Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00
Hi and welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life. I am Chris Villanueva the co founder and CEO of Let’s Eat, Grandma, which was ranked by the balance as the best resume service for job seekers. Well, today we have a minisode, where I try and answer a commonly asked question in 10 minutes or less. If you’ve heard anything from the recruiting space, it’s that you need to create a targeted resume that speaks to the job you’re applying for. While this is generally sound advice, it leaves many job seekers confused about how many resumes they actually need. Well, in this episode, I can confidently say that I will provide the right answer for you. And I’ll even go above and beyond and giving you the most effective way to create and organize your resumes. This advice will work if you’re crafting your own resume, or if you’re using a resume service, like Let’s Eat, Grandma. And a brief reminder to subscribe to this podcast. If you are a job seeker. I’m telling you, I provide the best advice out there on the market. And I know that’s a bold claim. But what I tried to do is give specific answers to targeted questions. And I try to answer all of them. We’ve had 279 episodes as of today. And I also bring in some of the foremost experts in the career space. So if you are a job seeker looking to land that dream job fast and want to feel a sense of connection, then definitely subscribe. And I promise I will follow through. All right, so I will open up this episode with a story. Because again, the title is How many resumes do I need?

I had a friend, let’s call her Jenny. I like to keep things anonymous. And she came up to me and said, Chris, oh my gosh, I’ve spent so much time on my resume, I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I’ve spent on my resume. So I’m like, okay, Jenny, how how much time I just I actually generally want to know, because if it’s a lot of time, then I’ll start to feel guilty. 80 hours, is what she told me, she spent 80 hours the last week on crafting her resume and sending it out to jobs. And instantly my heart dropped because I knew that she had listened to my podcast and read our blog. And she took it really seriously that you should create a bunch of targeted resumes. But my heart dropped because I never would want somebody to spend this insane amount of time working on their resume.

Because number one, if you’re spending this much time, then you probably can refine your strategy to apply more effectively, right use networking and the other things that I’d like to talk about. But second, it just was an inefficient way of crafting a resume, this person was redoing the resume over and over again because it didn’t seem to work. And she would bounce it to one job posting to another. And so what I want to do is give you the best advice possible for you to efficiently craft and edit your resumes and and do it in the least amount of time.

And yes, I always recommend using a resume service because we get a lot of this legwork and all this stuff done for you, especially if you’re a busy person and you’re able to do so I always recommend using a resume service, whether it’s ours or someone else’s. But no one should spend this amount of time crafting a resume should be mostly a one and done kind of scenario. And it should involve tweaking. So let’s answer how many resumes you need in your job search here. The answer is you need as many resumes as different job types you’re applying for all elaborate on that in a second here, because I know it can be confusing if you need as many resumes as the different types of jobs you’re applying for. So I’ll give you the three steps that you need to take in crafting your resume here, which will give you a profound understanding of what it means to create different resumes for different job types.

Step one is to get organized. So I’ll preface all of this advice in saying that you need to have your career figured out you need to know generally what direction you’re going in your career. If you haven’t done this type of soul searching yet, please reach out to a career coach, or put in the time and deep thought and figure out where you’re going next. I know it takes time. But none of this advice is really going to hit home unless you know generally what types of jobs in general that you’d like to apply for. But once you do have that figured out, you need to start pulling some job postings in front of you and figure out how to organize them, how are they different?

So what I’d recommend is getting all the different types of job postings that you would be applying for. And then again, you’re asking the question, how many different types of jobs Am I applying for? So when you’re gazing, you’re just you’re looking over these different job postings. Do the keywords look different? For example, if I’m seeing the keyword analyst in one type of job posting, come up over and over again. And then I have another set of job postings in which the keyword coordinator comes up, then I’m probably looking at two different types of jobs that I’m applying for really easy rule of thumb is to look at the job title, because often they’re classified in such a way that gives you the answer that you need. So how many resumes do I need? Again? The answer is how many different types of jobs Am I applying for? So if I’m applying for a marketing coordinator, position, and then I’m also applying for a marketing analyst position, those are probably two different types of positions.

Now, notice, I didn’t say that this is your ultimate answer, because there are certain instances in which you might be applying for, for example, that marketing analyst position in one industry, and then you might be applying for a marketing analyst position. And another type of industry, I don’t know your specific situation, maybe you have different types of job, maybe those positions have different types of requirements. But you need to figure out for yourself, generally, how many different types of jobs I’m applying for. And that is your answer for how many different resumes you should have. So let’s say you figured it out, you know that, okay, I’ve looked at all my job postings, I’ve reviewed keywords, and I know that I’m applying for, let’s say, two different types of positions, I’ve really narrowed it down. And I’ve classified it into two different types of jobs I’m applying for Well, the next step is to make sure you have a good master resume, this is the thing that’s going to save you a lot of time. But your master resume is essentially a resume that you have loaded up on your computer ready to go, that has all of your accomplishments, skills, and experiences all on one single document. I love this technique, especially if you are just trying to keep track of everything you’ve done. So quick point of clarification, your master resume is not going to be sent out to anyone, this is a document that’s probably too long, it’s too all encompassing. And like I said, you want to be targeted as possible. So don’t send this thing out to any recruiters or really anyone, it’s mostly for yourself, in order to really have that all inclusive document, like I said, to build your resume off of after you have your master resume, what you want to do is you want to just copy that master resume over onto another document, just duplicate it and cut it down and refine it for the jobs you’re applying for.

So like I said, in this example, if I’m applying for two different types of jobs, what I would do is I would duplicate that resume twice, to where I have two separate documents. And I would refine and cut down those two resumes to where they’re short and targeted for the analyst position and the coordinator position. really as simple as that. And again, good resume service should do this. Well, they should look at the types of jobs you’re applying for, and cut it down and refine it in such a way to where it looks like you’re a good match for the role.

But it’s really that simple. You don’t need 20 different resumes, just because you’re applying for 20 different types of jobs. And there is a way to get targeted without spending too much time on it. The question that I often get here at this point is well, what do we actually change on my resume from resume to resume, I’m not telling you to be a total chameleon, and have two resumes that look just totally different. It’s like, oh, my gosh, is this the same person? No, you’re gonna have shared accomplishments and experiences across your resumes. But what you can do is you can look closely at that summary statement at the very top of your resume. And you can also look closely at how your resume is ordered. As well as that very last experience you have on your resume, because that is the stuff that really matters. And it’s also the stuff that it’s not going to take you too much time if you have a good understanding of the jobs you’re applying for. So at this point, you’re done. Yes, you can tweak your resume out for the different companies you’re applying for, you can get even more specific. But even then, I wouldn’t recommend spending too much time doing this, because it’s just gonna take you a lot of time. And it’s probably not going to serve you that well. So this should answer your question, how many resumes do I need? You need as many resumes as types of jobs you’re applying for? And you can figure this out by having a good, cold hard look at all the different job postings you’re applying for. And that’s really your answer. It’s really simple. So hopefully you found this answer to be useful.

If you have any more questions or this generated more confusion that I welcome you to email us at Let’s Eat, Grandma ([email protected]) and cite this episode. Let us know what your questions are. And if you are looking for resume service, and you have questions about it, you can always email help at letseatgrandma.com and we’ll help you get it figured out. Thank you so much for tuning in. This was a really fun episode and I can’t wait to see you next time Career Warrior Podcast!

And before you go remember if you’re not seeing the results you want and you’re Job Search. Our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast. Thanks and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai