Expert Advice
Everyone hates writing their resume.
That’s why we came up with Resume Therapy.
In grad school, while I was getting my MS in Counseling, I paired up with like-minded SFSU professor and career counselor, Rebecca Toporek, who shared the belief that building a resume could (and should!) be a much more cathartic process than it actually is.
We invented a new type of coaching-infused resume-development model, which we eventually published in the Career Planning & Adult Development Journal (Vol 21, #4). It was Rebecca who, commenting on the therapeutic effects of using our method, came up with the monniker “Resume Therapy.”
Ah. Resume Therapy:
A collaborative process that leaves job-seekers feeling more confident, self-aware, focused, happy, and driven, in addition to churning out an actionable deliverable — that being a keyword-rich, uber-impressive, and authentically representational resume.
Based in proven therapeutic techniques, Resume Therapy draws from several psyschological modalities:
In plain terms, Resume Therapy leverages the therapeutic aspects of storytelling grounded in counseling psychology, human-centered coaching, and career development principles. Coaches guide the client in rediscovering their strengths, embracing unique talents, confronting shortcomings, and establishing congruence between what is and what could be.
It is a guided journey through your work history, bolstered by an intentional counseling approach designed to extract things you’ve forgotten, overlooked, or undervalued.
Resume Therapy is meant to be transparent; that is, you may not even realize it’s happening, until you reach the end of the session and you notice how energized you feel, how much more open your eyes are, and how many more (realistic and achievable) possibilities are in front of you.
It’s transformative, both for you and your resume.
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Each of our all-inclusive resume packages include Resume Therapy.
Looking for work is hard.
00:05
It’s lonely.
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It’s often fruitless.
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It takes up a lot of your time.
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It can get dark.
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And we all know this, and we all know somebody.
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We all know somebody who’s going through this right now.
00:19
And whether or not they share with you that they’re in a world of suck, you can be assured that they are.
00:28
And if.
00:29
If I can go by what my clients say, it’s that they don’t want to burden people, right?
00:36
So if you’re looking for work, you just don’t want to kind of lay on all that darkness into the cocktail hour, the happy hour you’re having with your friends, which is a noble thing.
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But you got to know these people, your friends, your colleagues, they’re suffering.
00:53
It’s hard.
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And so that leads you to think, hopefully, like, what?
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What can I do?
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And it often feels like there’s nothing you can do.
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I don’t have a job.
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How do I help out?
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But there are ways you can help.
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There are ways you can help immensely that won’t take much effort on your part.
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So the first thing I have three, I have three ideas.
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The first thing is initiate a hangout.
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And I don’t mean.
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You know, it is good to call them up and say, hey, let’s go like blow off some steam.
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But I’m talking about let’s focus on them.
01:28
So they should be doing this.
01:29
They should be reaching out to you and saying, hey, can we have a coffee?
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I want to talk to you about my looking for work.
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But a lot of people don’t do that for all kinds of reasons.
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So you, the person who’s stable with the job, who feels pretty secure right now, think about the people you know that are looking for work and reach out to them.
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I don’t know if you can hear my dog’s click clacky feet in the background.
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Hey, what can you do?
01:55
Home, home, studio.
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So reach out to your friends and and make it a point to say, hey, I know you’re looking for work and we never talk about your work.
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Why don’t we set up an appointment or just, you know, get a coffee, hang out, but let’s talk about what you’re going through, what you want to do next, and see if we can come up with some ideas.
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It’s like 30 minutes, maybe an hour, but you are giving them an appointment that is literally going to be the best thing in their day.
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So that’s one thing you can do.
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Another easy thing is just check in.
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So again, they’re not going to be forthcoming, but just to say, hey, I know you’re looking for work, that’s rough.
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Like what’s been going on with that?
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Just check in every once in a while.
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And the third thing.
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And this goes for people you don’t know.
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Take the call.
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And what I mean by that is when somebody reaches out by LinkedIn or by e-mail or phone or drops in or whatever, and they’re looking to do an informational interview, take the time to give it to them.
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I mean, when you’re looking for work, that is the greatest thing that can happen is getting somebody to speak with you, especially someone you don’t know.
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So what a gift you can give, right?
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20 minutes of your time.
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And you get to talk about yourself.
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You get to talk about your industry, your career.
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It’s fun.
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It’s actually a good time.
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So take the call.
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Take the call.
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Take, I mean, LinkedIn.
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Take a second.
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Look and see who they are.
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If you don’t like them, don’t respond, but take a few minutes.
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Maybe they’re an interesting person.
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Maybe at the end of the call, you have another ally.
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In your in your little industry, in your little neck of the woods, right.
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It’s always good to connect with people, but you’re really, really helping just by having that call.
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You don’t have to promise anything.
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It’s just being that bright light on the horizon.
04:03
Oh my God, this Thursday I’m talking to somebody at blah, blah, blah.
04:08
It just means the world.
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So I’m trying here cause I coach people on one side looking for work.
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Now I’m kind of coaching on the other side, people that have a job that are secure or maybe who are unemployed but just want to pitch in.
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If we help each other, we can relieve the suffering.
04:30
All right, people.
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So be well, be kind.
Wouldn’t you like to know where are the job creators at?
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Where are the job creators at?
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We’ve long been told that companies, large companies, are job creators.
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Big executives of large organizations create jobs.
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They’re the ones who create the jobs.
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Can we lay that myth?
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That lie to rest, please.
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All I see right now is big companies eliminating jobs.
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Job killers, job destroyers, not job creators.
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And I say this only half facetiously.
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I’m a I’m a business owner.
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I wouldn’t call myself a job creator.
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I have people that I work with, but I admit.
00:58
I’m not looking to hire 10 people when I can hire one.
01:04
My job as a as a business owner is to make sure the business keeps running.
01:08
And yeah, you can get sort of carried away with that and and try to cut corners every which way.
01:15
But the bottom line is a business is not a job creator.
01:19
A business is trying to create as few jobs as possible.
01:23
They should not get credit for creating the jobs.
01:29
So who or what should get credit?
01:34
You can make an argument for marketing.
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They do their job, marketing and sales, right?
01:40
They’re bringing in the business.
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But I think you got to go even farther.
01:45
You got to get to the root and the root, the job creators, the real job creators, drum roll, are consumers.
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Our buyers are people that get the product.
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They create the demand and that’s what makes a company hire, grow and build.
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So the real credit, the real job creator for the most part is us.
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And you know, most consumers are also workers.
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They’re also labor all the way up the ladder, right?
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We all buy stuff, but the power is really in the people in this case, in the people that buy stuff.
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Can we please give credit where credit is due?
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You know what I’m saying?
02:44
All right, take care, everybody.
Today, at my daughter’s college, the President ordered everyone to stop studying, cut classes, and have a collective day of rest.
We work hard in the US (as students AND professionals), and I think we forget the importance of taking breaks and messing around. It’s not only good for mental health, it’s good for the bottom line, if that’s your priority…
TRANSCRIPT:
Yay, it’s Mountain Day today at Smith College, which means the president calls all classes off.
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This is spur of the moment.
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No classes.
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Everybody out on the quad, get on a blanket, throw a Frisbee, eat some quiche.
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It’s just time to relax and unwind and take a break.
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And sometimes you need somebody to really.
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Force you into that for you to realize how important it was and how much you needed a break.
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So hats off to the president of Smith College and any other leadership that realizes the importance of play.
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This kind of was a personal experience for me yesterday.
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So I’m I’m coaching my daughter’s soccer team and we had practice, but it was super hot.
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So I said, you know what?
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No practice.
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You’re all coming over my house.
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And we’re going on a giant water slide.
01:00
And we did.
01:01
And the bonding was through the roof.
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It was really cute.
01:04
They were like chanting for each other.
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Give me an A, give me an L, you know, all that stuff.
01:11
So it ended up being super productive.
01:14
And I bring this up because we work a lot.
01:16
We’re a working society and there’s a lot of benefits with that.
01:22
But I think we forget the importance of stopping.
01:25
And taking a break.
01:27
And that’s not just for mental health.
01:29
It actually helps the work.
01:32
You become more creative, you become more relaxed, you become more collaborative.
01:36
Happenstance can happen.
01:39
There’s a lot of good things that happen outside of the traditional idea of what we call work that influences our work.
01:47
So remember, take a break.
LinkedIn is going crazy with their whole AI game. I think their intentions are good, but I’m not sure they’ve thought through the end-game: how it impacts the hiring process and hiring managers.
What happens when everyone has the same resume? What happens when everyone is the perfect candidate (at least on paper)?
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00:01
I’ve been mucking about in LinkedIn, playing with all the A I tools they have.
00:06
That little star seems to show up just about everywhere, and so I’m playing around with the resume stuff and it seems like pretty cool ideas at first, right?
00:18
You can figure out how good of a match you are for a job, for example.
00:25
I feel like there is a shadow lurking here though, and I’m curious if people have thought about it.
00:31
Maybe I’m thinking about it wrong, but it seems like so you you put up your resume and it will tell you where the gaps are and then it will give suggestions if not actually do the writing for you, but to change like what you need to change, what you need to add.
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And so I worry that people cause everybody wants the interview.
00:53
People want to have the best candidacy possible.
00:56
So what are they going to do?
00:57
They’re going to find a way to put things in their resume that may or may not be true, right?
01:04
Who’s going to really, when they get advice that they have gaps and they need to fill them, who’s going to walk away from that?
01:13
So I’m just sort of worrying that this is becoming a matchy, matchy game.
01:20
And not so much.
01:21
Hey, this is who I am.
01:24
Why don’t you look at that and figure out if I’d be a good fit?
01:28
It’s kind of more about did I check every box?
01:32
Do I have every keyword?
01:35
And I’m really curious to hear from people who have been hiring, from recruiters, from the people with the jobs.
01:41
Are you seeing a disconnect between what you get on a LinkedIn profile or a resume and what happens?
01:49
In the interview, cause I feel like that area is widening a bit.
01:55
And again, I don’t know, I’m not hiring on mass, so perhaps it’s not an issue.
02:03
I’m seeing like it might be.
02:05
Let me know what you’re thinking.
