Casey: Hi.
I'm Casey!
And I'm here with Clara.
We're gonna go through Clara's resume preparation.
I do a lot of career coaching for friends and family
and friends of friends, and especially in tech.
Here are the four stages that I like to do, whether I'm applying
to a job or helping someone else.
I've already done a couple of these with Clara.
We're here on step three already.
I talked with Clara about "what's important to Clara in a job"
and "what jobs does she want",
and we picked some, we got one that Clara's targeting now.
And now we wanna make sure that Clara can get through the screening process
and then the interview is later.
We're not talking about that today.
I've got a whole bunch of worksheets.
So Clara did this worksheet 3B, which I call the "inverted resume",
and we'll be going through what Clara did.
anyway, before we hear more about me
or we start this actual session itself, let's hear from Clara.
Clara: Hi, Um, so I am applying for manager, senior manager,
director, roles in program managing.
I am a public health professional by trade and training, and that's the
general area that I wanna work in.
Although I do like a lot of other different types of programs.
I spent a lot of time doing community and grassroots type work,
and now I'm moving my resume and interest to shift over to more
managerial directorship type roles.
So here's one that I found.
It's a good commuting distance for me.
It's a topic area I like.
It's a title that I like and the work itself seems to fit very
well within what I like to do.
I believe that I am one hundred percent qualified for this job,
so I want to make sure that my resume both reflects what I am qualified to do,
gives really good solid examples and is easy to read
and also gives off director, manager, um, attitude.
Not really as much Grassroots coordinator attitude is what I was doing before.
Casey: The other day, Clara, you were telling me about this worksheet
and how it was frustrating in a way,
but really helpful and good I wanna hear that.
Tell us
Clara: Yeah, it was frustrating because the thing is like,
I don't know if anybody else does this, but I do this
when I'm making a new resume:
I usually start with the resume I already have, and
I go through and read the whole thing and I fix it, change it,
add in some quantifiable things.
I think really hard about all the functions I did in that job
to make sure I'm giving myself credit for each thing.
Um, and.
The issue I was having is that I find myself summating a lot
or having lots of summation, bullet points,
things that give you vague ideas about what I was doing,
but not things that give you concrete examples or very clear things that
anyone who can read it can look at, grab it, latch onto it, bring it up
in interviews and conversation later.
And, I realized that for in three different ways:
one, after reading or rereading this worksheet for the inverted resume,
I was like, "okay, uh, I think I already do that."
Like, I was trying to convince myself that I already, you know, I'm
already addressing what needs to be addressed for the job description.
And I look back at my resume, I'm like,
"I'm kind of embarrassed about this..."
Casey: Yeah.
Yeah, I do that
Clara: necessarily bad.
Yeah.
'cause it's like you don't really think, oh, this is bad.
You don't really think that.
It's more like a uh,
it's like you look at something too long, you stop seeing it fully,
Casey: Yeah.
We also have what's called the "curse of knowledge".
'cause we know all the stuff that we've done
and so when we look at our own resume,
we're like, "yeah, that, that one line on line 57
of my really dense and wordy resume that I have,
it's obvious that I'd be really good at this job.
They, they should know!"
But how could know??
If it's just one line of the
Clara: How could they know?
Casey: You really have to design it.
Clara: I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8.
I have 8 two-line bullet points for each of the jobs, and that's me paring it down.
It's super dense.
There's lots of commas.
And I'm just like *sigh*.
I'm embarrassed BECAUSE I know as someone who's had to read resumes,
it's REALLY hard to read that and pick out anything useful.
So I was frustrated because as soon as I reread my resume, after looking at this.
I was like: "I have to redo the whole thing"
"I have to redo the whole thing 😭".
It was super frustrating, BUT it was nice going through this worksheet because
sometimes it's hard to sort of access that creative writing part of my brain,
but with the worksheet, it's sort of like you're asking yourself questions
that you just need to answer, and that makes it very clear and concise,
Casey: these questions, these questions ARE what the resume-skimming
person is asking themselves, right?
That's where these questions came from, and you're writing
them, imagining for that person.
Once you wrote them, then you can answer them.
Clara: Yeah, and I'm, I'm not, sometimes I get into a weird head
space when dealing with resumes.
It's a really unique document to try to write.
So instead of trying to get super intensified, I just copy and
paste important lines and grouped them together in the topics area.
So like -this job description, talks a lot about managing
internal/external partnerships.
So when I saw, I picked out two or so instances of that.
and I just pasted them, like "facilitating community outreach strategies".
Those external partnerships.
Um, "facilitating meetings of key partner stakeholders."
That's external partnerships.
And so I picked out the, those type of things, even just the one above it.
Uh, "working collaboratively with internal external partnerships",
partners.
So it's like right there.
So I was like, oh, this is obviously important.
So I picked out those three bullet points and put it under a topic, and
then I sat there, I put my resume down,
Casey: Yeah.
That's hard.
Uhhuh
Clara: it's hard.
It's so hard.
I sat there and I'm like,
yeah,
Casey: this a different document?
Clara: no, that's, that's the same document.
It's not as pretty, but you know, that's,
Casey: it's just notes.
Clara: a section...
it's just notes!
And it's just like, um, I would just pick up things that seem to go together.
Yeah.
And I just wrote, and I just wrote down quick things that
came to memory about experiences, uh, that support those things.
like this topic area on researching
evidence-based practices.
And I was like, okay, well, my whole master's thesis was about that.
I wrote an entire technical assistance package for policymakers,
and I literally had that nowhere on my resume!
It's not on my resume.
It's not at all.
Casey: Ah..
Clara: I didn't even think about that!
And because I,
Casey: I've done that a lot too.
Of course, they'll know.
But!
Clara: Of course they'll realize that the ONE line that says I have a Master's in
public health and Behavioral and Community Health will let them understand that
I OBVIOUSLY have a working knowledge of how to convert
like information and evidence research based
into research based practices and implement them.
Of course, they'll know that 🙄 --nope!
Casey: It's funny hearing us say it now.
'cause we have the gift of hindsight now.
So this is funny maybe, but
a lot of people get really stuck in thinking that their resume
is already great, but they don't know why they're not getting the
interviews that they were hoping for.
Including me, sometimes!
I'm not immune.
I have to do my own process, so that I'm gonna do that the right way.
It's not like I developed a process and magically I do it right every time.
I have to remember.
To pull out my own worksheets.
Clara: how to do
Casey: it's not natural.
This isn't like a natural way to approach it.
Clara: No!
It's also daunting.
It's daunting to think about redoing your resume
'cause you spent so much time trying to remember,
and I don't know if you're like me, Casey, but
when I'm in a job and I do something I'm particularly proud of, I jot
it down in like a, like a working
document or something
Casey: A "smile file," some people call it.
I have one of those.
Clara: A smile file, success stories,
Casey: It's just a Google Doc for me.
just one Google Doc that's long now.
Clara: Ugh.
But it's, it's good and bad!
Because you, you wanna tell people how great you are and you're like,
"look at all this cool stuff I know how to do," but that's
not what they're asking about.
The resume is like your highlights reel.
It's not supposed to be the hour and a half documentary,
Casey: Yep.
The hour and a half documentary is the CV, which most jobs don't even ask for.
Clara: Right.
Casey: and if you want can include a highlights reel attached to a CV.
Sometimes I do that.
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: some jobs don't want that, whatever,
you have to read this job description.
Some people will send BOTH in to a job, and it works sometimes,
but sometimes it gets disregarded.
Whatever, it's...
every company's different.
But yeah, the CV is, is what most people think of as the resume.
It's closer to the CV idea.
Mm-hmm.
Clara: Right.
And actually, for some people it's very hard to distinguish them.
Because either you have a lot of research or published papers and
you like wanna bring up all that, it's can be hard to distinguish.
But I still, I'm trying to train my mind to think about it as,
this is your highlights reel.
This is the trailer to your movie.
They don't need to know every single thing about you.
They need to know, are you going to meet their qualifications / later standards?
Are you meeting their expectations?
Can they pull it out immediately?
And that led to me writing down these notes.
And I had talked to Casey about this before, but
I started this worksheet and I literally put it away because I was
like, I have to redo everything.
Casey: Yeah, yeah.
do that.
It can be overwhelming.
That's human.
Clara: Yeah, yeah.
Because it's, it's totally human.
Like even in the same bullet point.
um, asking about evidence-based practices,
things that I didn't even like -- okay.
On here, adjunct instructor.
I'm an adjunct instructor for two different universities, and
Casey: Mm-Hmm.
Clara: I have that on my resume, it's on there, but the part the
part where I talk about, like, I say, oh, I made a curriculum.
I don't say the fact that I use, I did tons of research, went to literal classes.
Evidence-based practices on how to teach in a diverse classroom and how
to develop a curriculum so that as many students as plausible can succeed
and retain the information that you've given them and use them in real life.
That stuff, I'm like, "Ugh, I didn't,
I didn't exactly represent that," and
I'm like, well, that was such a dynamic experience.
Why didn't I talk about it?
I forgot!
Casey: Yeah, curse of knowledge too!
And maybe also forgetting, sure, both, both happen.
Clara: No, but I like, I forget that no one's...
not, everyone's gonna read the same sentence and think
about all those explicit things
that comes to mind when I think about them.
Casey: Yeah.
Yeah.
And even if they're, um, screening - whoever it is, HR, the hiring manager,
whoever's doing the screening - even if they are really on top of it and
they're really thorough and read line by line and really think about the
depth of the meaning of every line.
Like we naively always naturally (me too) always imagine they'll do for us
give us that benefit of the doubt.
Maybe they CAN'T because they don't have enough of the context
here to know what "teaching as an adjunct at the university" MEANT.
They can't, it's not there.
Even if they wanted to be super thorough.
But they're also NOT super thorough, usually.
Me, when I was, doing hiring and screening people at different companies.
Often I'll get a resume, like an hour before an interview when I'm
interviewing someone I'm like, why didn't I get this sooner?
And I skim it real quick and I feel bad about it, but that's just like the hiring
pipeline is very rushed a lot of the time.
They're trying to be efficient.
And so knowing some people are like that, most people, we have to make it SUPER
SUPER readable, skimmable so that someone who's screening candidates, a whole
bunch of candidates, they know they need "research evidence-based practices," that
kind of thing, and they can just open your resume and look at it and be like,
"She's got it; next!"
like we want it to be quick, quick, quick.
Clara: Yeah.
Casey: We'll get you there, Clara.
I don't think we're there yet.
That's why gonna work on this together today.
But we will.
I think this next resume version is gonna be like,
"DUH she's qualified for this job!"
anyone who up resume is gonna say, that's what we need.
Clara: I really hope so.
Casey: You've got the experience, that's clear.
Clara: I, I definitely do I just kinda
Casey: Just how do we frame it.
Clara: So, yeah, so this worksheet has been both good and, uh, frustrating
Casey: Sure, sure.
So for the frustrating part, I'm glad we get to work together on it now 'cause
I think doing it in a pair really - it helps me when I'm doing my own, I
try to get in a second pair of eyes.
It can reduce the stress a lot.
Clara: Yeah.
So what happens now?
Do we go through this?
Do we, I have to delete, basically, I have to delete everything under each of
my jobs, under my traditional style resume
Casey: Yeah.
Yeah.
Clara: to insert the appropriate things, but yeah.
Casey: So I wanna talk through this so I'm, I can follow what you have here,
at least the highlights of each one.
So first topic, data driven clinical decision making.
Oh yeah, I like that.
You change the font needs.
They're different.
Yep.
Different clauses to the same kind of idea.
Straight from the job description probably.
Right,
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: Right.
So tell me about your highlight experiences here.
Oh, um, first I wanna mention in my worksheet, I separate highlight
experiences, which is this part from the how to grow and develop further.
And for some people, there's a lot in the how to grow part.
If you have a dream job, you wanna grow into it.
But most people that I work with actually have so much in the
highlight experiences already.
That's where we focus.
So Clara, I today we can mostly focus on the highlight experiences and
try to get each into the resume that
I know you have in you already.
then the how to grow.
I mean, we can talk about it, but that's maybe not the focus
feel free to bring it up, but All right.
Highlight experiences.
Ready?
I'm ready to hear about this.
Clara: All right, so first three about evaluating data, data-driven
decision making, usually involving research practices, training,
evaluation, implementation, et cetera.
Casey: Mm-Hmm.
Clara: So I kind of put all those together because that is,
those are all pieces of the same process.
Um, from data to implementation.
It should be, that is the data-driven process.
So I put in highlights where I took specific initiatives
and data-driven processes.
The first thing I have listed there is the
Learning management system at ACPM, my previous employer.
And, um.
the learning management system is their software for
storing, organizing and delivering
their education material.
I went in there, I looked at what was doing well, what wasn't.
I changed what appeared in the featured section,
how the homepage appeared
based on feedback directly from participants and students.
I also went through and I looked at where people are clicking,
where they're not clicking,
how they're getting to certain courses that are doing well.
Some courses, they got to it through the main page.
Some courses, they only ever went to it through the link they were given
because the page was too difficult to navigate
or they couldn't find it
because our search engine needed a little bit more work.
The, the keywords weren't working properly.
So I went in there and changed those.
I tagged, I edited the metadata.
I worked with the company that was supporting us, uh,
month over month with IT questions
to explain to me more
how we could better utilize the system they've built.
So I spent a lot of time in that learning management system,
collecting data, realizing what was wrong, fixing it, changing it,
implementing later on how we upload courses,
what information we prioritize putting in there, and how
we can streamline a process
from an in-person program
to the evaluation that they have to take after the program
in that learning management system.
So that was a lot of data-driven work.
Casey: Right.
part of me wants to write all that down, but there's a separate
exercise I wanna do for stories.
That's on worksheet four.
on interview stories.
So once we get to that point, we'll have the questions, we'll answer the,
those questions with these stories.
And you have plenty of those
for this part, for the resume, to get through the screening.
Uh, for the LMS, this bullet point,
how do you know you were successful?
How would someone look at,
--okay, you've done it
you've done this kind of work, sure, sure.
But did it work?
Did it meet your outcomes?
How do you know?
Clara: Oh, I know.
Because
sales increase for those products by 30%, where they were over year, over year.
Casey: Wow, that's huge
year over year.
I know that.
Leave me alone
Okay.
That, that's a great resume line.
Think that's the, that's the advice everybody knows is like how do
you add metrics to your resume,
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: uh, via.
X, Y, Z and we can come back to that when we're in the resume itself.
I think it'll be easier to come up with those few.
Clara: Yeah.
Casey: Wow.
What a good resume line.
Uh, data driven.
We wanna have that phrase that's pretty important to them.
And it's true.
Clara: data-driven, evidence-based process.
Casey: Yeah.
okay.
Can we include the word evidence?
Sometimes I like to take notes on the words to put places.
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: If they use the word evidence, you should use the word evidence,
not a synonym as much.
I've had this problem before.
I said I am, uh, an Ember JS developer,
and someone told me, "oh, well you don't know JavaScript"
Ember JS.
The JS is JavaScript.
It stands for that; they didn't know!
The screener was not technical enough to know that was
equivalent, or similar, or related.
So in tech I have to put JavaScript apparently!
If the screener might not know all the specific languages.
But then the hiring manager, they know and it's like redundant.
It's a wasted word.
It's like not adding much value for the density.
But anyway, the audience of this one, I'm telling all this to make a big point.
It's the screener, the HR screener, or
someone who might not have all the context --they have to get it.
Clara: Yeah.
Casey: I love that you called out evidence.
We wanna have that word there.
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: All right.
Um, are these in rough priority order or the order that you thought of them?
Clara: The order that I thought of them,
and usually that to do
with the difficulty level it was,
or like how intense that experience was.
has very little to do how relevant I think it is.
Casey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I happen to remember the LMS when we talked before,
so I know that is a big deal
and the kind of thing that, folks hiring you might be interested in.
But anyway, for the next- there's a lot here.
If you had to pick what's the next most important one to THIS
employer for the health equity manager at CVS, that kind of thing?
Clara: Hmm.
It would be the next one.
Um, those next two bullets go together, and then it would be the one that
says, uh, researching best practices for learning and listening modules.
Casey: Great, Okay.
X is just my placeholder.
You can't make it an empty bullet until you do anyway, whatever.
Alright, tell me about this one.
Researching best practices for learning and listing modules.
That sounds like something specific I might not know.
Clara: Um, it's just a summative sentence.
I was trying to get it out of my head as quick as possible,
but I was serving on the racial
Casey: Okay, so the term might be relevant to this.
Clara: no, term isn't relevant.
I was, uh, serving on the racial health equity committee when I was working at the
hospital's population health department.
When I was there, I had to help and oftentimes lead the development and
implementation of, uh, racial health training and education in, uh, structures,
modules, information, which involved, uh,
it involved listening sessions where we had discussions about
how comfortable people are about talking about race, et cetera, et cetera.
We had internal discussions about what information to prioritize
that everyone learn as foundational or, uh, baseline information.
How to incorporate the knowledge and information we learn into
best practices related to working with diverse groups, culturally diverse
Casey: Yeah.
Yeah.
Clara: groups of people.
Um, so that involves a lot of research about best practices for
leading discussions about difficult or racially driven conversations.
Um, it has, uh, a lot to do with finding, uh, industry acceptable resources
for building out those tools so that we could be on-par
and it could also be easily acceptable across the different
levels of the institution.
You know, I was working within a larger institution
and so the researching best practices had a lot to do with like information
as well as how best to integrate that information into
where I was working at the time.
Casey: How do you know that was helpful?
Sometimes, mean, I am someone who, I wanna do research a lot,
but sometimes I'll do research and do the same thing in the end
and someone could criticize me.
They have before some, (saying that) it wasn't useful.
think it might've been anyway.
But how would you prove to the skeptic?
That's what I wanna know here.
Clara: Well, we cr, we led the entire hospital.
Our department was the first one to get our committee up standing and going,
and it was so useful, so helpful.
Everyone liked it so much
that they actually gave us the "Excellence in Diversity and Awareness Award"
for our work on that committee.
Casey: Wow,
this committee won the the...
cool
Yeah, look, that's proof.
Uhhuh
. Ah, sure.
Uh, did that,
were you, on the committee, was it a small group?
Were you a leader of it?
Did you do the most of the research that part of the, what the committee did?
how was your involvement?
Clara: The committee was four to...
I would say four to 10 people
because it, we get more or less people.
Throughout the year, depending on what we're doing,
Casey: Yeah.
Clara: four to 10 people, I would call myself more of a leader of in that group
because I did a lot of work developing
the questions for book clubs, facilitating conversations,
talking through the structure of how to lead those, uh, listening sessions.
Um, and you know,
Talking through how to use the resources available to us to get it.
To get it in.
So I think that I was pretty
Casey: Okay, cool.
Clara: involved
Casey: can safely say, um, you were leading a committee.
That's roughly true.
It's more true than saying you were just a member.
So I would
summarize it to: you led the committee.
I don't think that's being deceptive because there's often multiple
leaders of the group anyway, this kind of committee structure.
But we don't need to say a whole sentence about how you were
only partially responsible.
That's really easy to WANT to do in resumes.
I wanna be very accurate and give everyone else credit,
but it's not functional for a skimming person.
That's (not what) they need to know.
Anyway, so led the committee,
which one?
That's the line we could use.
Something like that.
And then what we to get back in here,
which we don't have yet, is
they're looking for the data-driven clinical decision making.
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: You just told me all about how you did it
and how can we say it short?
Based on.
Industry best practices.
That just sound, feels very, know, weak.
I think there's gotta be some kind of specific thing.
Clara: I, yeah, that's tough because I'm not really sure how to, we,
Casey: Did you package the research?
Did you write a report about it based on 100 sources?
I'm trying to find like numbers.
I don't know.
Just one idea.
Clara: No, I didn't package it
Casey: in
what were you thinking?
Clara: that way.
We had an internal document where we collected the,
the direction in our goals for teaching and learning
where we listed all of our resources,
that we were going to use.
But
Casey: that was probably used by other departments, right?
The resources document.
Clara: Yes, that is used by other departments.
It's still used in that, that department actually,
um, even though I no longer work there,
Casey: Cool.
Clara: and like I said, we were the first departmental committee
to do something like that.
Um, the institution had it at a high level, but not our hospital
and not, other departments.
So.
I think a lot of people used what we did
as a blueprint for how to do theirs.
Casey: Yeah!
Oh man, how can we highlight that?
Uh, I might say our work was used by, how do we say many people in a specific way?
Many departments?
Our foundational work, how's that?
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: is that true?
Clara: Yeah.
Actually,
Casey: To improve patient outcomes.
Clara: That was the goal.
That's always the goal at the hospital.
Casey: Any metrics you can tie to it?
No, no numbers.
Uh, how do you know it successful?
People said it was valuable.
That's pretty good.
Uh,
Clara: People said it was valuable.
The hospital overall recognized the value of it and.
Casey: Yeah, the award, uh-huh.
Clara: What I, if I were to say, if I were just speaking colloquially,
how I would measure success in that is because
we were the population health department,
meaning we would go out into the community and do these things.
So I heard from a lot of community health workers and PRNs or, or rather,
uh, part-time nurses that
how the information that they learned, about context
for maybe some decision making that people have
or the way certain behaviors play out.
How that affected how compassionate and patient
they were able to be in their work,
which can be very difficult if you're someone who's providing resources
to the community at that level.
Casey: Cool.
I love hearing that.
So not only the company through the award, but also you heard from . Folks
on the ground, how helpful this was.
That is so heartwarming.
I love that kind of thing.
Yeah.
People want to -I know that -people want to do this kind of thing
and listen and be compassionate,
sometimes they need some kind of awareness they don't have yet.
Even if they're interested and have time, they need the skills
-and you're filling that gap.
cool.
Uh, had overwhelming.
Is that true?
It might not be true.
Uh, positive feedback from community health workers,
Is that something that CVS would care about?
Community health workers?
Is there another way to say that audience in a way they'd care about?
Clara: I don't know how to say in a way that they would
care about, but that is true!
I'm gonna say I think that there's a more general term, like
public health, population health workers, public health workers, that kind of thing.
Casey: Yeah.
Clara: because they specifically mentioned one of their, their,
some of their goals have to do with health equity, analytics,
bias reduction and diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
And is definitely in that wheelhouse, which is why is
something that came to mind.
'cause our whole thing is about health equity.
So I think bias reduction and all those things are important when
you're someone like a community health worker or a public health nurse.
Casey: Um, this group came up with training.
Uh, we can come back to wordsmithing this later, but something like this, I
feel like captures the essence you did.
That sounds good.
If you just said you led a committee, alone,
I don't think I'd be that impressed,
but of course, companies have subcommittees and people lead them.
Yeah, yeah -what did y'all do?
Did you do stuff?
Did you just meet every week and do nothing?
That happens sometimes,
but THIS wow - you got an award AND the people on the ground
who liked it, both
like leadership and...
that's what I'm looking for for this kind of thing,
and the award is really actually very powerful
even though sometimes I think that they're silly
-companies giving awards to their departments,
but they're really effective.
They're really powerful at signaling what the company values and
celebrating people who did good work.
So I've been coming around to enjoying awards at companies now.
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: Well, um, so we're not gonna get through everything, clearly,
in this session, but hopefully you'll get the pattern of like, what kinds of things
I'm looking for and the questions are.
Generally, it's like, how do we know?
How do we prove it to a skeptic?
Clara: Mm-Hmm.
Casey: Would you rather go to another section or do another one in here?
Clara: Uh,
Casey: Or shift gears to your resume.
If you're ready for that, that's fine too.
Clara: yeah, I'd rather shift resume.
Casey: Let's do that.
Clara: yeah, it's, I, I, can drop my, Uh, my, um,
I've been calling it my fake resume,
my resume that has a bunch of old bullet points in it.
'cause it just makes me too sad to delete it all at once.
Um,
Casey: Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah, I think we're at a good point here.
I think you've, you've probably seen like what I'm looking for in these
and what it looks like to, I guess, um, crystallize what
you've brainstormed here earlier.
I'm really glad you brainstormed this much.
It made this go a lot smoother and faster.
Um, so next, I think we can start putting this kind of thing
into your resume and see how it fits,
and then we'll go back and forth between what they're looking for
from the job description, from your themes that you pulled out here
and comparing that to your resume.
We'll do that next time.
Clara: All right.
Casey: This is starting to good!
I mean, it's still very obvious to me you have all of the competent skills
and background and evidence to get this next job,
. All right, talk to you soon.
Clara: Okay,
Casey: Bye, Clara.