamscher  18:26  

Sure. So I always tell clients, when I’m designing a resume, it’s kind of like a puzzle to me. It’s all about that client’s experience, and then goals moving forward, and then like fitting the content onto one page. So Well, typically, so if we have like a page and a half of content, so much of where my mind is going to go is to like okay, how can we Tetris game this together to make it kind of fit. If you’re not from a graphic design space, that could be difficult to do, because if people are coming, they’re trying to download a template online on like et Cie or something, you’re going to run into a lot of issues because the template then restricts the content. So when we work, my writers kind of benefit because they’re not restricted, they can give me exactly the content they want, they need this bullet to be this long. And then I make it work on the design when you’re working with a template you can run into a lot of issues because they’re limiting. So I know that’s kind of frustrating because it doesn’t give you too many options if you don’t come from a graphic design background, but I would say quick fixes that you can do if you still are working in something like Microsoft Word is font selection, so you can go with something that’s a bit more modern. So you’ll the term like Sarah for set sans serif. If you’re going with something that’s more sans serif, it has like those sharper edges, not the the little detailed lines that look a little bit more old fashioned. So that’s a quick fix is going with something more Modern when the fonts, a little pop of color, you could just change your name to something that is colorful, and that’s okay. And again, if you changing your name to Blue turns off over cruder, then there might be a bigger issue with that company culture that you might be saving yourself with. When I go to design a resume, placement of sections is important. So if we’re working with an executive that has 20 years of professional experience, they have their bachelor’s degree, but they have all these professional development and certifications that are more relevant. Those developments in certifications are getting ranked a lot higher than education. So sometimes, if they have their master’s degree, that might be something we want to feature. But in the end, I always tell my clients, when you’re in an interview, what are you most excited about? What are you trying to talk about? Because we want to make sure that’s not missed. So we want to feature that in a prominent spot on your resume. Sometimes I refer to the resume format as real estate like, alright, this is your like, above the fold. What do you what are you so proud of and excited about? Because sometimes to go back from what I just said, I’m from Pennsylvania, people are like diehard Penn State fans, sometimes even executives 25 plus years of experience, and I put their education on page two, they’re like, lady, I went to Penn State, like, I’m like a Nittany Lion, like you need to get that onto the first page. Because that’s something I’m so proud of i It’s an icebreaker in interviews, and that’s okay. That’s what they want to talk about. And we’ll make it work. So that’s where I don’t always follow the rules, because the rules should be different for each person, depending on their story. So normally, I would say 20 plus years experience your resume or education going at the bottom, but I don’t mess with Penn State fans.

Jenn Smith  21:55  

Yes, I know a lot of those diehard Penn State Penn Staters as well. I’ve worked with plenty of them over the years. I feel like it’s between Penn State and Ohio State that needs to be prominent on a resume for sure. You’re right. I mean, if it does generate conversation, then break the rules. I’m all about that I break the rules on resumes as well, I love you know, the notion of you know, a quick fix is updating the font, you know, a quick fix is adding a splash of color to make it more memorable and make it more like you and making sure that that story is, you know, is consistent. Um, any fonts. Since we’re talking to the designer, any fonts you recommend on a resume that don’t have to be like special downloads?

Allison Hamscher  22:41  

Oh, yeah, see that. That’s the catch. All the funds that I’m using, like my favorite funds are funds and my clients are always because I’m always sending them links of downloading them because as a graphic designer, it’s and I don’t even it’s funny, I call myself a graphic designer. I’m really self taught I think I’d one class in school. But my My study is really more like the science of visuals. But I use this font collaborate all the time, it has a different font family, but it’s, it is a narrow font, it is free to download on like font squirrel. It’s a super narrow font is a really clean font, but it saves you space on your resume because it’s narrow. It’s the actual padding between the letters doesn’t waste space. So it is it’s like a tighter font to read. But it’s like one of my tricks of the trade of like, okay, this is a patient half of content, I want to get this onto one page still make it readable, still make it like fresh and clean. I know that’s kind of gonna be like my go to fonts. So collaborate. is a good one. lotto is a good one. A good bet. Again, like I feel like I give, I’m saying some things that if you don’t have like the Adobe Creative Suite, it could be a little bit hard to download this funds. But if you want to work with us, we get we’re gonna define those funds for you.

Jenn Smith  24:06  

No, I agree with you. I think it’s a big deal. I mean, it makes a difference in the old timey times new roman stuff is just get let it go. You know, it does make it makes it cleaner. It makes it easier to read. For sure. So I think those are good, good little easy hacks if anyone is interested in a quick fix. What about writing? I know you’re not the resume writer, but do you have any thoughts around if somebody is out there listening and they’re ready to refresh the resume on their own kind of three, you know, three ish things that they could think about when they’re updating the content?

Allison Hamscher  24:40  

Sure, so I mean, some kind of quick sections that we’re always when we’re when we’re talking about resumes, okay, so we want your we want a summary section, some people call it a profile, professional profile, professional summary, executive summary, kind of all the same, okay, so this is we write that as like that’s your introduction to your resume. So again, if if you identify three core values, these are the three things I want to, these are the three things I stand for when what I can bring to a company. And those are transferable skills to so from industry to industry, they really should be able to transfer. So, if you do it like that way, you could even your summary section could be three sentences, some are six sentences, we really tried to not go longer than that for your professional summary. And then you get into your professional experience section. Typically, you want to focus on your first 15 years of perfect or most recent 15 years of professional experience after that, things are a little bit more dated, and maybe we’re capturing that on your LinkedIn or on the second page of your resume. So your most recent experience really should be taking up the majority of your space, because you would hope that that’s where your recent professional development and most recent successes, metrics etc, have been captured. The way people can kind of process bullets, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, because you’re so we always say sometimes people are just reading the first part of that bullet. So they might not even get to the second part. So if your bullet, if you can, if towards the end of your bullet is what you’re most proud of about and excited about trying to reword that bullet so that the end is actually at the front, because they might never get to the end of the bullet. So that’s bullets should be, we try to not make them longer than two lines. Because again, once you get longer people drop off. And then people always talk about numbers are important on your resume. Absolutely. Obviously, depending on your industry, it could be a bit different, we work with a ton of sales professionals. So what we always tried to do is a separate section. So you have your, obviously the company, your title, your dates, your bullets, and then we’ve tried to do like a key achievement section. And we might even visually do a checkmark or do a star something that says like, q2 Quarter like these are your numbers type deal. So if you can, again, just break things off, give people sections, so you give them a chance. Because if your achievements are just another bullet at the end, they might never get to it. But if you identify it and like almost like subhead, it, there’s more of a chance that someone might actually capture your achievement, or your metric. So professional summary, professional experience. And then we like to list core expertise, because again, that captures a lot of those keywords, ATS systems, you’re really kind of feeding the machine by entering those key terms. Obviously, your education, like little things you can drop off your education date. So many people include like the city and state and I’m like, That’s space that does someone really need to know the city and state of like, they can Google it, right? So sometimes if I’m as a designer trying to save a line, I delete that. And if you look at templates, it’s like always has the city and state I’m like, does that need to be there? I don’t think so. So education, certifications, training and technical skills, so software, and then community involvement, leadership. But that’s a lot to fit on a page. So it’s what you’re most excited about. Doesn’t mean everything needs to be on there. But if the those are relevant, I would say those are kind of like the heavy hitters when we’re writing a resume.

Jenn Smith  28:39  

Yeah, I agree with you on all of those couple of thoughts here. So the you know, those the professional summary or the objective, the outdated objective, that’s now the professional summary, love on resumes, and I in most people, you know, especially when you’re scanning a resume, you’re gonna read, you know, top to bottom, right. And so when you’re, when you’re grabbing that you know the name and then that professional summary right away, it can really grab a reader’s attention and quickly let them know who you are and what you stand for. And then hopefully, as long as you match, you know, kind of what they’re looking for, they’re going to dive deeper. And when they dive deeper into those bullets, like you were talking about, showcasing the accomplishment right away. So the formula that’s always running through my head when I’m writing resumes is accomplished x by doing y. So in a lot of people write the Y first versus the accomplishment. And I think that’s your point. Like if you said, you know, achieved 50% You know, improvement year over year by dot dot dot that 50% achieved 50% improvement, it’s going to grab my eye as a reader and then I’m going to go it’s not collaborated with so and so and so and so to achieve 50 Yeah, exactly. Kind of switching those to, you know, to again, left to right, top to bottom left to right, you’re grabbing that reader’s attention. Totally agree with all the sections you mentioned. Quick question for I was just talking with an early career candidate about adding interests to a resume. What are your thoughts on that?

Allison Hamscher  30:10  

Um, it, it depends. It also depends on space. Sometimes for us, we’re looking to fill a little space. And we’re like, any, like interesting icebreakers that you want to add. Sometimes it’s the opposite where like, hey, we, this doesn’t deserve the real estate right now on your resume. So we’re going to cut it, but you can incorporate on your LinkedIn. So to the point of kind of breaking the rules, like we had a client who was a small yay, so professional wine taster had absolutely nothing to do with his career. But we had this space. And I’m like, that’s a really cool fact. Like, that’s not that common. So he put it on his resume. And he said in his interview, that’s all they wanted to talk about. It had absolutely nothing to do with his career. But in the end, people are human, they want, they want to connect with someone at like a personal level. So that’s cool. My husband runs Ironman, which he was like training on it, he took like a 40 minute bike ride, or 40 mile bike ride this weekend. So he took a lot of time. But that’s something that’s on his resume. He’s in the biotech industry. So do they really care too much that he runs Ironman? Maybe not. But it says a little bit something about his personality, so that he’s pretty dedicated and driven. So not saying that you have to go start running Ironman, or go to Somalia. But if you have something interesting to talk about, and you’re really excited about it, we, then I’m like, Absolutely, if you can fit it fit it. We just did a presentation for the Junior League of Washington, DC, and they were struggling with. They do a lot of volunteer work. And the woman was a lawyer, and she says, I had someone one time that said, I just don’t think you can do this job, because you’re so involved in your community, and you do too much with your community, like how could you dedicate enough time to us, and we’re like, Well, you probably don’t want to work for them. Because they might be asking you to work 8090 hour weeks. And if you truly do, like, what drives you, what gets you up in the morning is on nights and weekends you get to help your community, then then you want to find different opportunities. So for her, she was like, for so long, I kept I just kept it quiet that I was so involved. And I did so much for my community, because I didn’t want to scare away an employer. But I’m like, that’s for the right employers gonna appreciate that. So that’s another thing like interest, we’re okay with adding that even entrepreneurial experience like side hustles, we’re seeing more trends of adding those to your resume, because it shows a little personality trait.

Jenn Smith  32:54  

I 100% agree. And I love that I think anything that can open a conversation, whether it’s wine tasting, or reading Iron Man or playing guitar, you know, if it’s relevant, if it’s if it’s if there’s the space, and it’s relevant to where you’re going, by all means, you know, if it’s not so much, and it is, you know, your resume is limited by space. And I love putting it on LinkedIn. And that’s kind of the way that I think about those two tools as well is that your resume, you know, the design of your resume is important. And it is limited by space one or two pages. If you do have more to share, whether that’s more career experience, or interest or side hustles or projects, leverage LinkedIn, it’s not limited by space, and it can really build out that story for you and make you really interesting. And you know, open those conversations, which is really what it’s intended to do.

Allison Hamscher  33:42  

Absolutely. And sometimes we even make a little note on on the resume. So a big, easy thing that you can do is make sure you customize your LinkedIn URL. So if you’re on your profile, your name should be customized, it shouldn’t have a tail of numbers. And once you do that, you can add that URL to your resume under your contact information. We even a lot of our designs, you’ll see a QR code. And some people are like, do I really need a QR code? And we’re like, it has been again, another icebreaker, another conversation starter. And if someone is interviewing you with the paper right there, everyone knows how to use the QR code after the pandemic. So right there. If you’re talking about something you’re like, This isn’t captured on my resume, scan my card or QR code, bring up my LinkedIn and it really dives into all this volunteer experience I had. That’s impressive. So yes, absolutely leveraged LinkedIn to to kind of capture things that maybe don’t deserve real resume real estate. But at the same time, sometimes something just like multimedia works a lot better on LinkedIn. Obviously uploading a video can necessarily do that on your resume. But LinkedIn has those tools.

Jenn Smith  34:53  

Yes, I always say you want to make it as easy as possible for the reader. So if you can put your url or a QR code Whatever it is for the person to easily get right into your LinkedIn and be able to see your whole career story, you know, right in front of them, then you know, you want to make sure that you’re you’re doing that and making it as easy as possible for them. So absolutely. Awesome. So you mentioned the applicant tracking system, and I can’t not have a conversation about resumes without getting your thoughts on the ATS. It comes up in so many of my conversation. So talk to me about your thoughts on resumes, and ATS is

Allison Hamscher  35:28  

sure. So I get like, Mama Bear. Because so many people in the beginning told me your designs won’t go through ATS systems, because you have visuals you have color columns, etc, etc. So ATS systems, they’re tricky, because there’s so many out there, there’s not one ATS system, it’s software. So it’s constantly being updated. It’s constantly getting smarter. It’s there’s so many versions out there. So there’s no black or white answer. We have recruiters on our team that have tested our resumes with ATS systems, and they are going through and sometimes even we’ve taken the exact same content on a design pdf of ours, and a Microsoft Word document and we’ve tested it and ours like actually performed better. So what we do, and for people that aren’t familiar with ATS systems, so they’re scanning the resume looking for those keywords. So a huge, huge thing that you need to make sure when you’re submitting your resume is that your text is still text, like you’re not flattening as an image. And a good way to test that as you take your cursor, if you can copy and paste text, it’s reading it as text. We do incorporate visuals into our resumes a lot. Sometimes you’ll see like a school seal. And again, that might be to draw attention, there might be just a break up the page. From our experience, our clients are getting jobs at some of the biggest companies you can name. So we know it’s getting through. What’s hard with ATS systems is to my knowledge, sometimes you can they have certain rules on them. So it could say, Yes, we’re looking for keywords. But we also want to make sure this person has their master’s degree. So someone could focus on like, my resume is 100% optimized to all these keywords. But they don’t know that there’s a rule applied to the ATS system. So that’s why you feel like you’re in this black hole. So absolutely apply online, utilize that. But also find find the email of the hiring manager find someone connect with someone on LinkedIn that can get your resume in the door because yeah, we ATS system is black hole, you don’t know what you’re up against. But in the end, our thing is, we believe our design resume carries more benefit than playing super safe and sticking with that Microsoft Word template for a shorter sense that I get like super, like

Jenn Smith  37:58  

it’s the passion for your work. Allison, this is what we love to hear. We love this. So yeah, and you know, you’re you’re spot on with ATS is, you know, in my experience it is it’s software, they’re all different. There’s hundreds of different varieties out there, it’s going to depend on the organization. And it’s going to depend on what the recruiters decides to pull out from your job. Yeah, you know what words they’re looking for and what they’re searching for. So and that is a shot in the dark usually. So you know, your best bet is to go ahead and apply. But also try to find a human to PDF and email your resume to so the design, the content, the story all comes together the way that you intended it to create one, one follow up question to the ATF since we’re talking about like systems there. What about tools like Job scan? What are your thoughts on that I get a lot of questions from folks on these two.

Allison Hamscher  38:52  

A lot of clients get kind of caught up in it like they’ll come across job scan and they upload their resume and they’re like I scored a 60% I failed. And that again is where it’s a software it’s still we want you okay even if you get past ATS system, because you wanted job scan to give you a score of 95 when it gets to a human that human might read that resume and be like what? So okay, you beat the computer. But now you’re in front of a human and your resume doesn’t might not make sense or might be repetitive and might sound way too much like the job description. So we always tell clients, okay, you can scan it with job skin but don’t you did not fail because you got to 60% Because there’s also I mean, we’ve tested sometimes if you like say the word deliver verse delivered and you could score differently so we tell them not to get caught up with with job scan, but it is a great tool that it’s out there. but it’s not, it’s not something that is a part of our best practice where we run it through job scan, before we approve a resume we want. Again, if you were, we stick with this if you’re sticking with your core values and your core strengths, and that is what attracts, and that’s what gets you through the door, you’re going to do well, that job. If you try to create this person that’s just gonna beat this software, and it’s not you, even if you get that job, you might not succeed at that job. So we want you to be you be the best version of you and email your resume to someone. But don’t worry too much about jobs good.

Jenn Smith  40:41  

I love that description of you know how you share that you want it to be you. And if you’re just trying to trick a system or trick a software, then that’s most likely not going to be you. And, you know, there’s probably going to be people will sense that, you know, it’ll probably be sensed through the interactions. And so I love that. And I always think to that job, skin is a business. If you score low, then maybe you’re gonna have to buy something more with their business. But I agree it is a tool, it’s helpful to, you know, sometimes you can scan, you know, just to get different keywords and things like that. But it shouldn’t be the end all be all you want to write and design for human eyes, not a software.

Allison Hamscher  41:21  

So luckily, we are still in the end, hired by humans. This is true so far.

Jenn Smith  41:30  

All right, Allison, this has been fun. So to wrap things up, a lot of our listeners, as I mentioned, are thinking about career change, or moving through a career change. And so if you had to share one piece of advice for someone who is ready to revamp their professional brand, or resume their LinkedIn towards a new role or a new industry, what would that be?

Allison Hamscher  41:52  

I’m sure. So I think one thing because we didn’t touch on it so much. So your resume is so so important. But your LinkedIn is crucial. So many people, we get on the call with them, they’re like, I think I’m just gonna focus on my resume for now. And at their level, I’m like, there, they might be pulling up on LinkedIn first. So if your LinkedIn isn’t, isn’t cleaned up right now, they’re never going to ask for your resume. So I would say, if you’re starting your job search, absolutely get started on your resume work on that too, but simultaneously work on your LinkedIn. So your LinkedIn, our approach with LinkedIn is, it should be more engaging and conversational. LinkedIn wants people to connect with you. So if you basically follow LinkedIn recommendations and their best practices, they’re going to reward you in search results. So the way that we position a client’s LinkedIn typically, again, every client is different. So we might position it differently. But normally, you have an about section on your LinkedIn, whereas your resume to that professional summary. So some people will just copy and paste that over. We don’t necessarily recommend that we want your about section to be to read more like a bio. Whereas your resume reads more like an introduction. So that about section that is your heavy hitter on LinkedIn. So a lot of times to your point of people getting distracted, they might read your about section, they might never get to your professional experience. So in your bio, if you work for a really cool company, make sure somewhere you’re typing that in into your, your about section because they might never scroll down, because it’s a website. So they’re constantly distracted by clicks and whatnot. So really focus, it’s all you can get to on your LinkedIn is your about section really focus there. Anything that you do not want people to miss, get it touched on in your about section because that’s where the time is spent. Super quick things customize LinkedIn URL that’ll improve search results. Your tagline. So you have your name, your tagline is going to auto generate to your most recent role. That doesn’t, you can update that that can be a little bit more creative, make it a little bit more eye catching, make it capture your core themes. So just be repetitive because if you’re repetitive, repetitive is also being consistent. Consistency improves memory, design wise, of course I want to kind of play into this your picture is important. People are visual, they remember that. So many people are like oh, I have to go hire a professional photographer. Now you don’t iPhones work amazing these days. My picture I have a DSLR camera. Very nice fun. My photo on our website is from an iPhone. Get natural light. So that’s kind of like coming in from a window if it’s a cloudy day even better if we say when when it rains on your wedding day or it’s cloudy on your wedding day your pictures are going to be incredible because you have you don’t have the glare of the sun. So if you need a new LinkedIn photo, get someone with one of the newer iPhones you can play around with the portrait mode, get a cloudy day you outfit. Again, let it represent your brand. So professional, but it doesn’t have to be a suit. You want it to be approachable, you want people to want to connect with you. So something that if you are going to go to a networking event, what would you wear type deal. Design wise, also you have your photo and behind that you have a banner. A lot of people don’t know that you could customize that banner, how can it’s like a billboard essentially, like, what do you want to say on that billboard, LinkedIn gives you some like stock options. For us, for our clients, we actually custom design that because we want it to align and match your resume. So you can get kind of creative there. So to wrap up that thought I would say if you’re working on your resume, because you want to start a job search, you should also be working on your LinkedIn cover letters. That’s a bonus good for you if you get to a cover letter. But really, if you got to put your eggs in two baskets, I would go resume and LinkedIn.

Jenn Smith  45:59  

Yes, and I love that I asked the leader of a resume company about her advice for updating your professional brand. And she talks about LinkedIn. But I will say I agree that I have gone out on a limb and said that I believe LinkedIn is more important than your resume in today’s job world of job searching. And it is like you it can work for you in your sleep. People. Recruiters are out there, there’s something called LinkedIn recruiter, they’re using it, they’re using it to search for top talent. And if your profile is up to date, and it represents you, then you are likely to get tapped for those roles. So

Allison Hamscher  46:35  

and so many people don’t have an up to date LinkedIn. So if you do, you really do stand out. And that’s another really quick. So many of our clients are like, I need five different types of resumes. Because I can do these five different types of roles and jobs. But we’re like, but you have one LinkedIn profile. So if you if your resume doesn’t align with your LinkedIn, because it only aligned with resume B, you’re creating confusion. So that’s another thing to think about. If you’re worried about the time and commitment of job searching, stop trying to create 20 versions of your resume. Create something your master version that is you not these mini versions of you. Because it really should be telling a similar story to your LinkedIn and you only have one. So

Jenn Smith  47:23  

Tessa Cincy. Yeah. Love it. Allison, this has been a fun conversation. I feel like we could geek out about professional branding all day long. Why don’t we wrap up here by sharing a little bit more about what’s next for you and for elevated resumes?

Allison Hamscher  47:41  

Sure. So we’re really proud of year over year we’ve grown and this most recent year, we’ve actually doubled, which is exciting. For our kind of young growing company, we’re also a lot of working women working moms, which we’re really proud of. So we’re not, not that men can work with us. A lot of I want to say a lot of resume writers and the being females. But we’re we’re growing. And we’re always looking to expand right now. Specifically with writers. So if you have a background in resume writing, or just a passion for it, or really, it comes down to a passion for people, so many of our writers, their core skill is they’re good listeners. So if you’re someone that you want to listen, and then problem solve, like our writers, they’re like I listened to them. And I’m like, I have like a plan for you. And I’m going to create these tools, these resume, LinkedIn, etc, these tools, so that you can go use your tools for for your job search. So if that’s something that you’re interested, I always encourage people to reach out to us because we’re growing really fast. And, and we’re just excited about the work that we’re putting out there and looking to look into the future and see, I mean, with resumes and LinkedIn, and to your point, it’s like, video is starting to come into play, and there’s things are moving so fast. And even for us, we’re in the space, and we’re seeing how fast things are moving. So I know you as a job seeker, if you’re out there. It could be like, Wow, I had no idea that this is what resumes look like or this is what I’m up against. And I would say things are continuing to move. People are making video resumes and we’re like, cool things. Things are happening. But if you’re looking for support looking to be a writer or anything, feel free to contact me. I’m always happy to chat.

Jenn Smith  49:44  

Yes, if you are a resume writer and want a fabulous team to partner with definitely reach out to Alison and we’ll be sure to include her contact information in the show notes. So Alison, thank you for sharing your brilliance with us today. This was a fun conversation. I know our listeners are going to have a ton of key takeaways from this conversation. So thank you.

Allison Hamscher  50:08  

Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure.

Jenn Smith  50:10  

That’s a wrap for today’s episode. As always, you can find the notes at get Career Clarity. show.com/podcast. Talk to you next time.

Lisa Lewis Miller  50:27  

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 to 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 Find 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.