Your Resume is a Marketing Tool with Tom Powner, CEO of Career Thinker

Tom Powner, CEO of Career Thinker, an executive resume-writing and boutique recruiting firm, shares his insight on leadership, resume essentials, and navigating the recruiting landscape. In this episode, we discuss: 

• Early leadership mistakes and lessons learned
• Key players in the job search: job seeker, recruiter, company
• Viewing your resume as a Career Marketing campaign
• Common resume mistakes to avoid
• Essential components for different resume sections
• Crafting your value story effectively
• Three-pronged approach to grabbing recruiters' attention
• AI's impact on recruiting: short-term and long-term effects
• Caution against using generative AI for resume writing
• Importance of maintaining a human voice in cover letters

Show Guest:
With a decade of experience in career services and recruiting, Tom Powner transformed his trajectory after 25 years in business development, HR, operations, and sales. As founder of Career Thinker Inc., he's motivated by encountering thousands of poorly made resumes and interviewing over 5,000 candidates. Tom aims to empower individuals through career services, coaching, and motivation, expanding to offer outsourced recruitment for national companies. Tom leads a diverse team at Career Thinker, renowned for innovation in the career consulting section and improving the process to increase results. Since 2011, Tom has presented over 300 career workshops, seminars, and webinars. Book your complimentary resume review session HERE

Chapters

• 0:00 Career Growth Through Leadership Skills
• 10:01 Career Lessons and Resume Strategies
• 14:54 Optimizing Resumes for Value Impact
• 19:49 Recruiter Expectations and Job Search Advice
• 31:05 Impact of AI in Recruiting Process
• 36:45 Cover Letters in Job Applications

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, I'm Jill Griffin and I appreciate you tuning back into the podcast. Today I am interviewing Tom Powner. He is the CEO of Career Thinker, an executive resume writing and boutique recruiting firm. Tom started his career working on his dad's coffee truck at a very young age and this experience taught him everything from customer service, operations and running a business. It's where he learned to tap into his leadership skills really early and begin to lead people at a young age.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Tom brings a wealth of information in today's episode about the job search in the marketplace and all that we're looking at these days, friends. It is about relevancy. We talk about how you have to stop making your resume a job description because it reads then like a job description, and make it a marketing tool, about how you need to write it for the audience that is receiving it. Tom sets the record straight on some of the incorrect information that's floating out and about on there out there on the internet around what you need to do around the job search and resume, and he sets the record straight. We talk about AI, both in the short-term and the long-term impact on the job hunt and recruiting. And listen, a tip AI it can be your writing assistant. It cannot be your copywriter. Taking the human out of the process makes your content generic, inauthentic and, frankly, it sounds quite fake, and we can spot it. We also talk about the cover letter, and I know the debate do you need one or not? Well, guess what? If they ask for one, you need one because that's following their instructions, and if you want to work there, you need to follow their instructions. He emphasizes why you apply with your resume and wow us with your cover letter.

Speaker 1: 1:52

This is good. This is definitely an episode that you want to have your notes app open, grab pen and paper, make notes. I'm going to put all of Tom's information in the show notes. He also generously offered to give this audience a resume review, so you'll see that link in the show notes. Just let them know that you heard it from the Career Refresh with Jill Griffin and, as always, I want to hear from you. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? How's it going for you out there? Email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom, and I will get back to you, or I will bring your questions to another future episode and we'll get them all answered. All right, have a great week and I'll see you next time. Hi, tom, I'm glad you're here.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have a conversation with you.

Speaker 1: 2:37

So tell us what it is that you wanted to be when you grew up.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Well, when I grew up I didn't realize all the career opportunities that could have been From my family situation. We just didn't have that access. But when I was younger, when I grew up, there was three things I wanted to be A photographer, a veterinarian and a DJ. Very different and who knew. Djs can make a half a million dollars a year. They can now, but back then maybe not so much. So that's what I wanted to be. Did I actually become that? No, but that doesn't mean my career isn't a great career.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Yeah, yeah, you know also, there's also something that I almost want to figure out how to do unofficial research, because the volume of people that I speak to for this work that tell me they wanted to be a veterinarian and then didn't do it. There's something super interesting there and it makes me think that the work that we chose and again, helping others right, which is basically the same kind of concept, that there's a red thread through that Super interesting. So tell us then, you know, take us through the story what, what did you end up doing and how did you get to where you are? We'll get to where you are today, but, like, how did you? I've been.

Speaker 2: 3:53

I've been working since I was 14 in a family business. My father had coffee trucks and I was up at three in the morning out with him all day during the summers. And and then, um, even through college I worked with him and I actually learned a lot of sales techniques from watching my father. I mean, he was amazing. You know who would think a coffee truck would bring in the volume of money that he did?

Speaker 1: 4:14

so in new york city.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Yeah, he had a very successful um, you know business and he had six trucks. So I learned a lot of the sales foundation back then. And then I had a summer job and that parlayed into a really good job. I was promoted general manager when I was 19. I went to college. I never finished college because I was making way too much money too young. You know, at 20, I had a condo, I had a boat and everything. So I kind of made too much money too young.

Speaker 2: 4:42

But then when I lost that job I was kind of pushing into more of the real world and my first real job in a corporation was in retail you know, caldwell Department stores and as a store manager and BJ's and then I did that for quite a few years and then I shifted to the same type of function but more into the wholesale industry that was in charge of sales, operations, human resources. So I kind of built my career around that and I just kept taking the skills I learned and I just got better at it. And the one common skill that I use in every one of those positions was the leadership that I've learned, because you have a lot of skills but sometimes you lack the leadership. It's hard to climb that ladder that corporations have. So I did that and you know, about 14 years ago I just was, I was just stuck. I mean, I was making great money, loved the job, loved the company, loved my clients, but I was working 70 hours a week for somebody else. So I took a step back after some health challenges, which kind of was the trigger point, and I took stock of my career, what I was doing, my relationship. I had a strong relationship, so everything was going right. It's just the job was going to kill me.

Speaker 2: 6:04

So I thought about doing something different and the concept of career thinker the company I have right now I've always had in my mind, ahead of something I would do when I retired full force and put it in place 20 years earlier. And that's where I am now. I'm career thinking where I help people, I empower them with the tools and knowledge or confidence to move their careers forward Typically our clients any one of the middle managers to C-suite executives. So we get to deal with a lot of different people and at this stage, my business I built it to. You know I have six writers and career coaches on my team and we also do recruiting in the niche industry the past industry I came from. The recruiting fell in my lap, so kind of have a boutique company. I love where I am right now. I don't want to get much bigger, but I'm going to guide this through my retirement and even do it as part of my retirement as I get close to that age.

Speaker 1: 7:07

I mean, there's so many rich things that you've said in that section. One of the things that I'd love to go back to is something that stuck out for me when you said that about leadership, that you tapped into your leadership skills and that's really intuitive of you at that young age to be able to do that. Can you tease that out a bit for our listeners to see, like, what was it that you noticed in yourself and in the organization that made you make that connection that, oh, it's leadership that they're looking for, or that I need to show up with?

Speaker 2: 7:43

Well, the first job I had I had from age 17 to 24, 25. I was promoted, I was given a lot of responsibilities and one of the things I noticed and it was a company that was growing, growing very rapidly. So I grew with them and one thing I noticed most people around me that was part of the management team itself were managers. They manage a process. They didn't manage and lead people. I learned that very quickly from my father and watching him how he dealt with people.

Speaker 2: 8:13

Then I just took a lot of those things I learned when I was younger and just really realized that everybody has a different purpose, a different path, different strengths. We treat everyone exactly the same. You don't nurture what they have and where they want to go. Your teams are going to get stuck also. So I learned that very early and I kind of just kept developing those leadership skills, didn't realize I was doing it at the time. When I look back now I realize okay, my leadership, my way I approach people, you know my own brand and what I bring to my table and their table matters a great deal.

Speaker 1: 8:48

I think what I'm hearing and it's making me think too, especially around the panic that everyone's having around AI. And okay, let's be fair, there are things to be nervous around around disinformation and miscommunication, no doubt. But what I'm hearing is what people would call soft skills, which I think is kind of a BS name, and I would call them essential skills. What you're telling me is that it was you really learning from your dad and sales that everybody's on their own path, they have their own purpose and their own strengths and we have to nurture that. So, as people who choose to work in corporations or work with others, if we're not knowing how to lead people, none of us are going to be successful. And the reason why I bring up AI is AI can't take that from you. They can't take the human nuance of learning how to manage and lead others. So I love that sort of juxtaposition between those two.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Yeah, I mean, I agree 100 percent, and some people are born with more leadership abilities. That doesn't mean you can't learn them, but sometimes it's very hard to develop them and sometimes you just have to live in the trenches and learn them, you know, from the ground up.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Yeah, and I think that's true too. You know, I was raised in an environment in which business was regularly spoken about at the dinner table and when we were as a family, people were talking about that. So I was able to pick up ideas and thoughts around business at a very young age that I wouldn't necessarily have known had my family been talking about other things Right. So it's also you do learn some of it early on, but actually putting it into practice like there's theory, and then it's like clinical, putting it into practice and modifying, because I would imagine there's probably been times where the approach you took with someone wasn't the right approach and you're like, oops, that didn't work, I got to try something different. Do you have any stories to share there?

Speaker 2: 10:46

yeah, actually, yeah, one of my first corporate management position was at bj's hotel club. I was a director, I was operations for one of the largest clubs they had in long island and back in the late 80s, early 90s, in with the long island, um, you know, I I fell into that kind of rabbit hole. There was three, three women that worked in the apparel department and I didn't. I didn't I don't pay attention to gossip and stuff like that, but there was a situation I didn't. I learned later on that the two of the girls, or the women, were kind of against the third one. So they just constantly just made up these stories and stuff and I fell into that. I believed them and didn't investigate anything or what happened.

Speaker 2: 11:29

I really reprimanded the third woman because I thought she wasn't performing. I did some coaching with her. Long story short, she quit and I felt really bad but I felt like, okay, so we got rid of a problem. As time went on, shortly after she had quit, I realized my decision wasn't the best route to the decision to, you know, not investigate. And what I've learned is sometimes step back and take a full inventory of the situation before you make any decisions or assumptions. Unfortunately, and I was also young, you know, I was in my mid-20s when I learned that.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Yeah, but a really smart recap of you know, we maybe get our first impression of a situation but in retrospect, pausing, reflecting, giving some space to it, perhaps we'll have new information and make a different decision. I appreciate you sharing that.

Speaker 2: 12:25

And I really did learn from that and as I started managing bigger groups, multiple locations in other companies I worked for, I always carried it with me and every time I would step back and say well, I can't let that happen again, let me get the full inventory of what's going on, whether it's a client, a customer, anything, any situation.

Speaker 1: 12:44

Yeah, really, really. You know good information for people to see, also, that you know we can make mistakes and it's not the end of the world, it's how do you learn from them and what do you choose to do with. That, too, I think, gives some of us freedom to take chances. Otherwise, we're afraid to take chances because we're afraid we're going to make a mistake and fail. So I appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 13:04

And to add back, I did call the woman that quit and I offered another job in another branch and she took it and she became the customer service manager like a year later. So you know it was a good ending to the story but how we got there was kind of a little rougher than it should have been.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate that story. So, moving on to where you are today and the incredible work that you're doing with your company Career Thinker, I would love to spend a little bit of time talking about the needs of the person looking for the job, what the recruiter looks for and what the company looks for, and we'll kind of triangulate those three positions because I think our listeners are coming from all sides of that. So, when you think about some of the most common mistakes that you've observed in resumes, before your team takes them on and fixes them, tell us about what you're seeing and what are some of the things that we should not be doing based on the mistakes that you've seen.

Speaker 2: 14:04

Well, that's a loaded question. If I had to narrow it down to a couple of things. Um number one I don't look at it as a job search.

Speaker 1: 14:13

I look at the career marketing campaign wait, I'm gonna pause you right there, everyone, because if you've been listening to this, this podcast, for a while, you know I always say your resume is not about you, your resume is about them. And my friend tom just nailed it and said in such a succinct way that your resume is about a marketing, a career marketing campaign. Ok, sorry to interrupt Not a problem, not a problem.

Speaker 2: 14:38

I'm glad you energized that because it really comes down to the truth and when we think about job search as a career marketing campaign, we need to place a different thinking cap on. We have to be a lot more strategic of what we include in that resume and LinkedIn profile. When I speak about resumes and LinkedIn, to me today they are in sync with each other. They're both equally as important. We recruit directly through LinkedIn, so different topic, but anything on a resume, linkedin needs to prove the value you bring to the table.

Speaker 2: 15:09

So when we talk about that, that really comes down to the bullet points in the career history. The only thing that should be bulleted in the career history are value statements. You have a paragraph that explains the role. That won't get read at first glance from a recruiter to the hiring teams. They're going to dive into the bullet points. Every bullet point needs to be a value statement. The first three to five words should speak about the outcome, an accomplishment, a KPI, something that you delivered, and then by how did you do that? And that's where the skill and action will be placed. We do that consistently.

Speaker 1: 15:43

I'm just going to pause for one second for clarity. So when you first said values, I thought you meant personal values, but what you're actually meaning is the value that you bring to a business, the value that you brought to the experience or the role or what you were responsible for. What is the value you bring? Not, I value integrity, I value knowledge. Right, it's the value, the impact that you're bringing.

Speaker 2: 16:09

Right the value, the impact that you're bringing Right Now. The personal value. That's in the professional summary, which I break it down to the professional summary and part of that is the resume handshake that talks about your branding and your value proposition message. And the rest of the summary talks about the value you bring how do you lead, how do you collaborate. But we come down to the career history. I want to hire someone that's been successful and you can be successful in small ways with big meanings, but I want to. I want to see a career of a history, of someone who has actually accomplished things, made a difference, and everyone makes a difference in every position, every company. The problem is people don't see that. So when we write bullet points, we want to really talk about quick value stories.

Speaker 1: 16:52

So when we write bullet points we want to really talk about quick value stories. Can you give an example for our listeners? I mean, if you pick someone you know, you said you do a lot with recruiting within sales and marketing. So just pick an idea of like a statement of what you mean so that our listeners can kind of understand what you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Well, a typical resume. When I start reading the bullet points they kind of sound like a job description thrown back at me. You know responsible for, you know, increasing sales. Well, that doesn't mean you did it. So maybe the bullet points you say increase sales over sales for the past three years by implementing Salesforce as the main communication tool. Huge difference. One has value, one has assumed something you know, and constantly every bullet point needs to be a mini bragging story. And a bullet point should be one, maybe two lines. When it becomes three or four or five, it's in many paragraphs and recruiters don't read paragraphs.

Speaker 1: 17:46

It's not designed.

Speaker 2: 17:47

We're not trained that way. Just that. We have hundreds of other resumes that we might want to look at.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Yeah, and what I appreciate again about what you just said is that at the job description is I can't tell you how many resumes you know my years in corporate looking at resumes, my years as an executive coach and a career strategist looking at resumes. How many resumes from senior people kind of read like a status report or a laundry list with words like responsible for and I get it, you were responsible for that. But it reads then like if you're going for those senior level titles, that resume ends up reading like a solid manager. We want someone who's responsible, but it's not that transformative leader, the person that I need to hire to make the impact, the person I need. That's the solution for the problem that I'm having within my organization. It reads like oh okay, yeah, he's done some things, she's done some things Well.

Speaker 2: 18:49

I could brag about being responsible for taking out the garbage cans every Tuesday and Thursday when I was a kid. I didn't do it half the time, but I can still say responsible for it. It's responsible for not owning anything, not owning anything. So we want to make sure that our resumes is a reverse chronological order tongue-tied there about your value and again, sometimes, when you're in a position where you have multiple areas, maybe break the bullet points down to categories Operational wins, sales improvements, people wins and solutions and breaking down the bullet points into smaller groups of bullet points. So, as a recruiter hiring manager, my eye would draw to what's important to me at that time my eye would draw to what's important to me at that time.

Speaker 1: 19:31

People, if you are not grabbing your notes app right now or opening up, grabbing a piece of paper and writing down some of these things, this is really good knowledge for how for you to think about restructuring your resume. All right, so those are some of the common mistakes you've observed on resumes. Now, what is it that recruiters want? So, by default, you've said some of that. Right, they don't necessarily have time to read. They're moving really fast. They need things succinct and bullet points, but what are some of the other things that recruiters are looking for so that candidates can break through?

Speaker 2: 20:05

I mean, sometimes it depends on the position, but when we talk about mid-level professionals to C-suite, we need to hire people that could handle the job and that could solve problems, that could lead to collaborate. So there's a lot we want in a resume and sometimes it's hard to get all that in there. Even when I look at some salespeople, they just list all the KPIs Every year. The numbers Okay, that's great, but how did you do it? How did you collaborate? How did you retain those clients? How did you earn new business? All those skills in action, with outcomes, with those bullet points, showcases exactly what a recruiter wants.

Speaker 2: 20:44

I want to hire people that can solve my problem. If you're going to be applying to a sales position, well, guess what? The problem is not enough sales. Every company had that challenge. If you're an HR people, it's about hiring and developing the best talent to drive the business forward. So we know what the problems are. It's not a secret. It's right in the job title in many cases. So showcase how you solve those problems and obviously know. Obviously there's certain industries and certain positions that could be a lot more deeper than that, but in general, that's basically what we need to do for our clients.

Speaker 1: 21:22

Is there a best practice for candidates to get the attention of the recruiter either by email or LinkedIn? How do they get the attention of the recruiter? Either by email or LinkedIn. How do they get the attention of the recruiter? Yes, they need a marketing document called a resume. That's solid, but I still need to get to the top of the funnel. I still need to get you to create the awareness.

Speaker 2: 21:43

And that's a major challenge Just before we got on this call, because I'm going to put a blog post together, because I'm looking at the amount of applications that Java's posted on LinkedIn and I just looked at five of them In three weeks. They have over 4,000 applications, so I think part of that is AI generating these applications for people and they're applying to 100 jobs an hour or something.

Speaker 1: 22:06

I also heard Tom tell me, if you heard this too. I also heard Tom tell me, if you heard this too. I heard from a couple of different people who are very close to the algorithm elves at LinkedIn that that 4,000 number is not completed applications. It started applications because many people start the application, realize that because of the ATS, the applicant tracking software that the, I have to actually retype my resume now because it actually doesn't read my resume in the right way and I can't be bothered. And is this this ATS or that ATS? So I've heard from quite a few sources that it's started applications, not completed applications. What do you know?

Speaker 2: 22:49

Well, I'm in LinkedIn Recruit all the time, but these are job posts that I'm looking at. They're all easy to apply and the application doesn't go in until you hit submit. So these are completed applications.

Speaker 2: 23:01

There could be other situations where that might not be true, but these are completed applications and you're applying with your resume and your LinkedIn profile. There could be other situations where that might not be true, but these are completed applications, okay, and you're applying with your resume and your LinkedIn profile. So it's a little bit different than the ATS system, okay.

Speaker 1: 23:12

Got it. Thank you for that clarification.

Speaker 2: 23:15

Yeah, so it's really aggressive, so I forgot the question. Oh, so my question was so how does?

Speaker 1: 23:21

okay, now I've got a beautiful document, I've got a strong career resume, marketing document how do I get the recruiter's attention?

Speaker 2: 23:30

Well, there should be a three-pronged approach and you have to be active in all of them. Number one you do want to apply for jobs that are posted, but 50% to 60% of the time sometimes people say 80, the job or the position is filled already through internal applications, internal referral programs, internal networking, social recruiting. Companies want to be compliant with the hiring practices. So if they typically post a job and they have a job, they already have someone in mind. They still post a job to be compliant. So sometimes you get that black hole theory.

Speaker 2: 24:04

Second part you want to have a LinkedIn profile that backs up your resume. Your LinkedIn should be your resume on steroids. You print out a typical, fully optimized LinkedIn profile. It's going to be eight, nine pages. Typically a resume is two, sometimes three pages. So that's number two.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Number three you want to network, whether you want to build new network connections or leverage your network you already have. If you worked at a company five years, one of the best things to do is look at the company, see how many people used to work there and see where they are now. Reach out to them, start the conversation, because that might be someplace you want to be. So there's so many different ways to network and that three-pronged approach is definitely going to increase your success rate. And another theory of mine is we seem to be chasing job postings. When you have so many applications, you have a lot of time to drop the field already. So if we have time in our career search, our career marketing campaign, we should be targeting companies we want to work for and kind of get into the back door of a company that way.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Okay, tom, thank you for sharing that. I also think that is very helpful for people. You've emphasized the importance of treating the job search like a career marketing campaign. Can you elaborate a bit more, and what are some of the other practical tips for job seekers?

Speaker 2: 25:29

Well, career marketing campaign, like I said earlier, is just putting that different thinking cap on. You know you're not hunting for the job and apply for it and just leave it. You want to make sure that you're communicating your value, and that's really sounds simple, but it's not. But that's what it comes down to. So concentrate on what you do well and what you want to do. You know we apply for jobs that we don't want. And why do we do that? We get trapped into, you know, a job we don't want.

Speaker 2: 25:55

I always ask people did you choose your career? Did a career choose you? There's no right or wrong answer, but you know my career kind of chose me. I told you what I wanted to be and not doing that. But I'm a career coach.

Speaker 2: 26:09

So you know, I know we get off on tangents, but I think another pitfall people fall into is they and this happens to us too we we create a resume, we know what we're doing, and they go and they share the resume with five friends and you say tell me what's wrong with my resume, how can I make this resume better? And they take advice. When you ask somebody to tell me what do you think should be better on a resume, they're going to provide some type of response based on whatever they think. A lot of those become opinions. Like I had an executive.

Speaker 2: 26:44

The resume was three pages and two of her friends said no, I read Elon Musk doesn't need a three page resume. Why do you need one when he could write his name on a napkin and get a job? So we have to understand where some of this information. There's a lot of bad or incorrect information out there. There's a lot of poor advice. So you know listening to the best advice sometimes it's hard to find, but you know, take that and run with it because you can ask for a lot of opinions. I think that's a challenge a lot of people have. They hear all these different stories and even on the internet there's a lot of bad information. I mean, I read two articles that were recently posted saying if a resume is more than one page, it will get rejected from the ATS system. We hire 150 people a year. I think we hired one person in the past four years that was a one-page resume. I don't know where this stuff comes from.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Right, and I think also you know in context, if I'm a you know, a June 2023 grad, I probably should have a one-page resume, unless I've been working since I'm 15 and have had stardust. There's always the anomaly right. I've heard the adage about 10 years a page. What are your thoughts on that? Again, it has to be justifiable?

Speaker 2: 28:01

Yeah, and again, it really depends. It depends what type of job, which job the more, because, when it comes down to the resume, it's relevancy. Everything on a resume should be relevant to where you want to go next. So if you have some old jobs that are totally different than 12 years ago, maybe leave them off or maybe give them less real estate. So every resume is a different formula. You get a job, you get a job you just did for five years, but your previous job before that, for six years, is really what you want to go back into. So different ways of emphasizing what's important and what's relevant for each person, and that's the biggest challenge also. So again, there's just, you know, styling does matter. So adding a little color, a little styling to the resumes, a lot of resumes I see are just so boring and so cramped with information I can't read it, nor would I take the time to read it. And that's what happens. We lose the focus of the communication through a two to three page resume.

Speaker 1: 28:56

Do you think there's a difference between in the rare occasion that you might be physically handing your resume to someone, versus it being digital, either going to the ATS or attached to an email, like if I'm at a networking event per se? Do you think that resume should look differently or have more creative flair, shall we say, than the resume that is being sent to me? Yes, or digitally?

Speaker 2: 29:22

If you go into a networking event, leave your resume home. Take your one-page bio that talks a little bit about you personally, talks a little bit about your career, talks a little bit about your education. It's a one-page bio. It has some of the same information as a resume, but it's totally different. And as you meet someone and say well, you want to learn more about me, here's my bio. My LinkedIn address is on there. Let's chat next week. That's a lot more power. When you hand someone your resume, you're saying I want a job, help me, and people can help you. They just go inward and they walk away from you. People want to help, but when you hand a resume even if you hand a resume to a friend, help me get a job If they can't help you, they're going to kind of shy away from you. So when you hand a bio, I think it's a whole different vibe.

Speaker 1: 30:08

Okay, that's really helpful. I often work with clients to create what I call a networking resume, which is basically your version of what I'm saying is like a mixture of the two, somewhere between a little bit of bio. Yes, there is some facts. Right, it's not all flowery bio language. There's definitely facts about the things you've done, but it's certainly not the full, all-out resume.

Speaker 2: 31:13

So when we talk about AI, we have to kind of talk about two different AI. Ai has been around for 40 years Now. We talk about generative AI, where the large language models are used, where the AI can actually understand the context and really start coming up with responses to that. That's going to change. Today, typically, companies use ATSs applicant tracking software system, which is more about the direct keyword matching. There's some extra power behind that power behind that.

Speaker 2: 31:46

But once generative AI is introduced into the applicant track and source with systems, there's going to be a lot more power and hopefully a lot more important information that recruiter could analyze. I mean, just you know. You know generative AI would have the potential to enhance the comprehension of a context, meaning it can understand your trajectory of your career from five jobs ago and understand how you develop your skills. It would be able to detect that. It would actually be able to really personalize job matching based on your resumes and the stories and the successes you have and the summary. It could actually look for job posts that really match the language, the context you're trying to tell, the language, the context you're trying to tell. It would be able to build profiles. It would take your Facebook, your Instagram, your LinkedIn profile, your resume and build a profile in the ATS system that's going to give a bigger 360 view of an individual. I mean, it's scary and it's great at the same time.

Speaker 1: 32:44

It's everything yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:47

And even enhancing engagement through the ATS system to keep people informed. The biggest challenge because I do recruiting the biggest challenge is to keep in front of the potential candidates with what's going on with the application. It's almost impossible to do from the recruiter side. So what happens? We hear I'm getting ghosted, ghosted, ghosted and unfortunately some recruiters totally ghost people and that's the biggest complaint out there with recruiters Provide interview insights to the recruiting. So what happens if there's a video or Zoom interview? It can analyze the communication between the recruiter and give some more information about the candidate. It could actually help reduce bias, keeping track of the recruitive activity and what they do and who they speak to and everything. And it helped, you know, highlight some possible biases happening and predictive analysis. It could help predict a potential candidate success in that company based on all the AIs and the generative AI and how it's going to be integrated into the ATS system. So I'm excited and scared at the same time.

Speaker 1: 33:54

So I know I said. One last question as an independent person who's looking to find some information around how to navigate this is there a generative AI that you find is better for the career search than others? Meaning, I know most of us are aware of chat GPT, whether we pay for it or use the free version. There's lots of other AI, generative AI platforms out there. Do you have an opinion of one that's really good for career seekers?

Speaker 2: 34:20

Well, it really depends. If you're looking for AI to write your resume from A to Z, I will pick up on it during a job interview. I interviewed someone last week and one of his bullet points said increase sales for the past three years by 20% year over year, or something like that. He just started the business six months ago.

Speaker 1: 34:38

How could he have that result there?

Speaker 2: 34:41

And I actually challenged people. When I think it's written by AI, I said did you use AI to write this? Yeah, AI helped me write this resume and it kind of sucked, to be honest. So we could use it to get out of, to be more creative, to get some suggestions, but at this point I wouldn't write. I wouldn't trust AI to write my resume. I would trust AI to help me get out of the writing box and to communicate strong and more effectively on a resume. So there's a lot of these AI programs that would apply for jobs for you. You're not even going to have anything, You're not going to see anything. It's going to create the cover letter, tweak the resume, update your resume and apply for the job for you, and that means the human job seeker is out of that process. So I don't know. I don't recommend. I don't recommend. I don't have any recommendations. I would say use AI as your assistant, not to do the job it shouldn't be leaving.

Speaker 1: 35:35

It's not the master, it's the assistant yeah, okay. Cover letters yes, no. We hate them, we love them.

Speaker 2: 35:45

You know we're still in that transition period. I'll admit cover letters are probably 60% less used, but they are still used. So when I talk about cover letters, I want the human voice cover letter. I want to know why the resume should prove you can do the job. The cover letter should prove you're applying to the right company. So you want to have a conversation of why you believe in a company. You believe in the products or the services they offer, you believe in their mission, you believe they've been in business for 50 years and have a great reputation. You're excited about joining a startup company. So you want to connect to the company and I call that a human voice cover letter and then throw in a few paragraphs about your collaborative style, how you lead, how do you build consensus, and that makes a nice human voice cover letter.

Speaker 2: 36:29

So many people write a cover letter and I see it time and time again. They're just taking all this content from the resume, repeating after the cover letter. The cover letter is no longer read first the reason it's called a cover letter. Of course, years ago, when we mailed out a resume, we covered it with a letter, hence the name cover letter. We don't do that anymore.

Speaker 2: 36:45

So if you apply for a job and they ask for a cover letter, you need it. If you don't send it and they ask for it, you took a shortcut and you couldn't follow instructions. I have one company for the HR position. They say apply with your resume and wow us with your cover letter. I am not allowed to send up any candidate, regardless how great the resume is, if they didn't have a cover letter with the application. Now I could go back as a third-party recruiter and ask for a cover letter. But I can't send a client up and if you apply for a job and there's a spot to upload a cover letter and a spot to upload a resume, that typically means they're expecting it.

Speaker 1: 37:22

All right. So, friends, sorry you still got to work on the cover letters.

Speaker 2: 37:27

And again, if they don't ask for it, there's no spot to upload it. You probably save because in many cases your about page, your LinkedIn profile, kind of takes the place of a cover letter.

Speaker 1: 37:35

Will be easy apply within LinkedIn. You usually don't have to upload it, it just takes your LinkedIn resume that's already stored in the system, right, tom? This has really been helpful. It's a wealth of information for our listeners and I appreciate you taking us through this. I will put all of Tom's information in the show notes everyone so you know how to get in contact with him and to use his services. And, tom, I thank you for being here.