speaking to the pain & not apologizing w/jean leggett who is an amazing coach/speaker/resume writer

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to, to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. So, Jean, let's dive into it. Who are you? What do you do? And then we'll go from there. I like to tell people I'm a recovering standup comic who is now a career coach after having been an independent video game developer for eight years.

So a little bit of everything. I love that. You're my first standup comedian on the show. You know, I thank you. I'm excited. And don't expect me to be funny. That's fine. I'm not funny either. I'm not funny, so I'm good. So Jean, so yeah, talk about your story. You know, again, I think you have an amazing story. I think we'll resonate with a ton of people. So if you don't mind sharing on kind of how you got to where you're at now. Yeah, absolutely. So I started coaching back in 2008. And you know, I went and did my coach training. I was like, okay, this is the thing that I was meant to do.

I've been, I was that kid on the playground that everybody came and told their problems to. That was me. I was the kid therapist. So fast forward, many, many years. I, gosh, I think it was 31 when I finally found that thing. I was like, okay, this is the thing. Left that and just sort of started up a video game company with my husband. And then when COVID hit, we were at the tail end of our startup, we ran out of money. And things were, it's not my podcast, but things were pretty dire. Let's just say there was a lot of going on and somebody said, hey, would you mind taking a look at my resume?

Yeah, okay, I'm a little bit with words like words in my jam. Yeah and the words in my jam, so I looked at his resume and I realized that He wasn't speaking to the pain now Taylor I don't know about you like when you were teaching people how to write resumes Do you think about that hiring managers have pain and suffering? Yeah, I don't think of it that way. I think of hiring majors don't have time to read through your resume. So yes Yes. Yes. So we've all watched military movies where it's like, hoo-ah! And hoo-ah is actually an acronym. It's heard, understood, and acknowledged as in, I honestly heard your commands, or understand what you're asking for, Mr.

I acknowledge responsibility of it. And I think that if we were as candidates to just stop and listen and read those job descriptions closely, we could hoo-ah our way into an interview. And so what I realized was like I'm reading through these people's resumes and they so many people don't know how to write resumes because we're not teaching them. And to be honest, now that I have this like awareness, I don't think I knew how to I wrote the traditional resume way back in the day. Right? Like here are the tasks that I did. So anyways, fast forward to 600 clients later in the last three years globally.

And work with about 90% of people are in video games because that's like my primary niche and the framework which I'm happy to dive into is the non chronological. Yeah so so yeah in full transparency, Gene, Gene does things differently than I do and there is no right answer right I always say this I always say I'm only one recruiter right I'm not the end all be all you can always shop around my my advice to 10 other recruits in the Nashville area and they're probably gonna disagree with you. So I love having people on that have different thoughts that do things differently. I think one of the worst things, and I'm sure you can attest to this, just the group thinking tech and doing things the way we've always done.

And I'm all about bucking the trend. I think that's the same. So I'm really glad, Gene, we're gonna talk about this because I think you have an amazing thought process around resume. So let's go ahead and dive in. Talk to me, talk to the group. We got some more people tuning in, Alberto, Kayla, Brett, Chris, Christopher. It's great to see you from the world. I love it. Talk, let's start breaking it down. Talking to the pain in the resume, non-cronological talk about that. All right, all right. So I call it the VIP pillars because I had to come up with some snappy acronym, right? I love the VIP.

So this is, I am the acronym queen. The ABCs of VIP, I got you covered. So VIP stands for validation, integration and people. So what would happen if we took all of your career history, even because I work a lot in video games, your hobby interests and things like that, how do we like segment that out? So validation, that top pillar is going to be like, what is the defining expertise that I would be hired for? So, you know, we were talking earlier about hiring managers, sorry, engineering managers. So when you get to that level where you're an engineering manager or you are wanting to be a director of engineering, that first pillar is gonna be engineering leadership.

I wanna read all of the bullets underneath that. That tell me that you are a driver of innovation or that you are a people leader. So tell me about people leadership, thought leadership. I wanna see all of that. The second pillar might be that day to day. So maybe it's like product strategy, strategy and execution. I wanna see that. So it's just a different way of telling that story. And the names of those pillars are kind of inconsequential, but they do mean something. It's just a way that we can group and highlight very specific things. For example, I work with a lot of project managers and producers.

If you're just starting out, you know, maybe your top pillars, project coordination. But as you get into like your four Honesty Strategy and Execution, you get into your eight Honesty Leadership and Strategy. And it just, it changes the tone of how you walk into the room. And I like to say that it gives you a little bit of big stick energy so that they can feel your own. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you think, and Brad, I see a question, we'll get to your question in a second, where do you think after reviewing resumes and everything for the last, you know, two years or so? Where do people really make like, if you could give like, here's the top three things, people are truly missing in the resumes, what do you think those those would be?

One, I think it is not understanding that the resume is about you, but it's not for you. It's for a hiring manager. It is for a hiring manager. You got resume math. You resume math, right? I want to see that byline at the top eight years of experience. Blah, blah, blah. You got four to six seconds from a hiring manager. Use it wisely. Having a clean layout. Bam. I want to be able to pick up that information as quickly as I can. And when I started this, I didn't know anything about writing resumes. It literally was all through intuition. And when I sent to clients that are coming to me when I charged way less.

But then it's like, why don't you go grab five to 10 job postings of what you're looking at and we'll look at them together and we will pull the language. We could repurpose language, take inspiration from what exists. Because again, whoa, they have pain. And if we can pull from their pain, then we can speak to, oh, I'm a combat designer in video games, I have created Blobby Blah, enemy Blobby Blah, you know, you're pulling from the pain. Then when they go through the applicant tracking software, they're like, bing, it's a match. And we can romance each other in an interview. Absolutely. It's so good.

I feel like I know what I'm talking about, but it's always nice when people like reaffirm the thing they're talking about, especially if you've never met before. So thank you for that. Brett comes in here, quick question. Thank you, Brett, for asking. I've been editing my cover letter with the company and job description in mind per application. Do you suggest editing the resume? Actually, you literally just answered that question. It's very interesting. So I encourage my clients to just have like one standard resume because the way that I do it, it's kind of like it's a catch all. It really is meant to highlight all of the important pieces.

Cover letter. So I start off with what I call the validation pillar. In fact, if you do hashtag Gene's job tips on Twitter, you'll find a bunch of my resources. So it's the validation paragraph. Hi, I'm so-and-so I had this many years of experience. The impact paragraph, here's what I'm doing that is most relevant. The pain point paragraph, pick out three to five things that they have identified as their core pains and they're going to feel like you took the time to read the job posting and oh my god Taylor who are they understand us so and they don't realize that their pain is kind of generic like every marketing company with a marketing position is the same pain but they feel like you actually took the time to personalize something for them and then of course the personal paragraph like I love your Instagram account because it is xyz or I love this product or your class store reviews are phenomenal, but it's the cover letter where I think you can make a lot of impact and I don't know about you Taylor.

I mean some people feel like they're completely unnecessary. I don't think it's going to win you a job, but I think it may win you an interview. So I, you know, people ask me all the time and I tell you what, if you want to start fights on LinkedIn, talk about resume writing, LinkedIn resume, LinkedIn writing or cover letter writing, right? Because people lose, people lose their damn minds. And so, you know, I think for me being an agency recruiter, I don't have much experience with cover letters. And because because of that, I can't speak to it very well. I I the big thing that I say with cover letters is we need to you need to write your cover letter.

If I got you an elevator for 60 seconds, and I said, what are your greatest accomplishments? And you rattle off your three to me. That's what needs to go in your cover letter. That's kind of what I say But I love I love what you just spelled out there with the VIP thing because I think that's You know that's really good and bear bear comes in here too, right? Bear time major. He goes I don't read cover letters a lot of majors don't again You know it's like what Jean said. I don't think it's the end all be all But I don't think it hurts.

I don't think it hurts You know it's super funny because I know that people are there are even recruiters that don't like a deconstructive resume. They don't like the thing that I do and at the same time I have had so many clients come back and say, oh my god, this is the best resume they've ever read. And so you can have, I love that we have all these different opinions. At the end of the day what I'm trying to do is just make it super easy for the internal recruiter for a hiring manager to be able to see what are the key accomplishments and if If we can pull those out and put them in a very nice clean way to read them, then leave one.

And not only that, like we were talking earlier prior to getting on here, is this idea that why are we apologizing in our resumes? Like this resume is meant to be like the beel and all bride sheet, right? Our careers while they may or may not define us, this is the thing that pays for everything else in our life. Yeah. We don't live to work. We're supposed to be working to live. And wouldn't it be great that we had something that is like, Oh, I feel amazing about the work that I do. I feel amazing about the skills and talents that I've been to the table.

No apologies, the unapologetic resume. So that's really, it's about breaking down those pieces in your brain too. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Um, uh, real quick. Kevin comes in here. What's that hashtag again? hashtag jeans job tips jeans job tips I know alliteration and acronyms yeah you listen I'm gonna remember so much as I love acronyms like I was that kid in college and high school that would have to like sing songs or do acronyms so you're like really resonating with me this morning listen next time you listen to a military movie and you hear who I'm gonna tweet you I'm watching White Christmas and it's the military scene and I'm thinking I'm I think about it.

All right, more more encompassing here. What are your thoughts on the importance of listing soft skills on a resume? I go ahead. That is such a great question because I recently had somebody, I asked my clients to bring back a compassionate first brain dump when they come back to session number two. And some of them have like, I give them 300 examples, but I whittle it down to like five. Here's a five that you should work on. And some of them came back and it was just so heavy with all of these soft skills. and I said, I love that you have these. But let's put those into impact statements.

So expound on that, because I'm interested we're gonna head because I obviously have mine in my head and I'll share after you share. Well, so we have the- Like great communicator. Great communicator. Yes, so great communicator. Talk about how you communicate and lead conversations with stakeholders or that you have worked remotely with global teams, you know, those kinds of things. For a lot of my early career people, the VIP pillars, like for like a game designer, might be design, implementation, communication, and collaboration, that third pillar is all about your people skills. And that's the piece that, Ed is one client who's just fresh out of school, and he's like, Jean, that whole third pillar is what got me the job in addition to the other stuff, as I met their checklist, they were like, oh, you can communicate.

Ah, sorry, that was a little pitchy, but this whole idea that you can sing and make the birds fly to you, that's what every hiring manager wants is a great communicator. There are ways to talk about that without saying attention to a detail. Yeah, great leader, great communicator. Give me examples, right? Great communicator. I managed five teams across six time zones that raised up to 50 people and everybody was always successful. On projects from 12 to 18 months in duration with the budget of $4 million. Yes. There you go. Same. Paint a story with your words. Paint a story. That's what I've been saying too.

Mohammed, it's great to see you. Morgan comes in and he is, I think cover letters are more of a filtering tool to track serious applicants and filter out those just clicking and applying. What are your thoughts on this? Yes, that's great. And pray, spray and pray. I don't know if you've heard this, but I think it's 80 to 85 of percent of applicants are immediately discarded from the outset. I had a friend post for a marketing manager position on Indeed, he's like, Gina got 500 applicants. And some of these people were working food service jobs. No disrespect, I did that for a couple of years.

But they could not speak to that person might have marketing skills, but we'll never go. Because they weren't speaking to the payment, just hitting easy apply, easy apply, easy apply. So yeah, I do think that in this instance cover letters are a great filtering tool because it shows that you took the five to 10 minutes and that just puts you ahead of the other candidates, especially if you can articulate speech to pain. I love that. So let's kind of move in a little too. I know we've talked about brief about not apologizing and you and I obviously really really clicked before we went live about this in that I feel like there's so many folks that are just like oh I don't mean to brag, right?

when they talk to me or maybe when they talk to you about writing a resume. And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no. Now is the time to brag. Now is the time to like really put it out there. Why, why do you, and obviously I have my answer in my head, but I'm curious to hear yours, why do you think it's so hard for folks to brag? Oh my gosh. Well, I think two things, it's gender and culture, right? So I'm Canadian. We're naturally very apologetic. So I think it's hilarious that my the book kind of work on is like the unapologetic resume.

Breaking the Canadian rules. I'm a Canadian. Unapologetically whatever and then like just by a Canadian. Yeah, sorry, sorry not sorry. So I think there's that cultural aspect. So I work with clients in Europe and Southeast Asia and Latin America and the way that they talk about themselves is not from the place of American bravado. And like the rest of the world looks at Americans and goes, wow, you guys really think highly of yourselves. And I think that that's a selling point in certain areas. So there's a culture piece of it. And then I think it's also a gender piece of it. So I noticed, especially with my my my female clients, is that it's like, we're raised to be polite and modest.

And so this whole idea that we're taking up space even is scary and daunting. But the more that I have done this work, the more I realize that my male clients feel just as, I don't know if it's that they don't want to brag, it's they feel like it's in bad taste. Yeah. But literally, this is the only time that we want you to like bring your big guns. Yeah. But don't be tone deaf. Right? I mean, I think... Don't be tone deaf. Yeah. And I am all for shining the biggest shine sparkle on your resume. I tell my clients never put anything in there that isn't the slightest bit true.

Sure. Because if somebody goes line by line in your resume in an interview and you're like, Um, er, so it's got to be, it's got to match. You know, you just, you, that what you just said is actually popped in my head as a great idea for an interview tip prep. I think what Jean just said was brilliant. Go through line by line in your resume and see if you can recite experience and what you've done in front of a mirror in your resume. I think that's great. I've never talked about that before. This is the first time he's saying that, and what Gene said I think is brilliant.

I think a great way to prep for an interview, have your resume out in front of you and read a bullet point, and then ask yourself, can I explain it? I'm sure you've talked about the star method tons of times on the podcast. I haven't. What is the star method? No. That's okay. I know. I highly recommend that people go in Google. So star method is situation, task, action, and result. So it's a very specific framework for answering interview questions. So you can Google that if you're looking at director or above or like leadership management roles, do star method leadership? And there are very specific types of questions that they will ask.

And I love that because it's like, so tell me that a time when you had a conflict with your coworker. I don't want to hear your off the cuff. Like, why are we still doing off the cuff interviews? No, this is a very serious undertaking. You should have a story ready. You should have it in your pocket. I even make my clients right at the tell me statement because they, you know, then they get on the phone call they were just like, so tell me a little bit about yourself. I don't want to hear about your cat and your golden girl's collection. I shared that with you, Taylor, because you know, we're friends now.

I love it. This whole idea that you can answer each question and interview with a story is another reason why if we're more intentional about what we great in our resume, the stories are already there. Yeah, so true. Yeah, I mean, again, if you haven't seen a theme in this talk for the last 23 minutes, it's storytelling. I mean, it really, really is and being able to speak to everything very clearly. And I think the best way to do that is to use the star method now, which I now know. Thank you, Dean, for that. But then also, like, really understanding your story. You know, one thing, Jean, I did, because I do some, you know, one-on-one resume and career counseling stuff.

And this one girl came out of, she was coming out of college. And we did an interview. It was an hour interview prep. And I said, hey, tell me about yourself. And she couldn't get through it. And we spent literally 45 minutes of the hour perfecting her 60 second spiel. She messaged me, got the job out of college because she said, I'm telling you, she goes, I was able to tell my story and that set the tone for the rest of the interview. And she goes, I could not have done it without you. I freaking love that. And there's nothing better than getting that message from somebody that says, oh my God, I've been collecting my, I'm pretty consistent with asking my clients for LinkedIn testimonials and like three away from 200.

That's awesome. That's pretty good, right? That's a lot. And there's lots of people who don't talk about their work with me because depending on where they are in the cycle, they don't wanna like show their hand. And it comes down to like, how do you see yourself? How do you wanna show up and be seen in the world? And like, I don't know about you, Taylor, but what is the craziest thing that you've ever seen on an engineering resume? I mean, I think, I think just the formatting, I've seen a Trocious format. Have you seen a five-page year because that's what I was working with?

Oh, well, I've seen 16 pages before. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. In terms of content, I don't, I'll tell my head out. I don't like in the resume, I can't think of anything, but like format. I've seen a crazy amount of links and pictures and it's just, it's been, it's been a mess. It's been a mess. Well, you know, I were talking about the pillars and having that defining pillar at the very top. Yeah. I had this client and I, and she was, she was a life coaching client. And I said, you know, we're gonna go through this, but I'm gonna encourage you, even though you didn't come for career coaching, let's do the VIP pillars.

Let's just do this, because I wanna see how you see yourself, because it informs so much of your life. Oh, I love that. And her first pillar was heart-centered technical leadership. I like that. Which is radical. I love that. Multiple interviews, multiple offers, because she was able to so clearly articulate what it was that she was looking for to find and values alignment. So, and that's like, I call that career privilege. At some point in your career, you're going to have worked enough that you can say, hey, these are my values. I want to find alignment with the company that I'm looking for. When you're early in your career, sometimes you just have to suck it up and take a job to get that experience.

Sure, that makes sense. Kevin ask question a few minutes ago Kevin Sarge is now getting to it. How would I explain my military deployment overseas as a software engineer where I learned on the job as work experience to a civilian company? Gosh I guess it all depends like if you are talking about creating apps and playing apps, frameworks, GUI, like there's language, there's language that's transferable and feel feel free to drop me a like Kevin, I have some templates that I can share with you. Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, my two cents here is I would put US military as your company. I would put the month and year start and end day of the project, I would put the location.

I would then tab down one and I would put the company that you're at, that you were on contract for. Then I would put in parentheses on contract with the government and then write out your project list. That's what I would do. So. Get those impact statements. Yeah, so if I'm a recruiter, I opened up your resume, Kevin. See this guy was deployed in the military, but I also see where he did some consulting work at a company as a software developer, right? It's very easy stated, so that's my two cents. So Gina, as we, again, time flies when you're having fun with friends, especially first time friends.

As we wrap up here, I have three questions. This is the first question. Any last bits of encouragement, tips, tricks, thoughts, concerns, anything? I feel like one thing that we don't talk about in the whole job hunting and career sector is compassion. Ooh, please explain. Right, like this is hard stuff. One, it requires you to take a hard, honest look at yourself with compassion because you might not be able to accurately benchmark where you are in your career. So compassion is the first thing, I think, too. This is the kind of thing that you should be investing either time, money, or energy into, because this is such a huge part of 40 to 60 years to finding out how long it is to retirement.

40 to 60 years of your life, that's a good chunk of your life. And yet we apply for things without even a second thought. So you don't have to hire a coach, you can read some great books, You can go to the library that goes with free resources. There's so much out there, that you have to be willing to do the discovery work. So invest that time and energy into yourself, compassion. I think those are the biggest things. And check your ego. Yeah. Check your ego. And that's like separate from like, I know my stuff, I got my big stick energy and walking in the room with that confidence.

But comment this from like a place of learners mind. And what are the opportunities here for me? 100%. I love that. Bao comes in here. The value and pillar finding sounds awesome. Is there an exercise that I can use to find my pillars and values? Stay tuned for the book. And I'm also working on a pilot program. But I believe episode three and four of my podcast talk about mission statements, personal values, et cetera. I love that. Yeah. about check check out it's good to see on the show buddy but definitely check out Jean for that as well all of her resources. Alright so second's last question a little fun here.

What's your favorite Halloween movie? Okay there's one there's one that's recent it's got Vince Vaughn and it's like a freaky Friday leads Friday the 13th. Really? What's the title of it? I think it's called freaky. Okay I think it's called freaky so it's like a comedic take on freaky Friday. I have really, really enjoyed that. I love that. I love that mine is a I'm asking this question now for the rest of the week. Mine is going mines the same mines Ichabod Crane and I just sleepy Hollywood Johnny Depp. Yes. Kind of like the older movie a little older, but just a little older. I'm 45 and I will look great.

But we have that on D and K drop the That's right. So I have that on DVD because I am old school. It's on Netflix. I think it's on Netflix. I need to watch it. I mean, well, you know what? I may watch tonight. My wife's got Girl's Night tonight. I think I'm going to take some time. It's a little self-care and watch the legend of the 8-part burn. It's a little face mask going on. Watch the TV all out. Exactly. All right. Last professional question. We'll wrap it up here and again. Thank you for everybody hanging out with Jean and I this morning. Please go connect with Jean on our social media platforms.

She's a wealth of knowledge. And I'm pretty stoked we met. So the reason why this is called guidance counselor 2.0 is for many reasons. But one of the reasons is we don't really have guidance counselors adults. We had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, college, and really now more than ever. Like we don't really have someone to just turn to an ask a career coach question, right? So what is one piece of advice you would give your younger self from a career perspective? Oh my god. What a brilliant question. And I think you're so bang on about that idea of we don't have guided counselors as adults.

Yeah, like the probably the one time in our lives where we probably need them the most, we don't, we don't have them. We have therapists or a big fan of, but not guidance counselors per se. Oh gosh. You know, sometimes when I share the story of my life, I didn't really fall in love with myself until I was 42. And when I look back at this weird eclectic turn that I took from comedy to admin, to start up life, to coaching. What I do right now is the nexus of all of that. So just trust that all that crazy chaos, those detours, they all add up to having some great learning value and you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay.

I love that, that's awesome. Well y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us today. Please go connect with Gene. I hope y'all have a great rest of your Wednesday. tomorrow morning, unicorn finers, my other podcast will be live at nine 30 am central with Motivo health during the telehealth space doing some pretty cool stuff. And they definitely have a unicorn factor about them. And then Friday, I will be live with my first guest of my team. So over the next few weeks, I'm slowly going to start introducing you to my team, not that I've kept them in a closet for the last year and a half, but I have my goal is for you to know my team better, know who we are.

And because at the end of the day, my entire team is trying to build community with engineers across the country. So that is Friday. Her name is Sloane Bartley. That's why I'm very excited for you to get to know her. Y'all have an amazing day. Jean, thank you. Stay on real quick as we end it. But y'all have a good one. Bye. Bye. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening.

quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Dessin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.