Episode 87: Tactical Tips for Marketing Yourself with Jenn Smith

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

Today on the Career Clarity Show, we are diving into how to strategically market yourself as a candidate. Oftentimes we spend so much time talking about how to find the right fit for a new job that we don’t talk about the how of actually landing the job. 

In this day and age, the rules feel like they are constantly changing and evolving. Career Clarity coach Jenn Smith is here to help us stay up to date on what works, and what’s most effective in this current landscape. 

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

SHOW NOTES:

• Learn more about Jenn (and apply to work with her!) in her coaching profile
• Episode 20: The guide to creating a tenacity-driven career with Jenn Smith
• Episode 40: Monitoring and Managing Your Energy at Work with Career Clarity coach Jenn Smith
• Episode 54: Mastering the Top 5 Mental and Motivational Habits with Career Clarity certified coach Jenn Smith
• Connect with Jenn on LinkedIn
• Follow Jenn on Instagram at @flourish.careers
• 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 Lisa Lewis Miller. And I’m delighted as always to get to be here with you today. On today’s episode of the Career Clarity Show, we are diving into a topic that I love with a person who I love. So it’s gonna be a really fun episode today. Today’s episode is all about strategically marketing yourself as a candidate. And before we hit record, today’s guest and I were talking about how so many of the stories that we share here on the Career Clarity Show are about the discernment process of if you’re not loving what you’re doing, how do you think about what could be next? How do you find something that’s going to be a great fit, that’s going to feel fulfilling, it’s going to meet your needs and aligned with your values. But because we spend so much time talking about that piece of the process, sometimes we don’t talk about the how you actually land the job process. And especially in this day and age, the rules feel like they in some ways are constantly changing and evolving. And you’ve got to stay up to date on what works, and what’s most effective in this current landscape. And one of the things that I’ll say on that, too, is that I read somewhere online recently, and it really resonated with me that sometimes it’s not the most qualified candidate who’s getting the job. It’s the candidate who can play the game and do the job search the best who lands the job. And I hope that you are both the best candidate. And after you listen to today’s episode, you’re also the best equipped candidate to play the game, know how to position yourself, and know how to differentiate from all the other people who are going to be applying for the same types of roles that you are, so that you stand out, get opportunities to interview and get those offers. So if any of that sounds like something that you would love a little extra strategy on, or even some tactical tips on how to execute with, then today’s episode of the podcast is going to be for you. And for today’s guest expert to speak about these things. I brought on a repeat guest back again to share her brilliance. If you’ve been listening to the Career Clarity Show for a long time, you will probably recognize the dulcet tones of her voice from upstate New York. But I brought back our Career Clarity Show certified coach and friend to the podcast, Jenn Smith. Jenn, welcome back

Jenn Smith  2:52  

Such a kind introduction. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  2:55  

Well, I’m thrilled to have you and talk about this. Because listeners probably know that I started out career coaching after having spent about a decade working in marketing and branding and positioning. So this sort of topic about how do we think of you as a brand? And how do we position you How do we differentiate you? How do we help you stand out is so important and exciting to me. And I love that you geek out about it too?

Jenn Smith  3:21  

Yes, I sure do. I always come from the inside, I guess like an inside out approach with my experience from being an HR and being a hiring manager and being a recruiter myself. And then, you know, kind of putting myself back in those shoes when I’m partnering with clients and helping them to differentiate themselves and stand out. So yeah, one of my favorite topics.

Lisa Lewis Miller  3:41  

Well, and if there’s anybody who can speak to looking at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of resumes, that could all just be for one singular position and trying to figure out how you separate the wheat from the chaff. You’re absolutely that person because you’ve seen so many examples of it being done well and being done poorly that you probably know some of the nuance and the distinction in what people should be doing or what they should be steering away from better than just about anybody.

Jenn Smith  4:08  

This is very true. I have plenty of stories. Plenty of memorable both on the good side and memorable on the not so good side. So yeah, for sure.

Lisa Lewis Miller  4:18  

Totally. And one thing before we jump into this that I feel like we need to preface with is that every single person who has been a career coach, a recruiter and HR screener, a hiring manager, a headhunter anything like that, everybody’s gonna have some level of differences of opinion, differences of strategy differences of preferences. So in our conversation today, we’re trying to focus in on some of the things that are going to be golden rules, tried and true things that are going to work for you in almost any circumstance. But we may be venturing into this space of our own personal preferences on things that we tend to see that tend to be more effective with people like us as hiring managers or recruiters. So we’ll give the caveat for Everything we’re about to talk about today, use what works for you leave the rest, get some other opinions, if you feel like what we’re saying doesn’t resonate for you, but we’re trying to give you the the tools that seemed to work most consistently, you know, most widely for candidates and job seekers?

Jenn Smith  5:18  

Yeah, I appreciate you mentioning that. It’s definitely you know, it’s very personal. There’s a lot of personal preferences. There’s a lot of quote unquote, rules about this stuff. And so, you know, there’s, you know, lots of different ways that you can go about this process. So I appreciate, appreciate that caveat.

Lisa Lewis Miller  5:32  

Well, let’s talk about the five biggest things to be thinking about looking at focusing on for creating an effective, differentiated, memorable, personal brand. Thing number one, I know that you love to talk about is starting with a really solid foundation, can you share a little bit more about what that means?

Jenn Smith  5:54  

Yes. So this is really important, because usually what ends up happening when people talk about themselves is that they are they’re updating their resume or their LinkedIn profile, they just end up kind of regurgitating everything they’ve ever done. And sometimes that’s cohesive, sometimes it isn’t, most the time it isn’t. And so I always, you know, think of the foundation in terms of a couple a couple ways. So first is a balance of where you’ve been, as it’s related to where you want to go. So you always want to combine those two into your foundation, that should be your story, it shouldn’t just be about what you’ve done, it should be about where you want to go. And this is one of the, I think one of the the most complex kind of walls for folks to kind of break down and figure that out. So it’s really about identifying, you know, what’s going to resonate with your future employer and making sure that you have that balance. And so I think, the other piece to that people get caught up in job titles. And so when they’re thinking about their foundation, there, it’s like, you know, I’ve done this job title, this job title on this job title. And so I constantly have the conversation around, you know, your, your brand, or what you stand for is not your job title. So let’s kind of break that down, really talk about you know, where you’ve been, as it relates to where you want to go and kind of what you ultimately want to be known for in your career. So that’s kind of the the foundation, it’s definitely some thought, you know, that goes into that. It’s not just something that you can answer, you know, really quickly, it takes some reflection, and some, you know, some energy to put into that. But once you have that, all the other kind of practical and tactical pieces fall into play.

Lisa Lewis Miller  7:29  

Yeah, I love that. And I feel like it’s extra important for career changers. Yeah, for sure. If you are marching up the same ladder that you have been on, you don’t necessarily have to be as strategic or discerning or think about curating your experience in the same way. Because all of the experience that you have is likely to be more relevant. When you’re a career changer. And you’re trying to show off the transferable pieces from previous experiences where your title alone, or your role alone is not necessarily going to communicate all of it, communicate the nuance communicate the depth, it’s so important to be really thoughtful, careful and strategic about what do I include? What do I highlight? What are the pieces from this past experience that are gonna make the most sense, as the foundational elements that I want to be highlighting and displaying to a future employer, so they understand that I being really intentional about making this change, and not just sending my resume off scattershot to every job application I’m seeing open out there.

Jenn Smith  8:30  

And I hear that all the time. Literally, I heard it again this week, you know, people that this week, it was 200, apply for 200 jobs online, you know, just kind of throwing the resume out there all over the place and not getting one single callback, which is so heartbreaking to me, you know, and so spending your time on, you know, kind of putting together your resume and your LinkedIn and all of that stuff, and just not hearing anything. You know, there’s obviously, you know, a disconnect there. And typically, that’s what the disconnect is, is that it’s not resonating to to where you want to go versus where you’ve been.

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:03  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the biggest pieces of resonating and communicating your message really effectively is in your word choice. And the guy who wrote the quote on the front of my book, Josh Dykstra, he talked about this idea once when we were having a conversation that words create worlds. And I love how vivid that is. It’s both very catchy, and it’s a very effective teaching tool to think about how important your word choice is, your, your particular adjectives, the types of nouns and verbs that you’re using, how you’re making them feel transferable, how you’re making them feel senior, so I know that you are a big fan of choosing strategic powerful So share a little bit about what that’s looked like or what that means from your side.

Jenn Smith  10:06  

Yeah, so words definitely matter when you know, we’re in this world, especially this online world of job searching. And so when you think about that, you think about your marketing tools in terms of your LinkedIn profile, your resume, your blog, whatever other websites you have, people are reading about you. And so when they’re reading about you, you want to make sure that you’re using words in my mind that are going to be memorable and that are going to stand out. So you know, in the kind of the typical thing is on the resume, you know, the manage the lead, you know, oversee these kind of like boring things that people just like gloss over, but how can you kind of up level each of those adjectives to describe that describe you and make sure that you’re going to stand out. And so, you know, so I think it’s really important even in, you know, you think about your headline on your LinkedIn profile. So you know, that’s, you think of it like a headline of a newspaper, that’s the attention grabbing piece that’s gonna pull some out other than your photos, like that’s going to pull somebody right in. So you want to make sure that you have really strong descriptors that people are going to want to learn more about you. And so sometimes this is really hard for people to figure out words that describe them. And so you know, and that’s why even with resumes, like, it’s hard, because you’re in your head all the time. So taking a step back, and even asking people for, you know, three to five words that they feel like describe you, you know, and asking a couple people within your professional realm, your personal round your family, and just kind of see what you know, what they come up with, and what resonates with you might be a really good start for you to kind of put, you know, put that together. The other thing I always like to think about too, and kind of like that balance of where you been, and where you want to go, is that companies put a lot of thought into their words. And so if you’re looking at, you know, if you have a solid plan about where you want to go, and you have three to five companies you’re looking at, most likely, they’re going to be similar in some shape or form, same industry, you know, same kind of practices, whatever it might be. And so you could take a look at their websites and their values and their about pages on all of their socials, and start to learn what they’re about. And then if there are words that these companies are using that resonate with you, it’s a good idea to try to match those because then you’re marketing yourself towards your ideal company. And those words are going to catch that reader’s attention. And they’re gonna say, Oh, my gosh, this person is a perfect fit for this company, we need to call them right away. So it’s a really good way to catch somebody’s attention, especially if you know where you want to go.

Lisa Lewis Miller  12:36  

I love that. And it, it’s funny, because hearing you describe it, my brain goes back to being an elementary school and being taught close reading, right and being taught how to identify specific words in a sentence that stand out to you or that you need to go and look up in the dictionary about when kids were still using book dictionary, dictionaries back in the day. And it’s funny that that skill that we were learning in third and fourth grade, has a lot of applicability, when it comes to matching up who you are with the kind of role requirements that an organization has, and matching up who you are with the values that an organization has. And then I think that people sometimes when they think about wordsmithing, a resume will get really bogged down and thinking about it through the lens of the applicant tracking systems and atss and matching up keywords so that the exclusion rules or the knockout rules don’t keep you from getting to the recruiter. And yes, like that, that is also an important practice is making sure that the words that you’re using to describe yourself in your professional materials have match the word that they are using in the job description, because that’s a really easy way for them to tell number one, if you cared enough to tailor your resume. Number two, how strong of a fit you already are on paper. And but I don’t think that that’s the be all end all of thinking about words and how to use them strategically

Jenn Smith  14:11  

Yeah, I agree. I was just gonna, I was just going to mention there, you know, there’s definitely kind of two pieces to that. So it’s the words that describe you and like your personal brand that you want to portray, as it’s related to where you want to go. And then there’s like the keywords within the resume and matching, you know, you know, kind of matching that up. And so I always tell people, like that’s the easy piece, like if the resume says that they’re looking for somebody who’s an independent thinker, and your resume says that you’re a self starter, like switch that up, put in your resume that you’re an independent thinker, like that’s an easy, that’s an easy, you know, an easy fix in order to make yourself more, you know, market yourself more towards that specific job description. You don’t have the job description and you’re using your resume is kind of like a networking tool, you know, at the companies that you’re interested in, then you can take it that one step further and kind of, you know, make sure that the vocabulary aligns.

Lisa Lewis Miller  14:59  

Yeah. I think that’s really important too. And I know we’ll talk about resume here a little bit later. But one of the other things that really stands out to me about words and word choice is when folks are describing their experiences, the words that you use matter so much in terms of positioning you as a senior leader, versus just a worker B and A Dewar. And I’ve had two really interesting different types of experiences with this with clients. One will be that people will put into the bullets on their resume a lot of things that are very descriptive of the tasks that they did, like posted social media, captions, and images on a weekly basis. And while those words are very descriptive of what you did, they don’t give you a chance to really stand out and shine about the impact of your actions. If you say, grew social media account following by 19%, year over year, by posting compelling weekly social media content and images, all of a sudden, the exact same task, because it is wrapped in different words that describe a different piece of that job duty, make you look like a way more elevated candidate. So they’re still hearing about what you did. You’re not, you’re not being deceitful, or outside of integrity, but you’re just reframing what you did, and why to make it feel so much more elevated, so much more at a leadership visionary level. But then there’s the other problem, which I see sometimes more senior leaders running into, which is where they tell so much about the impact and the outcome, and they don’t include anything about the detail of how they got there. So I’ve got a wonderful client that I’m working with right now. And one of the bullets on his resume says, you know, generated 30 million in revenue in fiscal year. And it’s like, that’s fantastic. That is an excellent outcome, you’re clearly showing your outcome and result oriented focus. But we got to tell them a little bit more about how you did it, so that they believe you answer that you give them something to pull on in the interview process to ask you more about. So what was your strategy for the $30 million in revenue? Was it referrals? Was it advertising? Was it cold calling, you know, just even a little bit more detail, can help to paint a really compelling picture. And again, it’s not misconstruing what you did, it’s just repositioning the important details to help you elevate yourself from the other candidates who may have done the same thing, but aren’t able to paint the picture in as vivid or rich of color.

Jenn Smith  17:54  

Yeah, I love that. And if you think about it, too, so it’s just kind of like something, you know, that jumped out when you said that example, like the example of the bullet that started with posted or the example of the bullet that started with grew. So like, if someone’s skimming your resume, which trust me, that’s what happens in the in the ATF systems, I’ll just, from my own perspective, I’ll tell ya, on the inside, we used to have something in our in our ETS called speed browse, we would literally because you have hundreds of applicants, we would literally look at seven resumes side by side on my computer screen. And so if you’re not jumping out, like if your words aren’t jumping out there, it’s gonna get passed over. Because that’s how quickly these you know, these recruiters move. And you think about most recruiters at big companies, they it’s not one job, they’re filling, they’re usually filling, like 30 plus. And so it’s very fast paced. And so if I’m skimming a resume, and I see the word grew, you know, and most people read, you know, top to bottom, left to right, and so if I see the word group that’s going to jump out at me versus the word posted. So that’s just a quick example, that words really do matter when you know, when you’re when you’re, you know, when you’re in the job search process.

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:02  

Yeah, and I, you know, we think about, that every job that is posted out there, is likely getting hundreds of applicants and so we sometimes have the awareness that we are one of hundreds of people that the recruiter or the hiring manager is going to be looking at for that particular role. But sometimes we forget that context that the recruiter or the hiring manager might be trying to fill multiple roles, that they may be looking at so many hundreds of resumes, that it’s not just standing out from your your competitors for that particular role, but it’s standing out among the sort of eyes glazed over feeling that you’re probably going to get when you’ve been looking at hundreds of resumes across lots of different positions.

Jenn Smith  19:43  

Right, this is your and we know I you know, the Career Clarity, Show philosophy is not to be applying just blindly through the ACS, which I wholeheartedly believe in we can talk about that later as well. You know, but if you are in that, you know, in that system where you’re applying, you know, through the ETS, you know, definitely making That you have that elevated the elevated words for sure.

Lisa Lewis Miller  20:04  

I love that. Well, let’s talk a little bit about how we can utilize those words effectively. So when you’ve been thinking about the powerful words that you want to use to describe yourself as a candidate, the words that the organizations or roles tend to be using that really resonate with you and your values. And then thinking about how to position what you’ve done in a powerful language that’s results focused, but also colorful and descriptive. When we think about that, sometimes we really think about that in the context of your resume alone. But there are tons of places in which you are creating an online professional reputation and brand, were being really careful about your word choice can be a really important thing to do.

Jenn Smith  20:52  

Yeah, and when you think about it, I mean, just, you know, the complex economy that we’re living in, in the world of everything being online. You know, LinkedIn is such a powerful tool right now. And time and time, again, I see people that, you know, have not looked at their profile and yours, or they, you know, don’t think that, you know, they’re afraid of social media, quote, unquote, and they don’t want to use it. And you know, they don’t understand like the power of it. But you know, making sure you’re using those words, in your marketing tools across platforms. So if you’re a writer, Twitter is a great platform to be on, you know, thinking of all the different social channels that are out there, where you can showcase your brand and showcase kind of who you are and what you stand for. And so you know, it’s not just the resume, it’s a LinkedIn, it’s any social channels you’re on, it’s a blog, it’s your conversations. So even like using those words in your elevator pitch, to be able to articulate who you are and what you want, and how to get what you want. And so, you know, one of the biggest mistakes I see folks make is, you know, being inconsistent across platforms. And so you want to make sure you’re telling that cohesive story and using those, you know, kind of similar words across all the platforms. So somebody knows exactly who you are, no matter how they come across you or how they find you, you know, just from the recruiter standpoint, again, like we used to, you know, grab, get the resume, however, we got the resume, and then first thing we would do is click into LinkedIn. So we’re looking at the resume and LinkedIn literally side by side. And so if they’re not telling you a cohesive story, or if it looks to me, like somebody hasn’t put any effort into their LinkedIn profile, or anything, and a long time that that tells me they’re not really that interested, you know, in in getting a new role. And so just making sure that you have that consistency and can tell that story across platforms is super, super critical.

Lisa Lewis Miller  22:36  

Yeah. And I think that one of the things that probably comes up for folks as they’re listening to this is, well, what if I’m trying to tailor my resume for every different role that I’m applying to? How do I make sure that I can feel like I’m cohesive with LinkedIn, if LinkedIn sort of has to be more static than the uniquely tailored versions of the resume that I’m sending off for different types of roles or different types of jobs?

Jenn Smith  22:59  

Yeah, so some of the places that I think you can definitely, you know, upgrade and use those keywords in the resume. So definitely tweak your resume every single time. So your resume can also have a headline, and that headline could be the job title that you’re applying for. Or it could be words that describe you very similar to your LinkedIn profile. The other places to kind of tweak your resume or update your resume in those pieces is in a profile section, if you have that, which I do recommend. And then the skill section is a great place to tweak and update your resume based on the job description or based on what the company is looking for. Obviously, those words that we mentioned throughout your responsibilities as well, so So that’s how you can easily tailor your resume, for every single job, those three kind of key or four kind of key areas. And then LinkedIn, you don’t want to be updating every single time. And so it can be a little bit more, you know, a little bit more, I guess, like generalized. So, you know, instead of your headline on your resume being the job title you’re looking for, you know, maybe LinkedIn is the industry that you’re looking to work in, or it’s you know, an area of functional area that you’re an expert in, or it’s you know, some some type of words that describe you as a leader or, you know, even just as a human, you know, kind of what you stand for. And so, you can, you can still tell, you know, a similar story and those, but they don’t have to be exactly like I would actually recommend that they aren’t exactly like LinkedIn can also be a lot more conversational. So it is a form of social and it can be a lot more conversational, versus, you know, versus the resume. So your LinkedIn headline and your about section, I think are critical areas to put some thought into and you know, make sure that it represents you and what you stand for.

Lisa Lewis Miller  24:40  

Love that. And I know that there will be some people listening to this for whom LinkedIn won’t be as relevant to their particular job search, whether you are an educator and you know, nobody in your district really uses LinkedIn as a tool or whether you are a coder, a developer. And so GitHub is actually going to be the platform that you use, right? Other than LinkedIn, but the same rule, same thoughtfulness can absolutely still apply to creating messaging consistency, again, about how you are communicating with people, when you’re asking for an informational interview, or when you’re putting together a cover letter should have the same kind of language that they’re seeing in your resume or your CV. And if you have any sort of online presence on a place like GitHub, making sure that you have things in your portfolio and things in your profile that resonate with the person that you say you are, in your application materials is always always a good thing.

Jenn Smith  25:33  

Yes, for sure. And I guess like one more piece to add on to that, too, is if you are working in an industry that has like, multiple jobs within it, so like marketing comes to mind or communications comes to mind. And then there’s like, digital, and there’s social media, and there’s, you know, email, you know, in CRM management, there’s all these different things. And so I think it’s also important to be clear on what you are looking for within that industry. So using the words that are going to resonate within, you know, the function within the function almost kind of thing is going to be really important, or else somebody looking at it might be confused, you know, so if your resume says, You’re a social media expert, and then your LinkedIn says that you want to work in, you know, corporate communications, like to me, those are, you know, pretty different jobs. And so you want to just make sure that you’re, you know, you might think that they’re similar, or maybe you worked at a smaller company did all of those things, but you’re looking to move into a bigger company where those are separate jobs, you just want to make it as easy as possible for the reader to know what you want and what you stand for.

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:33  

Beautiful, what a perfect punch line. Let’s talk about how that principle though comes in applies to LinkedIn as a platform. Because I think that while there are absolutely some sectors of the marketplace, where LinkedIn is not going to be a relevant platform for you professionally, for most of us, there is a meaningful, tangible benefit to creating a really robust presence on LinkedIn. And I know that you and I are both big fans of LinkedIn as a platform. So when somebody’s thinking about how to differentiate and position themselves on LinkedIn, beyond just thinking about some of that the tailoring that we were talking about with your headline, and with your about section, what are some of the things that that you recommend?

Jenn Smith  27:19  

Yeah, so I, you know, one of the things that I love about LinkedIn is that it’s so easy to get noticed, it’s a great platform to get noticed by hiring managers or recruiters. So there’s what I don’t know almost like 700 million professionals on LinkedIn at this point, most likely, you’re going to be able to find somebody who works at you know, an organization, you know, that you’re that you’re interested in. And so one of the things and I share this story, because it worked, you know, one of the things you can do is start to kind of break the ice. So everyone, you know, when you work in career coaching, everyone’s like, I’m so afraid of cold, emailing and cold calling people I’m like, Okay, well, let’s, you know, let’s get creative. And think of other ways you can get noticed. And so I call this kind of like breaking the ice. So liking, commenting, or even sharing on other people’s posts is a great way to get noticed. Now, you don’t want to do it blindly, you don’t want to do it randomly, you want to be really thoughtful in the way that you are approaching this. So for example, in my last company, we were actually required to share on LinkedIn because it elevated the company’s brand on a regular basis. And I personally, you know, wanted to recruit top talent. And so I would share articles that resonated with me or my company, or whatever it might be. And we had a local young lady who was interested in working at my company. And so she started commenting on my posts on a regular basis. And so in very genuine comments, like very thoughtful, and clearly she read the article that I shared and was interviewed, genuinely interested in these topics. And so I started to notice because it happened, you know, pretty consistently over time, and I was impressed with her. And so then finally, she asked for an informational interview, she asked me for 20 minutes to chat about what it’s like to work in my company. And because I had seen her show up on, you know, on my content so many times, and I really enjoyed what she was, you know what she was saying, of course, I had 20 minutes to share with her. And so I talked with her, it was a great conversation, and she ended up getting an interview at my company. So so that example really stands out to me from the inside, because it worked. And I definitely recommend folks thinking about doing that. If you’re, you know, if you’re trying to get noticed, or you know, trying to even, you know, just like break into a new company or a new industry that you’ve never worked in before. It’s a really thoughtful, good way to approach that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  29:36  

I love that. And I feel like in the past when I’ve talked to people about ways to engage on LinkedIn, I’ve perpetuated the stereotype that a lot of the people who are on LinkedIn are folks who are also looking for jobs and are unhappy. So sometimes it’s not a great place to have communication and to build relationships. But I think that that tactic that you just shared is so easy to replicate in any industry or with any company, it comes from a really genuine place. And it’s targeting the right people, people who are on LinkedIn, because they are trying to find you as a candidate and trying to place you and get great people into their company. That that’s a a wonderful, wonderful thing to be thinking about. And how cool that that that person became memorable. And that it wasn’t because of a sort of transactional energy of I’m commenting. Because once I comment three times, then I am going to apply for a role. I’m going to mention Jen’s name and the cover letter. It was coming from a real place of openness and curiosity and willingness to learn about the organization before deciding that it was this person’s be all end all.

Jenn Smith  30:43  

Yep, exactly. And I mean, that’s a great point, too, you know, and I call this kind of like, you know, strategic strategic scrolling in the sense that, you know, once you’ve kind of identified the organizations, you want to work for spending your time on LinkedIn, proactively following leaders at the companies you want to work for and potentially engaging, if something resonates with you is a great way to spend your time on LinkedIn. To learn more about whether or not you actually would like working for an organization before you end up applying, you know, at that organization. So just like, being observant and listening to what the leaders are sharing and saying, I think is an excellent way to gather more information and make make career decisions.

Lisa Lewis Miller  31:26  

Totally. And one tactic you can do for strategic scrolling, is utilizing LinkedIn search. And when you come up with a list of organizations that seem intriguing to you, and you’re wanting to learn more about them, use the search function in LinkedIn to find folks who work at that organization. And you don’t have to sort of spam all of them with connection requests, you can click on the Follow button, which is in one of the collapsed menus on most people’s LinkedIn profiles, sometimes follow will come up instead of Connect, but for the most part, follow is a hidden one. But if you follow a whole bunch of folks at the company, you’ll have this really easy way to get a snapshot of what are they sharing? What are they thinking, and you’ll naturally have things popping up in your feed that are easy to comment on organically, so that it makes your time and effort on the platform feel more effective, so that you don’t feel like you’re just doing the scrolling, and spending hours and hours and hours on LinkedIn everyday. Because there is no faster way to SAP your energy and your momentum around job searching than to be on LinkedIn for more than an hour or two every day.

Jenn Smith  32:33  

Yeah. And how addicting is that easy apply? You know, does, I think there’s much more strategic and thoughtful ways to you know, to approach that and not not for nothing, too, you know, and think about your own self, like when you are if you share something on social media, like you’re going to notice, you know, you’re a human being like you’re going to notice who likes comments and shares, like, that’s just our normal, you know, response to when we share content to see if it resonates with other people. And so, same thing, like even though I was a recruiter, you know, in this company, like I wanted to see if my content was going to resonate with people. And so, you know, just notice it, like, sometimes we think that people at these companies are, they’re not even gonna pay attention. They’re not even gonna notice they’re, you know, they’re too busy or whatever. Not true. There’s real human beings behind that that are going to be genuinely excited when people engage with them. So just another thought.

Lisa Lewis Miller  33:23  

And it’s okay to engage with strangers. Oh, yes. It’s totally okay to go like somebody post or you don’t know to comment on the post of somebody that you don’t know. I feel like the last Gosh, a year of Corona Palooza has made it so that we have to find new and different ways to connect with people that we don’t know, because we can’t do the going to a book release party or going to a panel and hobnobbing and rubbing elbows with the people sitting next to you. You can’t go to the industry networking happy hour happening somewhere. So the Be not afraid to lightly cyberstalk that that term feels a little bit aggressive. Yes, yes, digital career sleuthing. You don’t have to put on your detective hat. start finding some people of interest and just keeping light tabs on what they are doing and what’s coming up. And, Jen, I know that that the hidden job market can oftentimes be a big part of conversations that we have with with clients about how a lot of roles are not posted visibly publicly on the internet. Or if they are they’re not posted long enough that anybody could actually apply for them. And this has a big tie in to meeting strangers on the internet.

Jenn Smith  34:48  

Yes, for sure. That is your ticket into the hidden job market. And so I always, you know, tell this to clients like it’s definitely normal to interact with strangers online, like that’s how we’re interacting right now. Just like If you were going to go and walk into an event, you know and hand out your business card, it’s kind of the same thing. So, so thinking about it that way, I think kind of eases, eases some folks minds, but once you start to strategically engage with these folks, that’s where you can start to have conversations. And once you start having those conversations, is when you can tap into the hidden job market. So, you know, if you have a conversation with, you know, recruiter, or even up here, I think peers are a great, you know, you know, person to touch base with at a particular company that you’re interested in, you know, have a quick conversation, get some information around what it’s like to work there. And then you never know, like, what if things change all the time. So literally, that person could go into a meeting the following day, find out that someone’s retiring, or quit or whatever, and there’s a job open, and they just talk to you the day before you had a great conversation. The Job’s not even up, they call you. And you’re already going through the interview process without even ever having a job that happens more times. And I can even tell you, so it’s it’s a thing, and it’s worth your time and energy to think about that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:04  

Yeah, I see a lot of people kind of Pooh poohing the idea of a hidden job market online. And, understandably, because the hidden job market is damn near impossible to measure, right, that we have sort of this instinct that it exists. But there’s because these things are never made public, there’s no objective, external way to get a good metric on how many jobs or what percentage of jobs end up being part of this hidden, private job market. But the statistics say it’s anywhere between 40% to 80%. Of all jobs are not posted externally. So it’s another one of the reasons why, as you spoke to earlier, that we don’t recommend applying cold online as the be all end all of your tactics in your job search, the more relationships you build, the more internal advocates you can create for yourself, the more likely it is that you’re going to be getting access to that whole slew of jobs, as well as any that may also be externally publicly visible.

Jenn Smith  37:04  

Yeah. And when you think about it, so, you know, go back to that example, about the recruiters looking at resumes, you know, side by side is 30 jobs to fill, you know, it’s hard to find top talent. So if you are a person and you’re proactively approaching organizations in a very thoughtful and strategic way, and marketing yourself to those organizations, you know, you’re going to them, you’re making their job 100 times easier, they’re gonna welcome that opportunity. So it’s definitely you know, it’s definitely something to think about, you know, if it’s outside your comfort zone, that kind of thing, it’s definitely something to consider just given, you know, given those those thoughts that we just talked about,

Lisa Lewis Miller  37:42  

Yeah, love that. Love that. Okay, I promised five tactics, and I have not been numbering these as we go. So if we back up, the first thing we talked about was starting with a solid foundation. The next thing we talked about is how important your word choice is being strategic being focused there. The third topic we hit was how important it is to then cascade through your strategic word choices into all your professional materials. So there’s a sense of cohesiveness through everything. Fourth tactic we talked about is how to make sure that you are playing the LinkedIn game and using all the available things, that it’s so much more than just creating a strong profile, to making sure that you have a presence, making sure you’re connecting well, making sure that you are putting yourself out there and introducing yourself to strangers. And that brings us to tactic number five, for how to differentiate yourself and stand out, which is all about diving deeply into your resume. So riff on this for a second Jenn.

Jenn Smith  38:39  

Yeah, so I’m just such a stickler for smart, professional, sustained, easy to read resumes, probably just going back to the fact that I’ve, you know, looked at hundreds and 1000s of resumes. And so just to like, think about this, you know, put again, put yourself in the readers shoes. And so your goal is to make it as easy as possible for the reader to know, you are the best person for the job. So we talked about the words that matter. I feel like design is a big deal when it comes to resumes. And so you again, people read mostly, you know, for the most part, top to bottom, left to right. And so you just want to make it highly skimmable and highly smart for the person to just kind of scan, see you know, a couple of your experiences, understand who you are and what you stand for, and just know that they need to learn more. And so it’s almost like I heard this analogy that like your resume can be like the teaser if you think of a movie, the resume can be the teaser trailer, LinkedIn can be the full trailer. And then your interview is the full movie. So you don’t need to go in a you know high level of depth but the design is going to matter. You want to make it simple, smart, sophisticated, easy, easy to read.

Lisa Lewis Miller  39:45  

Let’s talk about design for a second because this is a place where people get a lot of ideas about making themselves different by doing something highly designed using a lot of colors using shapes using a lot of fonts potential. even putting their faces or their photos into a resume. I know that you and I have different preferences on this. But I’ll start with my preference, which is, don’t do any of that design should be thought of as being really an accent to your accomplishments. So use design sparingly use design strategically to highlight particular things you want somebody to stop and linger on. Don’t go with crazy colors, because you don’t know how your resume is going to be looked at. If somebody prints it on a black and white printer, and you’ve used a lot of lighter tones that don’t come through, they may be missing pieces about who you are. If you go with a bunch of fonts, but you’re sending your resume to an organization where their computers don’t have those fonts installed, it may show up as broken characters. And please, please, please don’t put your face on your resume. There are a variety of reasons why I feel like one of the biggest ones is that in at least in the United States, there are a number of different protected classes of individuals where there cannot be discrimination against you as part of the hiring process legally. However, when you put your face on to a resume, you make it really easy for people to know information about protected classes that you might belong to. And some organizations have a flat out policy of if they give us identifying information that shows that you are part of a protected class, we can’t move forward because we don’t want to then put ourselves into a position where we could be liable for making decisions about whether or not somebody is in a protected class for hiring purposes. So also, if they printed, it might render weird, also the image might break. There’s so many different reasons to be really strategic about having something sleek, having something streamlined, having something that doesn’t have a whole lot of things that could go wrong in the file transfer process to make sure that you’re getting a fair shake as a candidate. But I’m curious what your thoughts on this are do.

Jenn Smith  41:58  

Yeah, so I agree. I mean, I definitely agree with your your conversation around the photo, you know, I don’t mind a splash of color, you know, for a little bit of personality in a resume in terms of design, I think that’s fine. Don’t overdo it one time, I opened a resume opened as PDF, and it was bright green. And I literally jumped when I opened it. And so I don’t recommend and then you couldn’t even it was white font on top of bright green, like couldn’t even read it, it was a mess. So I don’t recommend anything like that. But you know, if you have a little splash of color across the top, or, you know, a design element, depending on again, depending on the company that you’re that you’re interested in working for, I think it could work out. quick example, I had a client who wanted to work for Wizards of the Coast. They’re the dungeons and dragons organization. And she did an amazing job, it wasn’t too much by any means. She used, they have a very distinct font that they use in some of their work, she used their font, and had a tiny little design of that you could tell exactly what and I’m not a gamer by any means. But I could tell exactly when it was up in the top corner. And it amplified her resume and definitely made her stood out. I mean, she did pretty much all the tactics we talked about here, she ended up with multiple interviews, it worked. So I think that there are places that it can work, you just have to be smart and thoughtful about where you’re doing it. You know, if you’re applying it like you know, a defense company, or the government or something like that, it’s not going to work. But if you are applying for a creative organization, then it could definitely work and you can stand out. So I think it’s pretty situational.

Lisa Lewis Miller  43:25  

Totally and, and oh my goodness, if we’re talking about applying for government positions, that’s another good thing to say with respect to resumes, that they’re going to be different norms or different expectations of what you put into your professional materials depending on where you’re applying. Right. So if you’re applying in the education, academia space, you better be given them a CV and not a resume, you’re talking about everything you have done in an academic space, showing off your papers, where you’ve been published, the presentations you’ve done, totally different from what you would be using to say apply to a private sector corporate job. And that resume is gonna be totally different from what you would use to apply to government jobs, because there’s such at least the United States again, there is such a specific prescriptive way that you put together a governmental resume that includes stuff like your social security number and how much you made it those jobs, and contact information for a supervisor at every single one of those things and all this like highly sensitive private information that you would never never, never want to put on a resume going to anybody else. So be aware of the norms that in the area that you’re applying to. And then making sure that you are strategically tailoring your professional brand and your presentation to fit within that context is incredibly important to

Jenn Smith  44:37  

Yes, and that goes back to the foundation that you’re setting and kind of balancing where you’ve been with where you want to go and knowing where you want to go is so critical. Even more critical for all those reasons you just mentioned. So

Lisa Lewis Miller  44:48  

God love that. Anything else that you want to say on the resume front? I think we I think we covered it.

Jenn Smith  44:57  

I think we covered it you know i You know, the the foundation, the words, the design, transferable skills we mentioned, I think in the beginning those that that’s a really big deal if you’re going through the career change and just making sure that’s going to resonate with, with with the reader.

Lisa Lewis Miller  45:13  

So yeah, I think we got it. I love that. And one thing for any of you who are listening to go check out in the show notes is that Jan introduced me to a fabulous organization that has a bunch of really cool resume templates. I will preface by saying I don’t love all of their resume templates. But they’ve got a lot of really nice ones that have subtle design usage that’ll help to visually help you stand out without being obnoxious or jump out of your chair green, like Jen was talking about. So if you are curious about ways to think about a digital design, that feel like they have a little bit more personality in them than just a sort of traditional boring Times New Roman kind of font shibang Gen has a fabulous link to this organization get landed and their suite of really cool design templates, check out that we will include for you in the show notes. So you can check those out too. 

Jenn Smith  46:08  

Awesome. Yeah, she’s got a great, lots of different options, some more traditional, some more, you know, more creative, and they’re very inexpensive. So I definitely recommend checking it out.

Lisa Lewis Miller  46:19  

And Jenn, to bring us into a close for today, if there was one bottom line that you wanted to make sure that folks listening takeaway from today’s conversation around, standing out differentiating yourself, sharing enough detail being thoughtful and strategic, what’s the what’s the punch line for you? So great, thank you. So

Jenn Smith  46:39  

I guess like in closing, though, there’s a couple things that come to mind. So it’s balancing, you know, kind of humility, with competence, as you’re out there, kind of thinking about your brand and showcasing your brand. Definitely the consistency across all the platforms to make sure you’re telling you know, a cohesive story. It’s showing up on a regular basis, and ultimately being memorable for the folks that are engaging with your content.

Lisa Lewis Miller  47:04  

And I’ll add to that to that. Don’t be afraid to get help with this. If you’re not sure if you are balancing detail with leadership, if you’re not sure if you’re balancing and coming across as memorable, or if you sound so jargony that you sound like everybody else. Get some support. Get an external opinion, be it from a friend, be it from a former colleague, but from somebody who works at an organization you’d love to work out or be it from a coach or a resume expert. Just getting out of your own head and getting another pair of eyeballs on something can be so so helpful in noticing any of the gaps in your awareness and helping you to be as strategic and thoughtful as possible.

Jenn Smith  47:44  

Yes, I definitely recommend that especially like we were saying you’re in your own head all the time you don’t know how you’re coming across, have an extra set of eyes on it, somebody to give you some quick tips or feedback I think is an excellent thought.

Lisa Lewis Miller  47:56  

And love that. Well Jenn, thank you so much for coming on the Career Clarity Show today. And for any of you listening Good luck with positioning and differentiating yourself to make an impact. 

Jenn Smith  48:06  

Thank you for having me, Lisa.

Lisa Lewis Miller  48:15  

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