Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Alt here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Foreign hey there everybody and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host Diana Alt and today my guest Erica Recamp and I are going to dig into all things resumes, particularly her new research report about generative AI resume feedback from the job seeker perspective, not the expert resume writer perspective. Erica is an executive resume writer and job search advisor for the Captivators, positioning C suite executive and board leaders for their next steps in their career. She also serves as an advisory board member for some job search AI startups and as a speaker in residence for a few different executive networking communities. Like some of that's a little bit I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Diana Alt [00:01:16]:
She has some of the stuff on her LinkedIn if you want to look at that later. So welcome to the show, Erica. I'm so glad we got to do this. Me too.

Erica Reckamp [00:01:26]:
I always love talking to you.

Diana Alt [00:01:28]:
I'm entertaining. But we're here in service of the people. We're going to have a good time talking, but we're here in service of the people. You're the fastest turnaround ever. For me to say I saw you do something, I must record you on a podcast immediately because I think it was like last Wednesday you started talking about your researcher. Well, this is two. We're recording this on Tuesday 21st October, and just last week you released this report or I first saw this report and I was like, I must talk to Erica. This is critical.

Diana Alt [00:02:04]:
So it's, it's, it's usually a little bit of a lead time to coordinate with people. So thanks for.

Erica Reckamp [00:02:10]:
Yeah, no Diana calls, I'm gonna answer.

Diana Alt [00:02:12]:
Oh, hear that everybody? I want to kind of start with a little bit of your, like the thing that I think is really who you are at your core, which is a writer. So all up and down your LinkedIn is writing, writing, writing. Like way back since God was a boy, you got a college degree in English and so I wanted to know what is the first time you remember writing and loving it? Like even if you were a little kid, like when do you remember starting and like what were you writing? What was the circumstances?

Erica Reckamp [00:02:47]:
Tell us about all. Definitely writing as a child, I would write plays for my sister and my best friend. We would perform Them and you know, we would charge like a nickel.

Diana Alt [00:03:00]:
Right on.

Erica Reckamp [00:03:01]:
And we thought we were really. Wow. We're gonna be able to buy so much candy at the dime store, of course.

Diana Alt [00:03:08]:
Oh, the dime store. That's so much fun. So creative writing, plays, did you do other types of, like, what other kinds of writing?

Erica Reckamp [00:03:17]:
Poetry. You know, even by, you know, high school, I was, I was publishing, right. It wasn't just like, I'm gonna just do stuff in my, in my high school. Like I was actually sending it out, getting it published in anthologies and, and in books. So I was really interested in it. But you know, it's, it's really interesting how that evolves. Like your love of story, your love of, of character, and finding those elements of truth and having people experience something when they read your writing and then how that evolves over time.

Diana Alt [00:03:50]:
Did you like, did you like, like research or like nonfiction? The kind of stuff you would have to do in like an English composition class that wasn't creative stuff. Did you enjoy that too? Or were you always more of a creative writing person?

Erica Reckamp [00:04:04]:
That's a good question. I think I started getting more into, you know, the non fiction data side of things in late high school, university and because some of the. I'm sure you would get to this, but once I reached university, I was tapped by professors to ghostwrite for them.

Diana Alt [00:04:28]:
Oh, wow.

Erica Reckamp [00:04:29]:
So they had publication requirements, right? And meanwhile they're trying to teach and they're trying to do their own research and passion projects, but they need to hit that, that publication quota. So they would say, hey, go to Northwestern Library, do this research for me, send me a couple chapters or take a look at what I've already written, make it better. Or here are some interviews I did. Transcribe them, make them sound cohesive, right? Find some themes, let's create some sort of collection. So in doing that, you know, I started writing books about agriculture. Something that you wouldn't necessarily be like, yeah, I want to talk about fertilizer in Anya, but.

Diana Alt [00:05:09]:
But my dad was a farmer, so I think it's funny writing about agriculture.

Erica Reckamp [00:05:14]:
You're like, I would read it and.

Diana Alt [00:05:16]:
My mom was an English teacher at the community college level. So I grew up writing too, but not publishing like you did. I do remember the very first thing I ever wrote. It was I was in like the gifted and talented program when I was in elementary school. And when I was in first grade, I wrote a banger of a story called Billy and the Hamburgers. And I still have this in my house somewhere. It's like, on laminated paper. Like, your handwriting's so bad when you're seven years old that the teacher has to write it.

Diana Alt [00:05:45]:
And then I illustrated it. It's, like, laminated. And basically, Billy ate too many hamburgers. It was his favorite.

Erica Reckamp [00:05:52]:
Life lessons.

Diana Alt [00:05:53]:
Life lessons. We need a vegetable from time to time. Um, and then when I got in high school, I really liked writing, but I never considered myself, like, a creative writer. I was crushing it on, like, the persuasive writing.

Erica Reckamp [00:06:06]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:06:07]:
And all of that kind of stuff, which is super interesting because you and I both work on resumes. That's your bread and butter. I do, like, holistic career coaching, and resumes are part of it. I do persuasion, part of a resume. You do storytelling, part of resume. Two sides of the same coin. So.

Erica Reckamp [00:06:26]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:06:26]:
I just want to nerd out about your writing because I think that. I think there's a lot of people that think, oh, well, you know, most resume writers, they were just. They were recruiters, and so they got in it because they know hiring. And I'm like, there's plenty of those. Some of us are just word nerds.

Erica Reckamp [00:06:42]:
There's so many different sources of resume writers.

Diana Alt [00:06:44]:
Yes.

Erica Reckamp [00:06:45]:
There's so many different channels to that profession. Yeah. No, I. Even from the resume writing perspective, that ghost writing element is huge. I want it to be in your voice, not mine, not ChatGpt's. Right. It. So I.

Erica Reckamp [00:07:01]:
There's a thorough analysis of, you know, what's your preferred verb default? Is it infinitives? Is it gerunds? Do you. Serial comma. No, serial comma. How do you tend to structure sentences? Do you interrupt yourself? Some people, like, conceptually, they just pile and pile and pile and pile. They get so excited, and then it turns into this really long run on sentence, and they just so into it.

Diana Alt [00:07:22]:
Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:07:22]:
That's really captivating. Right. So when we look at voice, when we look at even how somebody uses prepositions can vary widely regionally. So I'm just writing what I think is quote, unquote correct.

Diana Alt [00:07:36]:
I get those. I get the voice of people differently. I think about it differently. I think I'm natively doing what you're doing. And, like, the next resume I do, I have a new client, and I'm working on his resume next week. He's a product manager, which is, like, my area that I was in last before I left corporate. So I'm gonna have, like, your little words in the back of my head whenever I do that. So you were writing as a kid.

Diana Alt [00:08:00]:
You sold plays For a nickel. You did all this stuff and then you went into, like, how did you go from. I graduated with this English degree, and then I moved forward, and now I'm running this, like, executive C suite board, resume writing, all the things. How did you get there? Tell about that journey. So I write executive resumes when you're 22 years old and have them actually close, but. But not very many people do it correct and do it effectively. So.

Erica Reckamp [00:08:35]:
And I'm a huge weirdo because I'm actually a high school dropout.

Diana Alt [00:08:39]:
Stop.

Erica Reckamp [00:08:40]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:08:41]:
Really? So.

Erica Reckamp [00:08:42]:
Yes. So our high school was a bit scary. There was some. Some violence, some gang activity, and it was very intimidating to me. Like, just really. My biology book, like, let me get my locker, you know, stop beating your. Stop beating him up. I couldn't handle it, so I dropped out.

Erica Reckamp [00:08:58]:
At 16, I tested into three different schools, full scholarship in their honors program.

Diana Alt [00:09:05]:
Nice.

Erica Reckamp [00:09:05]:
And I just said, I'm done. Uh, so I was in university very young, so I finished pretty young. And then, like I said, I was tapped to write people's books. I was ghostwriting. I wound up being an editor for the African Literature association and ghostwriting for some Nobel Pulitzer Prize winners. Doing so, however, I felt a massive identity complex. Right? Like, why is this white girl from the suburbs.

Diana Alt [00:09:36]:
Writing?

Erica Reckamp [00:09:37]:
Yeah, ghost writing and like, political interviews. Talking about the ethics of. Of writing in a non native language.

Diana Alt [00:09:45]:
Like, pretty dense stuff that today would get you canceled because somebody would find out that the white girl is writing all this stuff from the African.

Erica Reckamp [00:09:53]:
Well, but if someone's in prison, huh? But if someone's in prison as a. As a political dissident, they need to get their message out that what happened would be, you know, the magazine might send the interview questions to this person and they'd be like, you know, my platform. You know how I speak, you know what I think, how I feel. Write my responses right on, because I can't. I'm being watched. I'm being right. So I felt like I was continuing their mission and it was important work. However, again, I'm like, what am I doing? This feels very strange.

Erica Reckamp [00:10:29]:
So I just applied to a blind ad, right? Something we would tell somebody never to do. There was no information about the company. It's just writer. I was like, okay, I want to be a writer. I want to get paid.

Diana Alt [00:10:40]:
Sure.

Erica Reckamp [00:10:41]:
So it happened to be for Challenger Grand Christmas, which was, yeah, the premier outplacement for, like, the Mercedes of outplacement. I just went downtown. My naive little self took their little writing test was placed in the role within two years. I was the head of the writing department proofing process, like the youngest leader in the company. I was being sent to California, you know, to major outplacement projects. And it was very exciting. But I was ghostwriting. I was doing the exact same thing.

Diana Alt [00:11:12]:
I was taking a really interesting point because what's super. Something very interesting to me in the last three years or so that I've seen is that people are using the word ghost writing diff. Maybe not more broadly than they did. Like if you talked about ghost writing five years ago, the only thing that people were attributing ghost writing to was books.

Erica Reckamp [00:11:37]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:11:37]:
And ghostwriters were never known if they started showing up on the front. Like now people will put their ghostwriter with like almost co author credit on their books sometime. That's a right.

Erica Reckamp [00:11:49]:
So I would be mentioned in some acknowledgments.

Diana Alt [00:11:51]:
Yes, they'll either be in the acknowledgment like Dan Sullivan has had, who's like a big executive coaching guy. One of my business consulting clients has worked with his organization. He has put who his ghostwriter was now as like co author credit. Like it's changing. And we're also acknowledging ghostwriting is like anytime someone's writing on your behalf, trying to get you onto paper, that's ghost writing. Whether it's a resume, social media posts or whatever, it's. It's been an interesting evolution. So.

Erica Reckamp [00:12:28]:
Yes. But knowing the person's voice, knowing the person's mission, helping them execute in a way that they're not comfortable with or that they would have it would. The ramp up time would prohibit them from achieving what they're trying to achieve. Right. So in that way I felt like I was doing that. I was helping people talk about their proudest professional moments in a really compelling way. So that's very rewarding.

Diana Alt [00:12:50]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:12:50]:
So I fell in love with it in my 20s. So I've been doing this, you know, 25 years and this has been my joy.

Diana Alt [00:13:00]:
It's a lot of fun. And I started like I got laid off early in my. Like I got laid off twice in less than a year during the tech wreck. So I had gotten my master's, I had got my master's degree straight after my bachelor's. I'm barely not even two years into my career. I got laid off the first time from a consulting firm because all the work dried up. Then I went to another consulting firm where a friend of mine from college worked there. I was there for six months Lost my job again.

Diana Alt [00:13:32]:
Although I did learn stuff in that six month stint that served me for well over ten years after that. So it was not a loss. But I didn't know a resume writer was a thing. I wrote my own resume in college. I figured out how to do it more compelling when I was 27 years old and laid off for the second time, or however old I was. And it was really fascinating. And I realized that all that stuff I did in persuasive writing and composition in high school, where I got an award as best writer my senior year, worked on paper, started teaching my friends how to do it, and here I am. So I did not get trained by Challenger Grand Christmas.

Diana Alt [00:14:15]:
I got trained by the school of hard knocks. So at what point did you kind of abandon working for others as a writer, job search strategist?

Erica Reckamp [00:14:27]:
Pretty quickly. So I was a challenger for a few years before I had my first child that I really just decided I was, I wanted to be home. And so I was able to. Even as I was packing up my desk, a couple of different executive advisors or coaches came up to me and said, I'm, I'm planning on leaving. I would like to build my own writing function. I would like to build my own company. Would you? I'm going to give you my email.

Diana Alt [00:14:53]:
Would you?

Erica Reckamp [00:14:54]:
So right away I was helping other organizations build their writing function, serving as part of their, you know, coordinating their writing functions. And so it just grew from there to the point that I helped several different firms start, that I worked with, you know, even creating writers dashboards, things like that, before I decided, you know, I'm just going to make my own.

Diana Alt [00:15:19]:
Yeah. So I found it really interesting. Like I know a lot of people that do more volume of writing because like my resume writing, I rarely do a standalone resume. Like I will. But that's just not how I work with people most often. But I know people that have done high volume writing and I think I would go nuts if I was trying to manage a million little writing projects like my brain. I spent years in tech managing large enterprise software product projects. Not little tiny, what feels like ankle blighter projects.

Diana Alt [00:15:58]:
What are some of the ways that you kept all these writing projects on track? Like how do you do that and stay sane? Because to me it feels like so many tendrils to keep straight with a client base.

Erica Reckamp [00:16:15]:
So one of the thing is just making sure you have all of their submissions, all of their projects, because there actually tend to be several projects. It's not usually just a resume. It's often LinkedIn profile, bios, marketing pieces, pitch decks. Right. So keeping all of that clear and dated because oftentimes also they'll come back three years later, five years later, 20 years later. So you want to make sure it's timestamped and revisions appropriately. Um, that said, I do find each person so fascinating that I don't have problems kind of, kind of switching from one to the next. And maybe it's because of the personalization that's involved.

Erica Reckamp [00:16:56]:
It doesn't feel like the 200th widget.

Diana Alt [00:17:00]:
You know, so like a new interesting person that you're doing every time.

Erica Reckamp [00:17:06]:
And I've got, you know, there was one year I did 1500 resumes in a single year.

Diana Alt [00:17:12]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:17:13]:
So I mean, especially when you're doing large scale out placement layoffs. Right. That's really easy to happen. But what that's also one of the challenges is, okay, well, if we just laid off 200 people essentially performing the same role in the same region, they're all going to hit the market at the same time. Each of them has to have distinctive content.

Diana Alt [00:17:35]:
Yes.

Erica Reckamp [00:17:36]:
They can't just bullet a job description because otherwise all 200 people are gonna.

Diana Alt [00:17:43]:
They'Re just gonna look the same. Like, why would I. I'm just gonna. Joe is on the top. Let's go. She's our person.

Erica Reckamp [00:17:52]:
Exactly. So that's part of the challenge. That's part of the reason why I do enjoy it.

Diana Alt [00:17:58]:
I find that, like one of the first steps I do with people whenever I'm doing a resume. And I do this at various points in, like job search programs. I do it in career development programs. But I have a little toy I call the Superpowers worksheet. And what the short story of the. I'll unpack this in more detail on a solo episode maybe. But the whole thing with the Superpowers worksheet is you go brainstorm about 12 to 15 people that are from a mix of backgrounds, including personal. Like your best friend that couldn't even tell what you do for a job, but knows you perfect person to put on this list.

Diana Alt [00:18:37]:
Right. So I'll have people text them a very specific little question prompt, which is to get what do you think my. What is my superpower? What do you think I do better than almost anybody else? You know, exactly that, like, don't vary, ask that you're going to uncover different things. And so you get back, like, who the person is because nobody responds. You're the best Python developer I've ever met in a bubble. They might say, that and then say other things and if they do, I tell them, well just go back and like if Python didn't exist, what would your answer be? Because then we get into analytical or you can deal with the people and that's this, that's the differentiator right there.

Erica Reckamp [00:19:21]:
Right, that's stage two. First is how you qualified.

Diana Alt [00:19:24]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:19:24]:
Second stage is what's your eq? What's your. Yeah, exactly.

Diana Alt [00:19:29]:
Very cool. One thing that I've always noticed is that you always refer to yourself as an advisor or a consultant where job searching is concerned. I've never heard you refer to yourself as a coach, I don't think.

Erica Reckamp [00:19:44]:
Correct.

Diana Alt [00:19:45]:
So talk to us about how you see the difference and why you choose the advisor. You don't lean into the coach side.

Erica Reckamp [00:19:56]:
Right. So when I first started again 100 years ago they were called counselors also. So it's gone through a couple of iterations. However, I don't. A lot of those tend to have HR background, tend to have recruiting background. I see myself more as an expert on what's gaining traction, the market, what are the different tactics in play. So I can discuss this is what, you know this, you know, someone with a recruiting background would advise this. Someone with an HR background would advise this.

Erica Reckamp [00:20:31]:
An internal decision maker is going to be looking for this. If you are working in the market in the south, we see this happening. The risks of that are xyz, the benefits of that are xyz then it's ultimately the job seekers choice of what to do, which tactics, which strategies they would like to employ and they can make an informed decision. Right. But I'm not going to come in and say you have to do XYZ because even if it is best practices, even if I do think that that's most appropriate to their search, if they're not on board, if that doesn't feel natural to them, it's not, they're not.

Diana Alt [00:21:11]:
Going to do it. So why bother? I look at it like I, I feel like especially in job search work that I do, there's a coaching part which I look at is like I'm trying to draw out your greatness, draw out what you actually want. That kind of stuff, that ICF stuff, which I actually have some, have reservations about some of the cult around who are coaching us. But I think that in job search we're doing clients a disservice if we're not doing a combination of helping them articulate what they want.

Erica Reckamp [00:21:43]:
Oh absolutely.

Diana Alt [00:21:44]:
And figuring out the right tactics for them. So.

Erica Reckamp [00:21:47]:
Well, there's so through. The reason that I start in the resume is, and I do go through pretty extensive conversations similar to your prompts that you're sending out mission, vision, values, leadership style, eq, non negotiables, things I've learned through my career that I wouldn't want to have to relearn. That was painful. Right. So that we are able to create a persuasive document or a, a targeted document that is able to help even the hiring authorities discern whether or not this person would thrive in this scenario. Right. So we've, we've talked about a lot of these processes and I will, you know, even if someone says, for example, it's very beneficial if you're a job searching to post content on LinkedIn related to your area of expertise, if someone tells me I cannot, will not, I'm terrified, I'll say, okay, well these are the other channels through which you can explore opportunities and generate leads. Let's try that.

Erica Reckamp [00:22:56]:
For how long is your job search? How long do you have? Do you have five months? Do you have seven months? Like what is your goal? What is your, what do you finances allow?

Diana Alt [00:23:05]:
Months? Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:23:06]:
Right. Well, it depends. Every person's different. Wherever they are, wherever their finances, if they've already been searching for three months before they come to you, right. There's different things that are coming into play. Then you might say, okay, try it your way for one month, try it your way for three months. We'll see how much traction we're getting. If not, then let's add something else.

Diana Alt [00:23:26]:
Oh, I love that you say it as an ad too. Because if you tell people that, like I only tell people to stop stuff that's destructive, or if they say I can't add the constructive thing to the thing, that's eh. Because I don't have time, then I'm like, you need to cut the destructive stuff in half. That's kind of how I look at it. And another thing, I was going to loop back around that whole superpowers worksheet is the only thing I send people in advance. If I'm doing just a resume, I do everything else like via a pretty long intake call because then I hear their words, just like you were saying earlier. I'm like, yeah, hear their words and we can poke. And I'm just like, don't even think, don't write stuff down.

Diana Alt [00:24:08]:
I just, just riff.

Erica Reckamp [00:24:09]:
I'm hear you talk.

Diana Alt [00:24:10]:
We're going to be fine. I want to hear you talk. I'm going to draw it out. We record everything now we have transcripts. It's fine.

Erica Reckamp [00:24:16]:
So, yeah, I'll do at least 45 minutes of that, if not another session, and then I'm looking at writing samples that are coming, man.

Diana Alt [00:24:24]:
Yeah, very cool. So let's talk a little bit. You've worked on resumes at every level that there is, like from high school, new college grads, like entry level stuff, all the way up to C suite. And I want to be on boards. And I think that a lot of people, especially people who were maybe at a company for a long time, like they came in as a manager and then they got laid off as an SVP 12 years later, they don't understand the differences in how resumes are used and like, what. How they should think about them and think about constructing them themselves or with someone else. So can you tell a little bit about first off across resumes, like, what are some consistent things that are important pretty much no matter what your level, what are like the top couple of things. People always need to make sure that they're.

Diana Alt [00:25:19]:
That are in play.

Erica Reckamp [00:25:21]:
Well, that's one of the things we talked about in the, in the report is like, what are the basic expectations of a resume that's going to work? It needs to have your work history.

Diana Alt [00:25:35]:
Not that weird functional stuff either that.

Erica Reckamp [00:25:37]:
We were talking, not a functional resume. Reverse chronological with titles, with dates, with company names, some sense of scope. Right. What you actually did in this role, because titles don't necessarily indicate what you did, especially when companies start getting really creative with the titles. And then beyond that, we do want to show measurable impact, ideally numbers, dollars, percents. However, in some roles it can be very conceptual and so then it might be implemented a strategy or established a function.

Diana Alt [00:26:13]:
Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:26:13]:
Things like that, that's fine. But ideally we would, you know, numbers pop. Other things that we would expect to see would be active voice, strong language, strong verbs. We don't want it to sound like you were just watching things happen, which.

Diana Alt [00:26:28]:
Is another blah like no help, no.

Erica Reckamp [00:26:31]:
Helped, no assisted, no supported, supervised, even kind of sounds like you're watching. Right. So we want to be really careful about what verbs we're using, even responsible for over and over and over again, like cut that go straight to the verb. That's really effective even in helping with like the noise ratio on the resume, which is essentially the overall word count in relationship to keywords, hard skills, soft skills, numbers, dollars, percents. If it's too fluffy, if it's too verbose, if it's too wordy, the. The impression is that someone's trying to hose you. So we do want to try to keep.

Diana Alt [00:27:10]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:27:10]:
Language tight. Yeah, yeah. We. More and more we are expecting to see some sort of introductory section. Some people call it an objective. Hopefully people are not still using that. That's a very 1980s me, me me type section. But sometimes people call it that and it's actually still kind of a summary.

Diana Alt [00:27:31]:
Can I tell you what I like? One of my opinion things is I do not label that intro paragraph. It's a waste of a target title. Why am I doing that? Why, why, why are we saying executive summary? Hello. In the year of our Lord 2025. People know the paragraph at the top is a summary of who you like.

Erica Reckamp [00:27:57]:
What and for competencies. Same thing. Like we know this is the keyword B.

Diana Alt [00:28:01]:
Technical. You don't need to label technical skills. But like sure.

Erica Reckamp [00:28:05]:
Oh yes.

Diana Alt [00:28:06]:
Like what this. I, I told one client recently, pretend you're only, you only have 17 syllables like a haiku. Like would this make it. No, it's not, it's not going to make it. So let's you know, it's not a haiku, it's two pages of your brilliance. But yeah, okay, so that's the common stuff. Now talk to me about some of the things that are different between say like a mid level, you know, I've been working 10 years, individual contributor, right. Someone that is like senior manager, VP and then like the C suite.

Diana Alt [00:28:44]:
What are some of the differences that we see between those as we're leveling up?

Erica Reckamp [00:28:49]:
Okay, so sure. Mid level individual contributor. We're looking at 10, 15 years of experience. Those types of roles, they tend to prefer candidates who around that experience length. They don't tend to favor candidates with a lot more experience for mid level roles because there are some concerns they'll be burned out, they'll get bored very quickly, et cetera. So even a lot of firms will just have that. If that tends to be their where they're selling the most, they'll tend to come up with blanket rules like only list 15 years experience. 15 tech, it tends to be even less.

Erica Reckamp [00:29:26]:
There's more age discrimination in tech skills, timeout more quickly. So a lot of times they'll truncate it even further to 10 years of experience. That said, if you have great experience at year 17 or 23, you know, it's an invisible line. If it's relevant, if you feel it's going to help you move the needle, start conversations, I would go ahead and include it. Mid level resumes should be focusing on one specific area of expertise.

Diana Alt [00:29:56]:
Okay.

Erica Reckamp [00:29:57]:
Those resumes are more likely to be subjected to AI sourcing and screening tools, candidate dashboards, applicant tracking systems. Not that we're writing specifically to the system, but they're more likely to be subjected to scoring and ranking mechanisms within those systems.

Diana Alt [00:30:14]:
That's a really helpful thing to talk about. And it's again like the whole. We could talk all day about like auto reject and what is actually. Who is actually putting eyeballs on. But I like the distinction of one target. I work with a lot of people in tech and like the job. Half the job titles didn't exist eight years ago. So there's a lot of nuance that I have to work through.

Diana Alt [00:30:38]:
But one thing that's really common in my world is that people will have had like project and program management experience and they might also have had engineering leader, software engineering, leadership experience. Those solve two different problem sets. They might work on the same thing. So I try to get to people like what are the big picture problems that you want to position for? And then we choose how many resumes they need based on that. So I don't ever want to see project management and product management smashed together on the same resume. We're talking about like trying, trying to position both of those on a resume. Of course, okay, that's fair things in the last 10 years. But like product management, owning and driving the vision of a product or portfolio of products is a hell of a lot different than delivering that thing on time, under budget and with.

Erica Reckamp [00:31:31]:
Right scoping.

Diana Alt [00:31:32]:
Right? Exactly, exactly. So that's how I look at it. So talk to us then about that level of manage, that kind of middle management sort of level that I talked about like director. I think director is the wasteland where people don't know what to do. It's such a hard.

Erica Reckamp [00:31:47]:
Yes, it is. It can be very complex and you're on the cusp. You're a cusper in so many ways.

Diana Alt [00:31:52]:
Quite the person that has to go through an executive recruiting firm. But you could start talking about it.

Erica Reckamp [00:31:58]:
Yeah, right. Depending on company size, depending on impact that you've had in prior roles, and depending on the organization, if it's a larger. They might see, okay, you were a senior director here, but now you're going to be a manager and this organization. So it can get really, it can get messy. Especially with more organizations flattening right now. So when we get to senior director type roles, director type roles, we still want to focus on leadership and be talking about leadership style. Oftentimes what happens is people are promoted and to the level of incompetence. Right.

Diana Alt [00:32:40]:
Peter and Dunning, those two.

Erica Reckamp [00:32:44]:
So this, you know, this person's doing a really great job. Let's keep pushing them up. Push them up, push them up. Okay, now. Oh dear. He does not know how to talk to people. Oh dear. He just, we put him in a client meeting.

Erica Reckamp [00:32:54]:
He does not know how to speak to a client. Like whatever it might be, whatever threshold someone has hit that they find out there's a, there's a pretty evident weak spot, they still don't want to, you know, undermine someone or subject someone to a demotion if at all possible. So oftentimes they'll kind of languish there for a while. So it's really important that we figure out what you like and don't like about leadership style and figure out a way to play to your strengths, hire to fill those gaps. So showing evidence of that and then making sure that we continue to network up and down.

Diana Alt [00:33:33]:
So I talk to people a lot specifically at like that thing that's a director level and most like large ish but not necessarily Fortune 500 companies that when you're in management, when you're a manager, like especially a frontline manager or maybe somebody that's got like a couple team leads with two or three people underneath them, you're talking about your ability to lead that set of people that are under you to execute. But when you start getting into like director vp, you have to talk about influencing sideways and then also a little bit of managing up. And then if the way I look at it is if you're like SVP or C Suite, if you're not talking about how you help the board make decisions that are on company strategy, something's very wrong. Do you see it the same or like what am I wrong about? Because you've done way more of these than me.

Erica Reckamp [00:34:22]:
One of the things that's interesting is different org charts operate very differently and sometimes you don't have access that you'd like to have and oftentimes that's one of the most thing most frequent points of complaint. If someone has gone through the interview process assured you're going to report to the C level person, you're going to have access to this person monthly, whatever and it doesn't happen.

Diana Alt [00:34:46]:
Yeah, right.

Erica Reckamp [00:34:47]:
That's really, that can be a huge point of contention. But it is highly variable still. So I wouldn't necessarily view it as a risk unless it's known as a best practice within that I'm just frozen per minute.

Diana Alt [00:35:06]:
That's all so it happens. And we are doing a very, like I always say, I'm going for high content quality, low production value. So if we have some weirdness happen, that's fine. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. But my, my point is like the farther up you go, the more you have to be able to influen across and sideways and up whenever. And you've got.

Erica Reckamp [00:35:32]:
Don't neglect down. Most people network up. They really focus on that upper echelon and they neglect the relationships, the mentoring underneath. More and more now.

Diana Alt [00:35:45]:
Yeah. I think we may be talking about two different things because I fully agree with you, you have to network every way. But when I look at a resume, one of the things I see a lot from people. Hang on. I see people talking a lot about how they made the team under them execute and do really well, but they will neglect to talk about the broader influence that they had on their resume. And then they're wondering why am I not getting called for the VP roles? All important.

Erica Reckamp [00:36:16]:
All important. Yes. And one of the reason why I'm bringing up, you know, earlier levels is because we've seen an increase in learning and development functions being cut. We're seeing HR being cut. Right. So what's happening is if people don't talk about mentoring, developing, if they. Then it's a huge liability. Got it.

Diana Alt [00:36:40]:
That makes a lot of sense and that's a really good trend. And I think like my, whenever I work with people on this, I always, if they've managed people and they're. Especially if they're trying to manage people again, I always make sure that there's something about the scope and scale. So you and I are saying the same thing. You just said it faster and better than I did, which is not surprising. Let's talk about the thing that we. Oh, talk Touch quickly on the board.

Erica Reckamp [00:37:08]:
Executive C suite board. Yeah. Once we get to executive, the focus, the length, it can start to expand a bit. Once we're looking at executive level, they're looking more at your track record. So extending past 15 years is appropriate. Also we, again, we really need to talk about leadership style and eq. If we're not self aware enough to know what type of leader you are, all of a sudden that becomes concerning. At director, senior director level, it's just fine to have a leadership type title.

Erica Reckamp [00:37:38]:
It's more okay. But if we're not able to talk about it in context, it's a problem. Once we hit C suite, we're looking at a shift in value and content. Structuring because there's more of an emphasis on multidisciplinary expertise. So if we think about some of the famous leadership development programs, PepsiCo, GE, they have rotations. Right. You spent some time in supply chain, sometime in procurement, sometime in biz dev, sometime in acquisitions so that you understand how all of these functions interplay to drive large scale business results.

Diana Alt [00:38:16]:
And that's why like I talk to people about that too. I'm glad you brought that up because I know a lot of people that'll be. They'll be like in finance or whatever they love, they love some finance or operations. I'm like especially if you ever want to go past cfo you are never going to go from accounts receivable clerk only up through accounting and finance to cfo. You might be able to do that. Especially if you're one company, some real.

Erica Reckamp [00:38:44]:
Estate, some.

Diana Alt [00:38:47]:
Going to jump as that person from CFO to CEO or CEO. It's not going to happen if you do not prove exposure to the other.

Erica Reckamp [00:38:57]:
Increasingly rare just to get the CFO without exposure to other.

Diana Alt [00:39:01]:
The only time I see that is when somebody had literally the whole career that wants at that company from very.

Erica Reckamp [00:39:08]:
Or it's a very small organization.

Diana Alt [00:39:10]:
Yeah, yeah. There's not some.

Erica Reckamp [00:39:12]:
There's.

Diana Alt [00:39:13]:
There's like three layers. So.

Erica Reckamp [00:39:15]:
So and then we've also got mission, vision, values wrapped in not just leadership style. So it becomes a more built out in that top section. And then we've got themes throughout the resume. It's not just one topic. We have themes that are echoing through. Right. For board resumes now the emphasis shifts again we're going to prioritize discussions of board and committee work so that we can show that we're familiar with the inner workings of those types of functions.

Diana Alt [00:39:47]:
Talk about committee work a little bit because that's not something I hear people talk about a lot.

Erica Reckamp [00:39:51]:
It's early stage that's setting the stage for board contributions. It's indicating that you're able to see see large scale initiatives that need to happen within an organization and again influence, maintain, earn, buy in investment and be able to self advocate and effect change by gaining consensus and making sure that employees actually adopt whatever it is they're trying to impart to the organization. So board and committee work both very valuable. We're mentioning that early and often. There could even be a board section right under the summary as opposed to just starting with experience depending on how much they've been exposed to. The language also shifts. It's not so tactical. It's Broader, and we're talking more about steering and guiding as opposed to in the trenches, delivery.

Erica Reckamp [00:40:47]:
Your functional track record also becomes important. Oftentimes, board seats are selected based on type. Right. So they might say, we need someone in cyber. You know, if we're looking at the layout of the board, we've got six people, we've got eight people. We want someone in legal, we want someone in cyber, we want someone from hr, we want someone from. So if you are able to articulate whatever it is that your sweet spot is, making sure that you're also making sure they're aware of that.

Diana Alt [00:41:16]:
You're not just trying to get on a board, you're trying to effectively formally or informally get a slot on the board. So you're not just trying to get on board. You're like, oh, I did the whole compensation strategy for two Fortune 500 companies when I was the VA VP of Comp and Benefits at XYZ. Leaning hard into that.

Erica Reckamp [00:41:35]:
Cool.

Diana Alt [00:41:35]:
Thank you for that. Those are things that so many people, especially as they rise up, they don't know that what they did on their resume before does not work for the next level. We're going to talk about the study. That's what I promised people. We're finally getting to it. So you recently published a study that's called Generative AI Resume Feedback for Job Seekers. Beautiful SEO right there. Report.

Diana Alt [00:42:06]:
So I got a hold of this and I can't even begin to tell you how many people. I sent it to my whole email list last week. I'm like, go read, Eric. Yeah, you're all over. Because just have it on the brain. Because every single week, whether I'm in a something on LinkedIn or talking to a client or potential client, I hear this thing of, I don't know why this isn't working. I've updated this resume. I even used AI to help me do it.

Diana Alt [00:42:35]:
I hear it all the time. And it's a reasonable thing for people to want to do because as many resume writers and career coaches there are, there's millions of job seekers at any point in time. So frame up this study quickly. I guys, listening. This episode is going to be published in the middle of November. I did a solo episode where I went into some detail on this too. If you want, like, more in depth than Erica will probably give right now, you can go listen to that one. But frame up what led you to do this study and a little bit of what you found.

Erica Reckamp [00:43:11]:
Sure. So ever since these generative AI tools, these AI resume builders have been coming out my team and I have been testing them. We'll occasionally facilitate programs about some of the best use cases and some of the things to be careful of. As we continued to test them, you know, year after year, we started seeing some concerning outcomes. The assumption is that the more we use these, the better they're going to be and that they will become pretty seamless at informing our content. And there's a lot of trust that I'm seeing use job seekers give to these platforms. However, one of the concerns is that the feedback, the basic assumptions, you know that some of the things we talked about earlier, they don't seem to share those basic assumptions. That's concerning and they're not hard.

Erica Reckamp [00:44:05]:
Right. It's like every section should be labeled properly, like experience education. It should contain work history. It should, it should be written with strong verbs. Those should be things that we all agree on. Even though we have very different takes on what might make a resume good or bad. Those basic fundamentals should exist. Those didn't seem to exist.

Erica Reckamp [00:44:30]:
The other thing that I continued to see was people subjecting their resumes to job. To generative AI and it was actually making the content worse.

Diana Alt [00:44:40]:
And I'm, I've seen that as a resume expert, I've seen it do that because what a lot of, A lot of people don't realize that generative AI tools, all the ones I've used anyway, and I'm mostly a chat DBT girl, but I've used some others. They have a bias to tell you what they think you want to hear. You can sometimes get around that a little bit if you tell it to play devil's advocate or like push back on your whatever you have to prompt it to do that. And sometimes it forgets. And so I have witnessed when I was trying to be too perfectionistic with a resume I was writing for a client where the recommendations started to be like, wait, no, don't.

Erica Reckamp [00:45:21]:
Getting muddier.

Diana Alt [00:45:23]:
No, we're not doing that.

Erica Reckamp [00:45:26]:
It's concerning.

Diana Alt [00:45:27]:
Yeah, it's. So it's an issue. So you. So I was seeing anecdotally what you were seeing on a broader scale with more resumes. How did you define your study and what did you actually, you. You did what I think is a common prompt that I would also argue is the worst prompt ever.

Erica Reckamp [00:45:47]:
Well, and our lens was for the general job seeker because when we're facilitating these job search programs, these aren't people who've been through executive outplacement. These aren't people who are paying a resume writer or they're purchasing a package and they're getting guided feedback. These are people just trying to do the best that they can, trying to be competitive, competitive market. So if you're a general job seeker, you submit your resume and you just say something like, give me feedback on my resume. Me.

Diana Alt [00:46:12]:
And they don't know AI either.

Erica Reckamp [00:46:14]:
Like they may have prompt engineering.

Diana Alt [00:46:18]:
Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:46:18]:
They're, they're, they're just asking for broad feedback. Am I doing something egregiously wrong? What should I, what should I do that I don't know? Right. And again, we should have a fair amount of agreement on what that would be. Here's the challenge. Generative AI doesn't think. It's not truly creative. It's predictive. Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:46:42]:
So it's almost like you're at a meeting with, you know, the, the guy who really didn't read the agenda and who doesn't really know the product that well, but he wants to be heard. Right. So he's just saying words that he thinks sound good. Right. Because it's predictive. And so I might just throw out like systematic desensitivation. Synergistic. Like what are you talking about? We're talking about pricing.

Erica Reckamp [00:47:08]:
It doesn't necessarily get, it doesn't necessarily even discern what you've submitted. It's guessing what you want to hear.

Diana Alt [00:47:16]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:47:17]:
So when somebody is giving this tool that level of authority, it can be really problematic.

Diana Alt [00:47:26]:
Yeah, all of that. So you guys tested eight tools with three resumes and like they're listed in the report. I'm going to make sure a link to the report is in the show notes because I don't know how to not share the link to this report. I'm obsessed right now. But there's eight tools, Chat, gbt, Claude Grock, Deep Seek, which is scary. Don't use that one.

Erica Reckamp [00:47:52]:
Yes, it is.

Diana Alt [00:47:53]:
It's gross. Security wise and a few more.

Erica Reckamp [00:47:56]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:47:57]:
And you had some interesting findings. So the three resumes, you did tell about the three, the three resumes that you chose to test and what the prompt was.

Erica Reckamp [00:48:08]:
Yeah, sorry. So we purposely wanted to test resumes of different quality levels. Right. Because again, people are going to run the gamut on how polished the original submission is going to be. So we had a, a fairly good resume. Right. It's, it's pretty strong. It's using the appropriate keywords, it's got metrics.

Erica Reckamp [00:48:27]:
Like it might not, you know, people might do things differently. But at its core, this resume, plus.

Diana Alt [00:48:35]:
When I looked at it, I was like, this is a solid B plus.

Erica Reckamp [00:48:38]:
That's how I. Then there's the fair resume, which maybe it didn't have as many metrics, maybe it talked a little too much about the things that it gets really excited about. But it's, it's, it's okay, right? If the market is friendly, if they've got a strong lead, it's probably still going to perform for someone. But there's room for improvement. I wanted to see what kind of feedback are we going to get? And then we also submitted just a terrible piece of garbage.

Diana Alt [00:49:08]:
Content has resumes in it, you guys. And it's not, this is not 150 pages. It's like, it's like 11 pages of information and then the resumes. So it's pretty easy to digest. But it was God awful.

Erica Reckamp [00:49:23]:
The resume was horrible. Right? It just God awful resume.

Diana Alt [00:49:27]:
Nice work.

Erica Reckamp [00:49:29]:
Thank you. Stream of consciousness, like titles, dates and it's like at this company, like it's almost narrative and then it's got just like a couple lines of job description all one horrible, chunky, tiny paragraph for each role. Inconsistent typos. Right. Just a mess. Right? We know this is horrible. This should score terribly. They should have a lot of constructive feedback for me, if this is what I'm subjecting sending into the sense system.

Erica Reckamp [00:49:56]:
So the surprising element was, and maybe not to you, but they provided a lot of criticism to all of the resumes.

Diana Alt [00:50:07]:
What was Tell the people the prompt that you used.

Erica Reckamp [00:50:10]:
Give me feedback on my resume.

Diana Alt [00:50:12]:
Okay, we'll get into why that's bad in a little bit. But like that is very common. Yeah, it's a very common prompt people are actually using.

Erica Reckamp [00:50:21]:
So especially even if they've already paid for the resume and they're like, hey, I've got this. You know, Diana tells me it's good. Erica tells me it's good. Is it really? No matter what platform you're using, they're gonna give you some negative feedback.

Diana Alt [00:50:38]:
Yes.

Erica Reckamp [00:50:39]:
Here's the problem. A lot of the time that negative feedback was completely incorrect. Right. It would say at an education section there's already an education or really destructive. So for example one was non profit programming leader. That's exactly the role that this person was targeting. They said to position themselves as an organizational leader. Broad, generic.

Erica Reckamp [00:51:09]:
Is that the key holder at McDonald's? Is that a shoe salesman? Like that's horrible advice. Yes, horrible. And then just tips that were completely unnecessary. Right. Like saying you have to bullet everything. You don't. Or you have to only have one page. You don't, you don't Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:51:30]:
Completely depends on the candidate and the role they're targeting. In some cases that's not enough information at all. So predominantly I would say this is riskier to use this tool than it is to do some reading, some hanging out on LinkedIn and re updating it yourself.

Diana Alt [00:51:55]:
I, I found it to be fascinating because it's like when you read something that you know is a deep truth but you didn't have the words. I was like, yes, because like one of the most interesting findings for me that I'd. What did you call it? The help versus hinder gap is a section that's in the study and so you evaluated and compared the number of pieces of good to neutral feedback with bad feedback.

Erica Reckamp [00:52:23]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:52:23]:
Constructive derailing three times as much bad feedback on the good resume as things that were actually constructive guys.

Erica Reckamp [00:52:34]:
And the good and the fair and on many of the platforms gave zero constructive features feedback.

Diana Alt [00:52:43]:
So you would spend all your time going, well, they gave me 10 things. I don't know if I can do all 10, but I can do these five. And you're still making it worse because none of it was constructive.

Erica Reckamp [00:52:54]:
Right, right. So very concerning. And what's more, the quote unquote constructive feedback was along these very basic lines.

Diana Alt [00:53:05]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [00:53:06]:
Use these proper section headers, start with strong verbs. Right. That if you looked at the most basic article on resume writing, you would get the same information.

Diana Alt [00:53:17]:
Indeed. Would give you the same. Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:53:20]:
And it's not buried in destructive, misleading, damaging information.

Diana Alt [00:53:26]:
Yeah, that. I mean this is really important, especially when you consider, well, first off, a lot of people are just never going to hire a resume writer. Everybody is being told not in the budget, use AI more. So we're being encouraged in every walk of our life to use AI more. So people think that they are doing the right best thing for themselves many times in a period where they're financially vulnerable because of the layoff and then the tool, the tools across the board are making it worse. You've had an interesting thing. You and I were in the comments or dia. I don't know.

Diana Alt [00:53:59]:
One of the times we interacted in the last couple week or so, I asked you, did you evaluate any of the purpose built resume writing tools? Because one would think those are going to be better. Right. You know.

Erica Reckamp [00:54:13]:
Right. Specifically designated.

Diana Alt [00:54:16]:
So I know that wasn't officially part of the study, but it sounds like you have some anecdotal stuff.

Erica Reckamp [00:54:22]:
Well, we do have more information. We do have more testing. As I said, we do these programs, we do these tests quarterly, annually. We've for years had a series of, you know, if you're going to use a resume builder, what are the top ones? If you're going to use, you know, generative AI to write a cover letter, which one should you use? Right. So we have been testing these consistently. The problem with these, a lot of these, you know, smaller targeted tools is they're not evolving at the same speed as these more in use LLMs just because they're not getting as much of a data pool. So they're actually becoming worse in comparison with these larger LLMs.

Diana Alt [00:55:06]:
Yes.

Erica Reckamp [00:55:07]:
Number one. Number two there a lot of them are trying to do more than just resume writing. Even if they're targeted resume writing. They're saying also like I'm going to help you network, I'm going to help you track your applications, I'm going to help you. And by trying to do too many things, they're crashing, they're doing, they don't even work. Right, Right. So what used to be, you know, we might say, you know, try these three now it's like, okay, well the, this old school resume builder that's actually just data mining works better than the designated tool. So not only in terms of volume, like I'm seeing more people use the large language models, but also in terms of performance.

Erica Reckamp [00:55:50]:
These are actually outperforming those smaller.

Diana Alt [00:55:55]:
And the thing, the thing that I have not, I'll tell you what, like there's a, I have not tested as many of the purpose built resume tools or like the job seeker platforms that have, you know, the multiple functions but I play around with ones when my clients ask me. There's a couple I fool with a couple times a year and they're in my opinion for helping optimize or write resumes. All of them are getting worse. And why would I pay 20 bucks or any amount of money a month to one of these tools whenever my Claude is doing it better? Yes. Even if I don't know how to use like the answer if things are not going well with my resume and LLM is not to go to one of these resume tools, it is to learn some of the ways to actually use Claude usefully for your resume. Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:56:50]:
Or check out a book from the.

Diana Alt [00:56:53]:
Library or yeah, I have a LinkedIn.

Erica Reckamp [00:56:57]:
And learn a couple things.

Diana Alt [00:56:59]:
Yeah, I have a webinar that I do. I, you know, I just have it because why not? And I do it publicly a couple times a year. Usually called how to write a Resume that gets attention and I'll actually put that in the show notes Guys. So when it's over on YouTube, you'll, you'll be able to have it, have it for free. I don't even need your email. But that tells people what good looks like because fundamentally what people are doing is they are using an LLM to optimize something and they don't even know what good looks like. So.

Erica Reckamp [00:57:30]:
Right. Well, and then the danger is they'll look, turn to these resume builders and they look worse than what you submitted or they look worse than the template you could have used. And I'm not a fan of templates because they, they kind of turn into a Procrustian bed where people are just cutting things and shoving it into like they said, three bullets. So I'm going to reduce it to three bullets.

Diana Alt [00:57:51]:
Right.

Erica Reckamp [00:57:52]:
So I don't like them. And many of them, you know, if you're getting from Etsy or Canva, they're a picture. So a lot of times the systems cannot read them. So I don't even love those. But you don't even get the assistance aesthetics from these tools.

Diana Alt [00:58:06]:
That's true. Congratulations. Paste this in a Google Doc, it will do you no good. So I work when I work on a client, on a client, for a resume, for client, I will have a template, the container, the spots that I'm doing, and it's very loose. It doesn't care if there's two bullets or 12 bullets, it expands.

Erica Reckamp [00:58:25]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:58:26]:
And then what I do is I build piece by piece, you know, okay, we're going to work on the executive summary now. Okay, we're going to work on this work experience for job one, job two. Okay, we're going to work on education. And then I build those pieces with my knowledge and the LLM put it together and then I start doing holistic reviews.

Erica Reckamp [00:58:48]:
Well, they have the luxury of your guidance to say like, yeah, the most recent position should not be one line. Right, Right. Like that should be built out. It's the most relevant. That's where people are going to spend the most time. They have the benefit of your, your guidance in there. And if, yeah, if there's workforce development programs in your area, a real person who's offering a program and you check their credentials, obviously, then yes, please prioritize that over what you would receive out of any sort of generative AI, any sort of tool.

Diana Alt [00:59:20]:
So I came up with a couple things that I recommended to some of my people on that solo episode I mentioned and I'm curious where I got it wrong, what you would add to it. So my three Things were if you're going to use an LLM to help with your resume, the first thing I suggested was giving it a target so that they know what, what you're going for. So whether that is a job posting you want to apply for or really like a really clear targeting statement. I want to be a senior product manager in a SaaS Fintech Company series B or C. Like that kind of level. What do you think about that? Is that a good thing for them to do?

Erica Reckamp [01:00:07]:
So one thing that I like to do is if you take several job postings and ask them to create a consolidated version of that, that can be a good way too because then we're not just signaling language with one organization because it can vary. We're kind of recognizing that. And sometimes also there's overlapping targets. And as long as we've got overlapping keywords, that can be okay. It's not like I, I want to be a veterinarian and I might want to be a teacher. Like that's not going to work.

Diana Alt [01:00:38]:
Yeah, right.

Erica Reckamp [01:00:39]:
But, but if it's sales, business development key accounts like, yeah, so I can enter.

Diana Alt [01:00:45]:
I'll find three of those from the sector I want. Put that together. Here's. Okay.

Erica Reckamp [01:00:49]:
A uniform because it can only accept so many of them, especially if you're not logged in. Can only accept so much information at a time. So if you have them create kind of a combined based on, you know, your top. The top view that you're looking at and then going from there speaking to that as a target.

Diana Alt [01:01:05]:
Very cool. The another thing that I said is to ask it to rate it. And here's where I'm gonna go with this. So I. When I'm. When I've worked through resumes myself, I will sometimes ask it to tell me, well, I'm mixing up two things. Let me step back for a second. I.

Diana Alt [01:01:28]:
It's always a good idea in prompt engineering if you learn nothing else. Learn to tell your LLM what you want it to be so and what you want the purpose to be so. As an example, put on your hat. Pretend you're a technical recruiter in B2B SaaS and you're evaluating this resume versus you are also the director of a. Of a product management. How are you going to look at it versus you're a peer in product management. So ask it how you want it to think. What role do you want it to be? Most of the time people are trying to get it to be a recruiter, but just say, I want you to act as a Technical recruiter hiring for talent in a B2B SaaS company.

Diana Alt [01:02:22]:
Then the third thing I suggest is asking it to rate on scale of 1 to 5, scale of 1 to 10, whatever makes sense. Your likelihood of meeting the goal of the resume, which is to get called for an interview. So I've got my composite job search target thing. I'm telling it to act like a recruiter. Tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely I am to get called for an interview with this resume. That's how I, I actually do that with my clients and train them to that. What else? What's. What should I stop doing in that? What do you feel like?

Erica Reckamp [01:03:02]:
Sure, anything.

Diana Alt [01:03:03]:
You feel like one thing.

Erica Reckamp [01:03:05]:
That and this could be just a stylistic difference between the approach that you take and the approach I take. And it also could be related to the level of client that we might be working with. I don't spend too much time and energy worrying about what recruiters think. Reason being fair, Reason being if we're thinking of the hiring process, sourcers, recruiters, headhunters, HR executives, the people to whom you report, the people you work with every day, these are potentially the people weighing in on hiring positions. Right. Ultimately our ultimate audience are those internal decision makers and they are looking at very different things.

Diana Alt [01:03:44]:
And that's why I said in mine that we, we want to tell it who to act like. So if you're work, if you're a certain level, then you probably want to ask it is the recruiter going to call me? But if you're at another level, it's going to be, oh, I'm trying to apply to be VP of Finance. What's a CFO going to think of this? Right?

Erica Reckamp [01:04:03]:
Well, depending on the nature of the role. Because if it's a, if it's a pretty, if it's a pretty hot role, then yeah, recruiters are going to be knocking on your door if it's something that you know that maybe isn't as. So like if you're a customer success executive, targeting startups, a lot of startups don't even know what that means. So you're gonna have to explain what it is that you would hope to do for that organization. So targeting recruiters are hoping that AI sourcing tools are going to pick you up. It's probably not going to happen. But if we are targeting that language to speak to the priorities of internal decision makers, it's a completely different game. Now recruiters, headhunters tend to really only look at five or six data points on the resume.

Erica Reckamp [01:04:45]:
Right. They're looking at location, they're looking for within an hour radius of whatever would be considered on site because they see stronger retention rates for that. They're looking for industry. They still, even though we've got that push for skills based hiring, there's still a whole lot of recruiters practicing coaching, especially from dinosaurs, you know, corn fairy Stuart Spencer. They're not changing their model. Right. Then they're looking at tenure lengths, they're diagnosing for risk and they can calibrate these systems to, oh my gosh, we.

Diana Alt [01:05:14]:
Could do a whole other episode, Jane.

Erica Reckamp [01:05:17]:
Right. So they're looking at very different things. The internal decision makers are basically saying, I'm buried, please save me.

Diana Alt [01:05:25]:
Right.

Erica Reckamp [01:05:25]:
So do you have the functional expertise to do what I need you to do or do what I hate to do? And then can I stand working with you every day? Which is where those EQ discussions come in.

Diana Alt [01:05:35]:
Thanks for breaking that down. So really, I think if we like zoom out a little bit, we're still saying target. So you're suggesting a target is maybe a few job posts, job descriptions put together with a targeting, so you have a composite. Then the second thing is tell it to wear the hat of the person that needs to make decisions.

Erica Reckamp [01:06:00]:
So within that organization.

Diana Alt [01:06:01]:
Within the organization. So depending on your level, it could be more focused on a recruiter and heck, it's cheap. Like go through to the first person. But then if you want to test another person that might be involved, that's fine too.

Erica Reckamp [01:06:14]:
I've even had people enter, you know, like a LinkedIn profile or come up with a personality profile on the, the people to whom they know they would report to.

Diana Alt [01:06:24]:
That's cool.

Erica Reckamp [01:06:25]:
This, speak to this person.

Diana Alt [01:06:27]:
Yeah. And then the last thing I was going to say, what I end up doing is I'll ask it for a little bit of like, scale of 1 to 10, how likely am I going to get, you know, pulled in for the interview or shortlisted or whatever that goal is. And when, if you choose to do that, you must remember that you're never going to get a 10. You almost don't want a 10. It's kind of like if you use one of the resume scanning tools. By the time you, if you use like Teal or Job scanner, the tools that are very well known as having scoring for your resume, usually if you get to 100, your resume is now unreadable because of the way they do it. What you're looking for is an improvement from where you started. So that fair resume may get a 5 out of 10.

Diana Alt [01:07:17]:
And then you take some of the advice. Hopefully the good advice that you learn is good. And then you turn it into a seven.

Erica Reckamp [01:07:24]:
Well, here's where it gets more problematic. We've had people do this. They'd say, okay, I'm going to implement these changes. Then you implement it. You run it through again. It says, oh, no, you should change it back to how you had it before or now you should change this again. Like it is programmed.

Diana Alt [01:07:40]:
It never ends. That's the point. Yes, yes. The thing that AI tools want to do, when you ask it for help optimizing a resume, it's going to try to help optimizing. And I have a whole rant on the term optimizing that I will save for a whole other day. But you're looking to improve and get your stuff in front of people fast. If you're continuing to try to optimize and optimize and optimize and go from an eight to an eight and a half to a nine to a ten, that you're never going to get, you're passing by the opportunity to have that resume in front of people when it may be good enough.

Erica Reckamp [01:08:17]:
So, right. No, I wouldn't ask it to rank because I don't trust it. I don't. I don't trust its discernment on that level, number one. And number two, we've seen an increase in people over customizing their resumes. And so then they're saying, okay, this person actually doesn't care about this role. They just submitted it to AI. And so then what happens is, you know, there's 2,000 applicants, 200 have done the same thing.

Erica Reckamp [01:08:40]:
There are only so many tools to customize your resume, so it sounds exactly the same. And they're like, okay, well, if this person, if I really was on this person's target company list, the short list of 10, 25 companies, they would have taken the time to actually write it. They assume this is a sludge. So we definitely don't want to get in that micromanagement cycle.

Diana Alt [01:09:02]:
So that's good. So I think what, what I may take away from this is that if you're going to do a number, take it with a grain of salt. What you're trying to find out if you, if you asked it to do it at all, which it sounds like you think is a bad idea. I, I feel okay with how I do it as a resume writer, but y' all listen to Erica because she studied it more than me. If you're a lay person that doesn't really have that much AI and or resume expertise and look for better. But the advice I think that's the best that you gave is go freaking watch a video or read a book or read some blogs from qualified people on what good looks like, and then you can recognize when your LLM is telling you bad and not take those pieces of advice. It's really pretty simple, so. It's really pretty simple.

Diana Alt [01:09:58]:
Thank you so much for digging into all of that. I have to say, it was a joy to geek out about resumes. I do have a couple more questions before we go. These are kind of like my lightning round. That's not really a lightning round. It's stuff I like to ask all my guests. The first one is, what is the worst piece of career advice that you have ever received?

Erica Reckamp [01:10:22]:
Oh, you know, I think. I don't know that it's. I think it's just a pet peeve of mine. One thing that's really tough that I see a lot is people tell you to network before you've actually finalized how you want to introduce yourself or your resume or your value offering. And because what happens is you burn through your contacts and they're like, well, what do you want to do? I don't know. Well, show me your resume. Oh, it's not ready.

Diana Alt [01:10:49]:
Yeah.

Erica Reckamp [01:10:49]:
So I actually think people need some time before they go out and start extending.

Diana Alt [01:10:56]:
I agree with you, but there's a small caveat that I'll say most people have a few work besties that are the ones that can handle the fact that, like, they're the people that you might even be getting feedback on. Where. Where do you see my talents? Like those people that are really close to you, the best boss you ever had, the person that was your mentor. I think you can talk to those people early on if you've maintained a relationship because they help with clarifying that. But other than that small set of people, you need to at least at a minimum, have a solid positioning statement. Even if Erica or I is writing your resume and it'll be done in a week. The ability to say, this is what I'm after and why I'm good at it before you start digging further. That's my.

Diana Alt [01:11:44]:
That's how I look at it. So, yeah, just network. No.

Erica Reckamp [01:11:49]:
Even knowing the stories that you want to tell, it's so helpful in those networking conversations. So much more fruitful.

Diana Alt [01:11:57]:
Yes. What is a personal habit that you have that's helped you be successful?

Erica Reckamp [01:12:05]:
You know, I think actually this sounds really strange. But walking away. So sometimes when you get really entrenched in something, especially if you are an analytical person, you'll say, okay, I need a reset. So either changing location, right. Like bringing your laptop to another room, or saying like, okay, I'm gonna walk for 10 minutes and, like, let this ruminate or let it go. And then coming back. A lot of times that's when things break loose.

Diana Alt [01:12:34]:
Yes. I've been working really hard to take breaks, like, actually take a lunch, which I'm. I've been terrible at. But since I came back from medical leave a little while ago, I've been trying really hard to do that. And it has a big. It's made a big difference. The last one is what is something you've changed your mind about lately? I stole this one from Adam Grant.

Erica Reckamp [01:12:58]:
Change. Okay, you know what your mind about actually this AI, because I've, like I said, I've been an early adopter. My husband is an AI engineer. I can talk to him about this all day, right? Yeah. And I've been on a number of boards dedicated to AI startups and how do we integrate job search best practices into these platforms to make sure that we're not misleading, misdirecting job seekers. And I'm seeing the quality degrade. And it's very interesting. And I'm.

Erica Reckamp [01:13:29]:
I'm gonna, you know, kind of keep my finger on it, but I think right now it's. Unfortunately, it's one of those things that we want to harness. We don't want to be left behind, but at the same time, it's. It's really hurting some people.

Diana Alt [01:13:43]:
You got to do a little Hippocratic oath for job search, coach. Well, I really appreciate that. And you're the first person I've talked to that has said the op that they trust AI less as they go on like this degraded. So I think that's a really important thing to realize is that it's not all just magically getting better. Like, on average, for a lot of tasks. Yes. But that doesn't mean for every task, every tool, it's getting better, so.

Erica Reckamp [01:14:14]:
Right. It's really interesting.

Diana Alt [01:14:16]:
Well, Erica, thanks. Erica, you're at the captivators.com is your website for your business. I tossed that up. And then also I have her LinkedIn. Erica-recamp.com is the end of her LinkedIn URL. Thank you so much for coming to hang out with us.

Erica Reckamp [01:14:37]:
I really appreciate it.

Diana Alt [01:14:39]:
And we'll see you guys next time. Hey, are you sabotaging your job search without even realizing it. You might be. I break down the most common job search mistakes and how to fix them in my free [email protected] so go grab it today. And that's it for this episode of Work Should Feel Good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend, hit follow, hit subscribe, do all the things, and even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars. You get to decide if I earned them.

Diana Alt [01:15:19]:
Work should feel good. Let's make that your reality.