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. Hello, hello, hello, 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 Virginia Franco and I are going to talk about strategies for your career collateral that can help you land work that feels good. Virginia founded Virginia Franco Resumes years ago, which is exactly how she put it in her bio, after recognizing that her time in corporate communications, journalism, and social work offered a unique understanding of how people read, communicate, and share information. She's a longtime member and past president of the National Resume Writers association, and she's also been a contributor of multiple publications and podcasts and even hosted her own podcast, resume storyteller, from 2017 to 2023. She's not doing new episodes anymore.

Diana Alt [00:01:20]:
She's moved on to other stuff. But that show is still a banger. So go listen to it on Apple and Spotify. Welcome to the show, Virginia. I'm so glad to have you.

Virginia Franco [00:01:30]:
Yeah, no, I've been looking forward to it.

Diana Alt [00:01:32]:
Yeah. You were honestly one of the very first career services people that I thought about having on the show. Like this is even know exactly when I'm going to publish this because, you know, I'm recording quite a few. But you were one of the first people because they're every. Most resume writers I know started as a writer, but they really wanted to be a career coach or an executive in that lane of resume writing and loving it for so very long. So.

Virginia Franco [00:02:10]:
And I've coached. But I really love writing.

Diana Alt [00:02:12]:
I know, I know. And you said that you. That's your favorite. You have. So I'm really excited to get wisdom from you because I think there's a lot of resume writers out there, but not everybody brings that unique perspective. And I always love when I meet a journalist doing anything that isn't journalism. I think it's so interesting. So talk to me about what do you feel like journalism helps you with in your work? And also I want to hear about social work.

Diana Alt [00:02:42]:
Yeah, you're two different animals.

Virginia Franco [00:02:45]:
So I. Yeah, so I. My degree was in journalism. I wrote resumes for year for. For years for free. No clue that anyone did it for a living. And then after writing for several years and I sort of pivoted to social work. I just really wanted to give back and was sort of the only way I could think of to do so.

Virginia Franco [00:03:03]:
And long story short, I got very burnt out, went to a lot of funerals, and then pivoted back to corporate America and back into writing. The what the two have in common that I think makes me, makes me good at what I do is the ability to ask people the right questions. So journalism, you know, battle is interviewing the people and really asking the who, what, where, why all of those pieces. And then with social work, when you're doing an intake, when you're counseling. But you know, I did a lot of case management and crisis management. Pulling out the information was so important because it informed the treatment plan and where you referred them to. And that is not unlike the. I use those skills today to interview my clients to hear their job search stories and then, you know, write stuff down on paper but.

Virginia Franco [00:03:59]:
Or on the screen. But that's the commonality between the two. I'm a really, really good interviewer.

Diana Alt [00:04:05]:
You and you don't do forms, right?

Virginia Franco [00:04:08]:
I don't. I have before. I hate them though, because number one, some people exposes them out. And two, I have found that a lot of times just the back and forth conversation and might feel sort of all over the place, but it pulls out details that get missed. When people are trying to write down their own information, it can be really hard to write your own blood, sweat and tears and be objective about it. So they just get on the phone with me. They can be walking through the park, in an airport, wherever it is, and let me do the questions they answer. And then I get to work.

Diana Alt [00:04:42]:
I do. I. I just started offering resumes this year, so I'm all the other people. It was funny. Went to the park Professional association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches, which is a mouthful. I went to the conference.

Virginia Franco [00:04:57]:
Oh, you did?

Diana Alt [00:04:58]:
Yeah, yeah, I went. It was fun. The end of April and there's all these people there that have been writing resumes for 5, 10, however many years and now they're more interested in the coaching side. And I'm the exact opposite. I started doing. I've taught resumes for years. I've taught.

Virginia Franco [00:05:17]:
Yeah. You know, you know, the ins and outs of resumes for sure.

Diana Alt [00:05:19]:
Thank you for saying that. The fact that you think that is a big deal to me, but I didn't offer them as a service because I do a very high touch premium approach to it, which means it's not cheap and we can dig into a little bit of like, what is some of the difference and what makes what makes for a great resume and not like that's part of the reason you're here. But I started doing that, and I was like, I don't want to do forms either, because who care? Like, most people that come to me already have a resume, even if it's a few years. Get the. What languages you. You had. I can't get your overarching narrative and your best stories from a form.

Virginia Franco [00:06:04]:
And that's. That's what works for me. Some people do great with forms. It's just. It is not my thing. I love the interview piece.

Diana Alt [00:06:11]:
Yeah, I'm. I'm the same way for you. So I want to hear about the very first resume you did that you made money that.

Virginia Franco [00:06:20]:
Oh, God.

Diana Alt [00:06:21]:
What do you remember? Or a really early one. Tell us.

Virginia Franco [00:06:25]:
I mean, yeah, I did them for free, like I said, for a million years. Yeah. So the first one I did for free was a. I mean, I think I made a hundred dollars on it. It was a neighbor of mine during the Great Recession. I lived in a neighborhood in Charlotte home to two banks that got crushed during the financial crisis, and everyone got laid off. It was like Armageddon. And I was starting.

Virginia Franco [00:06:54]:
I was freelance writing, and I was trying to explore resume writing, and I did, like, two neighbors for free. And this guy's like, well, I'll pay you. And I'm like, all right, well, give me $100. And. And he used it to pivot out of financial services into a new industry. So that was super exciting.

Diana Alt [00:07:11]:
Cool. Because that's. That is not easy to do on a resume.

Virginia Franco [00:07:14]:
And that was way before I had a website or a company name. You know, all that stuff came after. Very much accidental entrepreneur for me.

Diana Alt [00:07:22]:
I did a little bit of that. My first two client career coaching clients were people that asked to pay me. I was like. Because I'd help people for free for.

Virginia Franco [00:07:30]:
Yeah, yeah.

Diana Alt [00:07:31]:
And they're like, what do you charge? And I'm like.

Virginia Franco [00:07:35]:
Yeah, exactly.

Diana Alt [00:07:37]:
And so my first. That I did, I actually pegged it to their pay.

Virginia Franco [00:07:46]:
Way savvier than me with that stuff.

Diana Alt [00:07:47]:
Well, I was making. I mean, I was making 90k in 2012 or 14 or whenever that was. So the very first one was someone that was working a contract job for like 16 an hour. 10.99. Completely abused, toxic environment. Her goal was. She was a Navy vet, so. So her goal was actually to get out of that and see if she could find a job in the federal government, which she did.

Diana Alt [00:08:16]:
So I said, you know, I have to prep and follow up, and so give me $32 for a session because it's 2x what her pay was. Right. And then there was another that was targeting 100k and I said, well we'll just $50 because I couldn't even think about a hundred.

Virginia Franco [00:08:39]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:08:40]:
Link. That was the very first people that. That guy still comes to me.

Virginia Franco [00:08:46]:
So that's amazing. That's amazing.

Diana Alt [00:08:48]:
100K in the job that we worked on. And then ever since then like comes to me for a session or two every 12 to 18 months. It's like, hey, I'm considering a promotion or hey, I'm trying to position myself for this. So I've had this long standing relationship now he plays, pays rack rate and every time he tells me.

Virginia Franco [00:09:07]:
Amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, I, I was not that savv writing articles for different for like livestrong and travel.com and med. What's the one that everyone goes to? Not Mayo Clinic, one of those healthcare websites. I'm spacing on it and just writing it was like 30 bucks an article and. But I knew corporate and understood how companies worked in the roles that people play in the companies. I'm like, well I can talk to anybody about their job. Tell me what when I can write it to anything.

Virginia Franco [00:09:37]:
So making $100 felt great articles.

Diana Alt [00:09:41]:
Yeah, I, I love that stuff and I've got, I've done a little bit of paid blogging, but it was like the pace situation was different because I had a byline. But this, oh no.

Virginia Franco [00:09:54]:
This was a company called Demand Media and they would have a portal with all these articles that you got to write. And so I wrote about the coolest locations on the planet. I just never got to leave and go anywhere.

Diana Alt [00:10:05]:
Yeah, how exciting. So love it. $100 for your very first help somebody pivot out of finance. Do you remember what industry that client went to?

Virginia Franco [00:10:15]:
They went into say tech. They were a finance person within banking and they moved into finance. They did like financial planning analysis and I moved them into technology. Cool.

Diana Alt [00:10:35]:
That's exciting. People think that's so impossible and it's totally, totally possible.

Virginia Franco [00:10:41]:
So. But what this person did that was smart, you know, he didn't apply online. He. I don't even know if there was online in 2008. I don't remember. But he started talking to people and got his resume in front of people to tell the story. He talked to me, told his story to me, saw it on paper and then he was armed with fodder to have those conversations with people so that he would be perceived as not a huge risk trying to make a move like that.

Diana Alt [00:11:07]:
Yeah, big fan of that. And I love how, like, one of the things I always had a back and forth on DIY for resume versus paying for a resume. As I've known too many people that had a resume written for them and they hadn't internalized the stories that make the conversation your first person. So it's like they had a good resume and it might hit, you know, they might apply, they might get.

Virginia Franco [00:11:35]:
You can't speak to it. Then you. Yeah, it's like forest in the woods or whatever that.

Diana Alt [00:11:40]:
Well, definitely, if you can't sit down in an interview and talk about those stories, you're in trouble. But you're just as in trouble if you sit down at the bar to have a hamburger for lunch at your local pub, and then a person that's the director of whatever you do sits down next to you and you start chatting. Like, if you. If you are not ready for that, which is all about very short, succinct stories, you're gonna lose that opportunity. So.

Virginia Franco [00:12:10]:
That's right. And that's why I won't. I don't work with people until they're pretty crystal clear on their target, because then they've done a lot of that homework around what their deal breakers are, exactly what they want to target, and then it makes for really strong marketing collateral, really good interview responses, really good immediate pitches.

Diana Alt [00:12:30]:
That's good stuff. Do you partner with career coaches that don't like to write resumes so that you can be coaches?

Virginia Franco [00:12:37]:
Yeah, I have coaches that send me. Send people to me. It just depends on the timing. So, yeah, I definitely work with coaches, but if someone comes to me and they are really. They feel like they could go in a number of different directions, for which it requires multiple resumes and Writing a cohesive LinkedIn would be hard. Then I send them to people that sort of specialize in helping people get career clarity. And once they've got it, if they want to work with me, then I write their stuff.

Diana Alt [00:13:03]:
Okay, that's cool. Thanks for sharing. Okay, so the name of the show is Work Should Feel Good. It is not. We're going to talk more about resume stuff, but this is also about you. So you've had your business for a long time. Before we got on, we were talking about a couple of things that you do in your business that a lot of other people find hard. What are some things that you do in your business that make it feel better, make your work feel good? And I'm really interested in hearing the things that other people say can't be done.

Diana Alt [00:13:36]:
Like your summer that we were talking about and that maybe other people say, well, you, you can't run a resume writing business that way. Like, tell us a few of those things.

Virginia Franco [00:13:48]:
So. Oh, gosh, that is such a good question. I'll talk about what I did in the summers. I, I have four kids now. They're out of school and two in college. Two are off the payroll. But when I was building this business, they were little and summer camps and programs were so expensive. And so I did the ROI and I thought I realized it made sense for me to scaled back dramatically for six weeks every summer so that I didn't have to drown in, in child care costs.

Virginia Franco [00:14:26]:
Long story short.

Diana Alt [00:14:28]:
And so, so every year you've had.

Virginia Franco [00:14:31]:
I did it, I did it from when they were in. Oh God. I mean, I probably did it for 10, 12 years. I did it until they got out till the youngest drive the car. That's pretty much when I stopped. And, and now I'm traveling a lot throughout the year. So instead of taking a concentrated amount of time, I'm taking off chunks throughout the year. And so what I did was I, I wasn't, I didn't say, hey guys, I'm taking off because I need to go, you know, take my kids to the pool and the beach and tennis and video game playing or whatever I was doing.

Virginia Franco [00:15:14]:
I just would change my social media habits. Instead of posting regularly, I said, I'm not going to post for six weeks. I'm going to just comment all day long and see what happens. And then I did not take any new clients. What I did do is I focused on returning clients. Part of my business model is that once I've worked with you, I can be a writer in perpetuity. So if a client came back to me and needed an update, I could fit that in. Because it was, you know, 10 minute phone call, hours of writing.

Virginia Franco [00:15:45]:
It wasn't that big, deep process. And I didn't take any sales calls. I wasn't trying to land new clients.

Diana Alt [00:15:50]:
Got it.

Virginia Franco [00:15:52]:
And so what to my surprise happened was number one, yes, my LinkedIn engagement dropped off, but still was getting enough to sustain me. And because I had kept the engagement going, when I came back to posting, it was not a hard rebuild. I didn't feel like I was starting from ground zero. Secondly, I had clients that said, well, I'm okay with waiting and I don't need to talk to you. And I said, okay, well then I'll review your documents. I'll provide you some feedback and I'll offer you a date to work together. Six weeks down the road. And my close rate wasn't as great as when I spoke to them on the phone, but it was good enough.

Virginia Franco [00:16:35]:
And so when I, when I went back to work, I had, you know, at least a three week window of people, which was enough to, then I could hit the ground running.

Diana Alt [00:16:46]:
A lot of what people are afraid of when they think about taking, well, heck, a lot of people are afraid of it if they take a day off, but most people can't fathom taking like 10 days to two weeks off.

Virginia Franco [00:17:01]:
A lot of time. I get that it's a lot of time off. And I was, I was working, I was working 20 hours a week instead of 40, 50. But my, I was scared to death of what would happen to my lead generation, my sales close rates, all of that. And I was really pleasantly surprised. And so I just kept at it. And then as the years grew through word of mouth and all of that, I relied less on my business coming from, from, you know, LinkedIn and, and the marketing and more on word of mouth. And so the last time I took those, a six week period off, when I came back, I was booked out two months.

Virginia Franco [00:17:37]:
Wow. And so it was well done. It was really manageable. Yay.

Diana Alt [00:17:42]:
Yay. Very good. So thank you for sharing that.

Virginia Franco [00:17:47]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:17:48]:
One of the big things that comes up a lot, especially like I focus a lot of my business in the tech market. So even people that aren't software engineers and product managers and stuff, a lot of them work in tech, even if they're in like L and D and marketing. I also.

Virginia Franco [00:18:04]:
Right, right, right.

Diana Alt [00:18:06]:
Is this difference between the resume from the bigger name company that can afford to run a million Facebook and LinkedIn ads, but the resume only costs like 200 to $250. And then like what you and I do, that is much premium. So I was looking on your website and right now it looks like it's between like 1100 and 2500 for resumes.

Virginia Franco [00:18:32]:
Yeah, I'm at the low end of the high. That's sort of how I feel.

Diana Alt [00:18:35]:
High. I'm in the same kind of boat, like minor 1250 to 2,400ish for my resume packages. Like, what is the difference? How do you explain the difference between those much lower cost resumes and what you do?

Virginia Franco [00:18:53]:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I actually, when I first, before I launched my own company, I worked for companies as a team of, you know, a ton of writers. And I Saw good ones and I saw lots of good ones. And a lot of those lessons learned I used to like, well, when I start my own company or if I start my own, this is what I'm going to do. What I found was number one, the training that I had back then wasn't nearly what I know now. And so a lot of times when people are charging higher dollar it's they bring a wealth of experience that I certainly didn't have, you know, all those years ago. But really more importantly, there were limitations on how much facetime I could get with them. Some people, some of the companies I work for, I wasn't even allowed to talk to the clients.

Diana Alt [00:19:45]:
Oh wow.

Virginia Franco [00:19:46]:
It was either done all through questionnaire, there were limits on revisions, there were just. There was a lot of parameters. And I have heard through the grapevine that some companies have. Have limits on just how much time you can even spend writing them. You. You're expected to produce at a very high level and quantity is more important than quality. And, and that just that was not for me. So if, look, if you are a really good writer, if your story is not complicated and your the target, your where you want to get to from where you're starting is not that big of a leap, then maybe that company could work great take what they wrote and then edit it yourself.

Virginia Franco [00:20:31]:
Use chat cpt. But if you that is not the case then talking to a person who can pull the right information out and be strategic in terms of the writing that costs more.

Diana Alt [00:20:45]:
Yeah, I look at it as you're paying me to include your career narrative like the overall arc which is if you do that right that's how people can switch industry because you can show what transfers and you can also like one of the clients I worked with recently, the care the ARC is from another industry into healthcare it and they actually had early retired and then were terrible at being retired. So they wanted to go back but in the interim had had some of their own medical stuff. And so their firsthand experience with the medical system made them want to take their old technical knowledge train on like Epic or Cerner or whatever and then be able to go into this field that they hadn't actually worked in actively. Like that kind of story you're not going to get for 200 and you.

Virginia Franco [00:21:48]:
Need to ask, you need to know. To ask the right, you know how to ask the right questions. I'm right. I just, I'm writing a resume right now of someone who had been in marketing and PR agencies forever and she wants, she Has a question now for angel investing, and she said, I want to be an advisor to founders, which is a totally different resume. She's like. And she's right. With her old one, she can probably. She's got enough cachet she could walk into any agency.

Virginia Franco [00:22:18]:
She doesn't need me. But for this, it's. It's a strategic pivot, and I needed to pull out different information from her client stories than I would have if she was just trying to get a job with another agency.

Diana Alt [00:22:29]:
Yeah. So that client that I was mentioning, they had been at like, big consulting, you know, had principal architect as a title on their resume from one of their past employers and had helped sell millions of dollars of consulting contracts and architect these solutions and all this. All this stuff. And I had to change a little language because they're trying to look for like an analyst role now. We're not going to talk about, like, overall enterprise architecture.

Virginia Franco [00:23:03]:
And so there's lingo you need to know and there's industry lingo. I've written a ton of federal resumes lately. People from the federal government that got doge. You got to translate what they do, military to civilian, all of that. Yeah. It's a different, different world, different map, different language.

Diana Alt [00:23:20]:
So of the. The time it takes to understand the problems and 70% of the people that I work with or maybe a little more work in roles that I actually worked or worked with.

Virginia Franco [00:23:31]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:23:32]:
You know, I didn't.

Virginia Franco [00:23:34]:
Yeah, I didn't work in those roles, but because I did corporate communications, I had to interview the people across every function and. Corporate function.

Diana Alt [00:23:44]:
Yeah. And, you know, I haven't been a CIO, but I reported to CIOs and.

Virginia Franco [00:23:49]:
Stuff like that, so.

Diana Alt [00:23:52]:
And I very much dig into what problems do these people actually solve. And it's wild because when they're a genius at solving them, they don't always even just, they look like, I fix stuff, I make solutions. They can't say it. So that's the difference. So, folks, that is the difference between the 25 resume and the four resumes.

Virginia Franco [00:24:14]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:24:16]:
And whichever one you need is what you should buy. So how, how people read matters. That's a theme on your LinkedIn and your website.

Virginia Franco [00:24:27]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:24:27]:
Learned it from your experience. Talk to us a little bit about how people read resumes and what, what the average person does not understand about that because it's different.

Virginia Franco [00:24:41]:
Yeah. I've been on my soapbox of this about this for years. So people tend to read first reviews of a resume number one in a super skim Fashion. Not even your own mother is probably going to read your resume with a fine tooth comb, but they are largely reading it on some sort of a screen. It might be a phone, if someone is, you know, in field sales, it might be a laptop, it might be an iPhone. But then down, as the job search progresses or as the interviews progress, you're going to have that hiring manager that just wants to print it out so they can look at or take notes on it and go old school. And so the challenge is you've got to write a document that reads just as well whether someone pulls it up on their iPhone or if they print it out. Luckily, documents designed for screen reads tend to print out fine.

Virginia Franco [00:25:32]:
They do print out fine. The problem is that documents designed to be read to be written for print the way we were taught, that's the way we were taught to write in high school. They do not convey well to screens and they can make for brutal, brutal mobile reads. And that's because our eyes do two things differently. And by taking it into account, you can facilitate a skim read of anything. Email slide deck, resume. First and foremost, we have a really, really hard digesting, really dense or crowded text. So do you ever see, you know when you go online and you sign a, you like click on terms and conditions or you know, all the cookies including.

Virginia Franco [00:26:13]:
Yeah, it's like this big 8 point font and there's no way you're going to read it. They know that because it's crowded, it's dense. That's what happens to us. And when you have a paragraph that's maybe five lines on, on a big screen, that's fine. But that five line paragraph when you open it up on your phone turns into like a 12 line paragraph. And if something is hard to read and you're in a rush, you run the risk that the reader's going to skip it because we are lazy that way. The other thing that our eyes do differently online is that we jump all over the place. We're like ADHD squirrels online in a way that we don't when we're, we were trained to read on a page.

Virginia Franco [00:26:56]:
You read like f or you read like that you're not, or you read like left to right, you're not jumping. And so what I do, number one, to avoid dense text, I keep my paragraphs to two to three lines. I add space between them. That's an easy fix. Recognizing that people jump around a lot, I will use just very minor design elements. You and I, we, you and I both do not like design for design's sake. But I'll use, I'll use bolding, I'll use shading. I'll go caps versus, you know, sentence case.

Virginia Franco [00:27:30]:
If I want the reader to focus on one piece or another when I'm writing something, I will front load it. Which means I put the good stuff at the beginning of the sentence because. Right. 80, 80 readers don't, don't stay around to the end. And then when people are reading a series of bullets, jumpy readers start with number one. But then if they happen to have extra time, they don't usually read in order. They don't go 1, 2, 3, 4. They read 1, then they go to 5.

Virginia Franco [00:28:00]:
They often don't read anymore. And so I'm strategic in terms of ordering bullets so that the first most important thing appears on the top secondarily. Yeah, second. And then if there's like nine bullets, I don't want death by bullets. And so I'll break them into subcategories with five bullets on the first one and four on the other.

Diana Alt [00:28:16]:
I do some of the same things. We should trade some resumes when we get done here. But some of what I do is there's different styles that I use to show skills. And it kind of depends on industry. Like product management has so freaking many skills that people expect to have that I'm less likely to do like the tables or things like that that people do. And sometimes I will do like a bullet point with a heading like, here's the product strategy stuff and here's the.

Virginia Franco [00:28:45]:
List, like the keyword as a bullet. As a bullet?

Diana Alt [00:28:47]:
Yeah, a high level keyword as a bullet. And then put more information. And I always put, depending on what's going on with a person, either like platforms, tools, framework stuff last or for product managers, always industries. So if they've worked in more than two industries, I will put it last. Because what you have to show for a lot of people is if they don't have 10 years in an industry, you have to show they can learn an industry. So when they see this thing at the bottom of that skills list, it's like, oh, well, they've been successfully in four industries. That makes sense.

Virginia Franco [00:29:28]:
And that's. It depends on what they're targeting. If they want to lean in and be an industry specialist, then you reference that industry in the headline at the top.

Diana Alt [00:29:36]:
Absolutely.

Virginia Franco [00:29:37]:
Yeah. And so I'll, I'll do. I call it like a knowledge snapshot, where for a C, not a cio, but let's say like ahead of Software engineering, someone a little bit more junior or not a chief product officer, but one a little bit lower. I'll do, like, leadership skills, platforms that they know, frameworks that they know, industries that they've served. And that sort of goes all into one piece.

Diana Alt [00:30:03]:
I think we're saying almost the same.

Virginia Franco [00:30:04]:
Yeah, yeah. Where the placement depends on, but I, When I.

Diana Alt [00:30:10]:
When I'm trying to tell the story, like. Absolutely. If someone, like, worked in an industry for a lot of years and they're leaning into that, for sure, emphasize that. But a lot of people have worked in. I know a lot of people that have worked in SaaS across multiple industries. And we're in a situation right now where people are using do you have a zillion years in an industry? As one of their criteria when this tech market is weird. So for people that literally just don't have that for where they're going, I want to show this person learns the industry. Part of their super power, part of their superpower is that they bring the independence that helps you see things that you wouldn't have seen.

Diana Alt [00:30:56]:
And I was this person. So.

Virginia Franco [00:30:58]:
Yeah. And the other. The other thing that I always make sure to call out is where if there's industry commonality and I tell people, if you were in this industry, like, you're in a really heavily regulated industry, so.

Diana Alt [00:31:11]:
Yes.

Virginia Franco [00:31:12]:
You under. So maybe consider targeting another heavily regulated industry.

Diana Alt [00:31:17]:
Yep.

Virginia Franco [00:31:17]:
And so just show that commonality up. So at all. That's. That's the strategy piece that we were talking about. It all depends on what. What they're going for.

Diana Alt [00:31:24]:
Yeah. And it. It does take time, but it's fun. I. I mean, I love it.

Virginia Franco [00:31:30]:
I love it. And I like. I like startup world. I love people that are targeting Fortune 1 hundreds. Like, it's just really cool stories and it. It's like a puzzle.

Diana Alt [00:31:39]:
Yeah, it is like a puzzle. How do you. So one of the things for. If you want to find a job that really feels good to you, it definitely goes way beyond, like, what are the results that we're trying to show and what are the skills? You know, everybody's worried about the ATS keyword search thing that isn't even a thing, but beyond what's their skills and beyond, you know, metrics and context that show results fit. And feeling good at work has to do with values and those kind of intangibles, the way that we move through the world. How do you capture some of that stuff? Because there's a difference between somebody that is. I'm good with the chaos of launch or I'm good with these more chaotic environments and I motivate and inspire the team and the person that is, I am cool in chaos. They can have the same job.

Virginia Franco [00:32:42]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:32:42]:
I am the strategic, you know, the more strategic person that will help you with the things I work on now. You're gonna feel it five years from now still, because we've done such a good job. What are some of the ways that you like to convey those values and those things that are special? Because that's another thing.

Virginia Franco [00:33:02]:
So, yeah, so number one, I asked to see a handful of job postings of interest because I want to understand, yes, the role, but I want to understand the kinds of cultures that they're attracted to and I want to go through those postings and read the deal breakers. If someone. The other thing I always make sure to ask before we've even started working together is, you know, do you love the leadership piece or do you like being an individual contributor?

Diana Alt [00:33:29]:
Do you.

Virginia Franco [00:33:30]:
What kinds of companies are you targeting? If it's the startup world, then is it because you love chaos, you love wearing multiple hats, or do you like Fortune companies where you have to navigate really complex matrix organizations? So having a sense for that, where they're headed allows me to ask the right questions. So. Right, exactly. And the why. And if someone says, you know, I've been working, this is my last gig before I retire, I need to feel good about myself when I go to bed, then I'm probably going to include language that speaks to being, you know, mission driven, purpose driven organizations. If leadership is really important, I'm going to make sure to ask questions like what, why do you love to lead? What's the strategy that you've used to motivate your teams over and over again? Most people have a rinse and repeat strategy that they have used to build teams, keep teams, fix hot messes, all of those things. And I just have them walk me through it and then that becomes their brand and then I can explain with stories in each of their roles.

Diana Alt [00:34:34]:
I like the way you thought about the way you articulated that, that most people have strategies that they use. And I haven't thought about that as much with resumes as I have with interviews. Because the thing that you and I might have learned 15, 20 years ago, like that was at the very beginning when people were starting to talk to about STAR or CAR or.

Virginia Franco [00:34:56]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diana Alt [00:34:57]:
But now a high percentage of companies are saying, we're doing behavioral interviews. We suggest you familiarize yourself with star. So it's no longer special to answer a question in the STAR format, especially if you don't do it effectively.

Virginia Franco [00:35:15]:
So you know what? And behavioral interviewing was part of social work way back when. So this. Yeah, tell me about a time when this. Because you're trying to figure out what their problem is.

Diana Alt [00:35:25]:
Yeah, I had never thought, yeah, I do that in coaching. But in any case, what I was going to say is it's no longer special to be able to answer an interview question with a, let's call it B minus STAR answer. Because everybody can do that now. Or a whole lot of people, a.

Virginia Franco [00:35:53]:
High percentage people are figuring it out. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:35:56]:
So what I have started doing is talking to my clients about what I call Framework plus Star. And you do it very simply. So when someone asks you about something and you're like, I've done that five times or 50 times in. There's an old public speaking premise of tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell him, then tell them what you told them. Right. So if you get asked, how do you handle, you know, how would you handle it if like the project sponsor suddenly once does. Is angry about the progress of the project and everything's in chaos? Well, if you've handled that a couple of times, which every program manager in America has a couple of times, then instead of saying, here's a situation, task action, result, you say, oh, I've run across that multiple times in my career. I have a three step approach.

Diana Alt [00:36:50]:
I like to do this, this and this. And you use like it's very short, it can be in one to two sentences, all of that. And then you say, let me tell you about an example.

Virginia Franco [00:37:01]:
That's right.

Diana Alt [00:37:03]:
And you show how you followed the framework when you're answering in STAR and you say, and that's how I use my approach to. It's just bringing people along.

Virginia Franco [00:37:13]:
Because that's right. And, and what I have found is sometimes people don't even recognize that they have a rinse and repeat formula until we have walked. Because I haven't had the luxury of going through their career. And so I sort of try to get answers to four basic questions. And I tell people, if you have to write it yourself, this is what you should ask yourself. What do things look like at the beginning? What did things look like at the end? What was your role in moving things from beginning to end? And then why did it matter? And that allows you to create. Usually it's when you, when you go through it over and over, you're like, I sort of did the Same thing. The results might have been different and the, the context might have been different, but it allows you to sort of explain your approach in the branding at the top.

Virginia Franco [00:37:59]:
And then the experiences you're walking them through, the what it looked like, that's.

Diana Alt [00:38:03]:
Great, that's a great way to think about it. And yes, people have no idea what, how they do things a lot of times, yes.

Virginia Franco [00:38:10]:
I mean some people have huge awareness, but a lot of people don't.

Diana Alt [00:38:13]:
So yeah, they don't. And something I've seen, like it's more likely for people that are like director and vp and plus, because you're actually paid to make decisions and create frameworks that your team can work on, they are safer. But the people that are like trying, maybe they were a manager and they're hoping they can level up trying to get in.

Virginia Franco [00:38:35]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:38:35]:
If they can showcase that framework stuff, oh, we could nerd out about.

Virginia Franco [00:38:40]:
And that's why asking them how did that, why did it matter? How did it benefit the team, the client, the company? And I'll go to ChatGPT if there's a public company and say, you know, did the share price go up, did the revenues go up, did the market share go up? And it allows me to tie the, their accomplishments to the bigger picture, which shows insights into strategy that can help them to position them for that next level job.

Diana Alt [00:39:05]:
So good. Especially if the company shares enough information. I work with a lot of people that are in product, so unless they're a CPO or like the top product person product line that they're trying to show impact of and that can be really hard to get information, it can.

Virginia Franco [00:39:23]:
Be hard to pull. Been surprised by some of the stuff I pulled on ChatGPT, I'll be honest with you.

Diana Alt [00:39:28]:
Then that's interesting. Very cool. So what are some of the things on a resume that matter most at different stages? So like very early in your career, that middle or maybe like first line of leadership part of your career and then when you're hitting that VP and C C suite, because I think a lot of people think a resume is a resume as a resume, but it's 100 not. So what should people pay the most attention to at each stage to tell their story correctly?

Virginia Franco [00:40:10]:
So when you're writing an early career resume or like a new grad resume, you don't have a lot of experience. Right. You're trying to show how your story skills that you've learned or beginning to acquire could be applied in, in real world situations. So for students, when I write for Kids, I'll be like, tell me about your couple of classes that you're proud of. Tell me about some projects you worked on. And to me, those stories are often a lot more impactful than, or tell a lot more than what they did in the internship where they didn't do anything. It was hard for them to do anything because they were doing grunt work or when they worked at, you know, as a server. And.

Virginia Franco [00:40:52]:
And so I think about that during those first few years, though, you are, you're cementing skills and you're contributing to. Usually you're contributing to a smaller effort. And so I always, I hope. But I still think the same questions are important. How did this benefit the team? Your manager, your customer?

Diana Alt [00:41:17]:
It could be a team of three people that have.

Virginia Franco [00:41:19]:
Right, right, right, right, right.

Diana Alt [00:41:20]:
New tableau dashboards. Not, we're gonna make $50 million more dollars this year.

Virginia Franco [00:41:26]:
That's right. That's right. You're. You're a smaller cog in the wheel. As you get higher up the food chain, then you are often directing teams. You are, even if you don't have directs, you might be influencing bigger groups. So giving a sense of the scope, I think is important.

Diana Alt [00:41:44]:
Okay.

Virginia Franco [00:41:45]:
If you, you know, again, it depends on the target, but in product roles or pro, in project roles, you need to show, I've worked with 100k to $100 million budgets or whatever it is, you know, teams of three to 30, I feel like showing that scope becomes more important because it shows an ability to be adaptable and agile, depending on what you're targeting. Gosh, what else? As you move up the chain, the technologies, your deep expertise around technology doesn't matter as much. What matters is, could you. Were you involved in vendor selection and vetting and implementation? Can you lead the people that know all the technology? And then when you're moving up to the executive level in C suite, it's, what did you. How did what you do advance the CEO or the board or the corporation's larger strategy?

Diana Alt [00:42:50]:
Yes, certain cases, especially, I think CTOs and CP, chief product officers and CEOs in particular, how did your contribution impact the company and also the industry? Because people at that level, they want to be industry movers. If you helped a company grow quickly and significantly, that's great. But if the whole industry was growing two times bigger than you were, it is less impressive. So if you can kind of with.

Virginia Franco [00:43:29]:
CFOs, chief marketing officers, chief revenues officer, sales, even chief legal, for that matter, general counsel, companies that are growing do so through acquisition by going into new markets, by launching new products, by being industry groundbreaking stuff. And so showing that you're advancing the company's largest strategy through these things.

Diana Alt [00:43:55]:
Yep, you heard it here, guys. Results of all levels. I also like to talk to people about influencing up because the way I explain it often to people is when you're like that frontline manager, your main job is to make sure the team under you is getting stuff done. So it's about down, like out to your peers. And then when you go another layer up like that is important, but less important because you're doing more to shape your function. And then the farther up you get, the more you have to manage up like you should.

Virginia Franco [00:44:29]:
And then you're reporting to your board, you're part of leadership committees, all of those things. That's right.

Diana Alt [00:44:34]:
So.

Virginia Franco [00:44:35]:
But you still have teams of direct, so you're still accountable for that stuff.

Diana Alt [00:44:39]:
And so, but if you're the cto, you're not accountable to making sure that the scrum team increased velocity. Unless you're in a startup that has one scrim team and your title's inflated. You're responsible for are we with our technical practices and partnership with business, are we kind of reducing time to market in general because of how we work together? Are we capturing revenue that way?

Virginia Franco [00:45:07]:
And you're right. And so when you get to the other point that I now I'm thinking most roles influence the top and the bottom line. Not most, many influence the top and the bottom line. So Chef, you know, a cto, the investments they make increase operations, but they also might help grow sales. So you're doing both. A COO is focused only on margins, CEOs top and bottom. And you need the other piece. The other piece that I'm also thinking about is on the CTO front and then a couple different other C suite roles is you're thinking about, did you get buy in to make big investments? Because you got to convince the cto, has to convince the CEO or the board.

Virginia Franco [00:45:51]:
I need a lot of money to do to, you know, totally redo this tech stack. The chief marketing officer has to implement a system. Chief Operating officer has to implement an ERP. HR CHROs have to implement certain software too. And so building the case that gets buy in for changes and investments is another piece of you need.

Diana Alt [00:46:13]:
That's a really great point. And I think CTOs are one of the most difficult roles because most CTOs grew up out of tech. You know, you don't see a lot of people that didn't spend most early career in tech, but fundamentally it's a business role. It is a stroll that understands the tech and so like how tech advances strategy. Yeah, that is a bit. I have, I occasionally have a tech leader that's like, I think I'm ready for a CTO role. And I often have to hold their hand while I say it. As the kids say on Tick Tock.

Diana Alt [00:46:51]:
They're not because they haven't done that. And I actually do career development stuff, so sometimes I'm trying to help them what hole they have to plug. But it's interesting stuff.

Virginia Franco [00:47:02]:
But when you start with the before, after what you did to get it from point A to point B, and why does it matter? You tend to get answers to all those questions, no matter the level.

Diana Alt [00:47:13]:
Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I am going to do what I call the lightning round. That's not really a lightning round. And then talk about how people can get to know you. I've been flashing the things up but eventually this will be audio only, so we have to handle it. So my first one is, what is the worst piece of career advice you've ever received?

Virginia Franco [00:47:36]:
Don't say no.

Diana Alt [00:47:38]:
Don't say no. That one hurts, doesn't it?

Virginia Franco [00:47:41]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:47:43]:
Especially for women because sometimes the don't say no is don't say no to making the coffee when you don't even drink coffee.

Virginia Franco [00:47:49]:
It was all of the extra volunteer stuff and stretched myself very, very, very thin.

Diana Alt [00:47:54]:
Yeah, I've done that too. How about a personal habit that has helped you be successful?

Virginia Franco [00:48:03]:
I have, I have very strict rules that I impose on myself on responding to emails, texts, messages and being responsive, I feel like puts me. It puts me ahead of a lot of people that just. That don't take that time.

Diana Alt [00:48:27]:
What's your rules? I want to unpack this.

Virginia Franco [00:48:30]:
I respond to texts within two hours, emails within half a day, LinkedIn's within the day and I turn around, edits within within 24 hours. Wow. Five days to get the resume.

Diana Alt [00:48:48]:
Wow. So here's a question. It's brain work, like it's thinking work to write, especially an initial resume, at least for me. So what are the rhythms and kind of guardrails you put in place so that you're not compromising your ability to focus and get in the zone resume, but you're still maintaining the responses.

Virginia Franco [00:49:13]:
So I, I'm add thinking of it. So I have to take a lot of breaks from the work so that I can, I need to, I need to move around and so during those breaks I'll go check my Email or I'll run outside and I'll be, I'll be on my phone responding to text and then I'll get back and I turn on brown noise on my phone and the brown noise helps me to focus. I don't know when I'll just. Oh my gosh. It's. It's just the white noise app. I'll find it. And brown noise is one of the colors.

Diana Alt [00:49:48]:
What's it like?

Virginia Franco [00:49:51]:
Violet, white noise.

Diana Alt [00:49:55]:
Oh, I hear that. Yeah, kinda. I'm gonna go play with that later.

Virginia Franco [00:50:01]:
Yeah, so it's a different color. There's blue, white, yellow, but brown. I started, I found it. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like clearing the cobweb for my brain. And my friend's like, oh, no, they wrote about that in the New York Times. It's actually a thing. So I write sections. So I'll write, I'll do all the low hanging fruit.

Virginia Franco [00:50:17]:
Like I'll set up the categories and then I'll knock out education and volunteering and then I'll go take another break and then I'll write two jobs and take another break. And so that's how I do it. But it takes me. We get 10 hours to write a resume and a LinkedIn profile. So sometimes longer.

Diana Alt [00:50:33]:
Nice.

Virginia Franco [00:50:33]:
That's after a 90 minute, two hour interview. So.

Diana Alt [00:50:36]:
Because I've talked to a lot of people and that are like, I can bang out a resume in two hours. And I'm sitting here thinking, that can't be good.

Virginia Franco [00:50:43]:
And then, I mean, I could write a new. I can write a new grad resume in a couple hours.

Diana Alt [00:50:46]:
But yeah, well, I've seen people that are writing like VP resumes and they're like, yeah, I'm not that fast, it can't be good. And then I look and I'm like, damn, that actually is good.

Virginia Franco [00:50:56]:
So I'm not that fast.

Diana Alt [00:50:58]:
Everybody does it differently. But I also almost never have revisions because I get the story, so. Right. And also I have, I've kind of trained my clients that their opinion doesn't matter as much as they think it does about their resume. So when we're revising, we focus on inaccuracies first. And then if there's. Oh, well, I might, you know, I have a lot of my people have two different resumes. I'll write one and then I'll item on the other.

Diana Alt [00:51:30]:
And so if they ask me, you know, hey, we're, we're doing this thing for program management, but I'm also applying for engineering Leadership, like can you help me with X? You know that, that I'll, I'll guide them on if that was part of the scope of the project. Okay.

Virginia Franco [00:51:45]:
So make sure. Yeah. I'll spend time to walk through the strategy because a lot of times people don't have edits as much as they want to understand how to do it, you know? Yeah. Why I wrote what I wrote. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:51:55]:
Yeah. I do a little video loom is one of my tools.

Virginia Franco [00:51:59]:
Oh yeah.

Diana Alt [00:52:00]:
So I often do a video for people and when I'm doing drafts of the resume, I typically do it. I give them a Google Doc with comments on the side and then we answer all the questions and I let them know like sometimes, you know, Google Doc being crazy and us having to change something, there may be another edit for, for space reasons to make room for the thing we decided was more important.

Virginia Franco [00:52:25]:
Got it.

Diana Alt [00:52:26]:
Yeah. Anyway, what is something you've changed your mind about recently? Could be personal, could be business and work resumes. What have you changed your mind?

Virginia Franco [00:52:37]:
Yeah, so I, I used to be more on the fence about the banner, the open to work banner on LinkedIn. I was like just ab test it, you know, and see if it works for you. It doesn't work. But I was in a room talking to Linda Brubaker, who I love and she said, you know what, there are enough people that have purchased LinkedIn's recruiting software that are searching specifically for that. And if you're someone who doesn't want to work for a company that is going to buy put, you know, be biased against you because you're working, looking for work, then that's not your thing, then go ahead and turn it on. So I've become more of a, more of a champion of it. Although the caveat is, is that be prepared for lots of spam.

Diana Alt [00:53:23]:
Yeah, I'm on team, I'm still on team A, B test. But I didn't customize my advice because the advice that I'm going to give to somebody that is a senior project manager that got laid off is different from the advice I'm going to give even to someone that's in the C suite and not working because the way they conduct their search is different.

Virginia Franco [00:53:46]:
That's so true. Yeah. And again, it always depends. But I did, I used to be blanket any industry, just test it out, see what you think or talk to other people. And now I'm, I'm more pro for now.

Diana Alt [00:53:58]:
Thank you for sharing that last question I have is what is a common misconception people have about Your work.

Virginia Franco [00:54:08]:
I think they think that it's easy, but anyone can do it. I have people that come to me. They'll call and go, well, I'll have a resume. It just needs a new job updated. And that's not what I do because there's strategy, there's formatting. Your resume from 2012 needs more than just updating your last two jobs.

Diana Alt [00:54:30]:
I can't remember the last time I saw a resume that only. Only needed the last job added.

Virginia Franco [00:54:35]:
No, it doesn't. And so that's just. Just. And that's not my client. That might be the 200 client. Those are the fundamental misunderstanding of the role that I play in writing someone's story.

Diana Alt [00:54:47]:
Like, if I run across that person, I'd rather just teach them how to.

Virginia Franco [00:54:51]:
Do it, because I'll send them a sample of. Of somebody that's in that role and say, you know, I'm not your person. I do. I do overhauls. Here's some samples. And then.

Diana Alt [00:55:06]:
Well, thank you very much.

Virginia Franco [00:55:08]:
Yeah, no great questions.

Diana Alt [00:55:09]:
I can't believe it's like 54 minutes since we started. Weird. I put some things up. What are you working on right now? Is it prepping for some more summer travel or.

Virginia Franco [00:55:21]:
I'm. Yeah, I'm going on a women's adventure trip to New Mexico. I'm going to be fly fishing, e biking, horseback riding, and hiking. Hiking. So nice. Yeah. So I. Yeah.

Virginia Franco [00:55:34]:
So my. You can find me my. My resume. My website is Virginia Franco Resumes. I had to come up with the name of a company on the fly when my accountant told me I needed one. And so that's why I named it after myself.

Diana Alt [00:55:47]:
Yeah. So Virginia Franco resumes dot com. Reach out. See her stuff. She has a great. Your website is great. If you've got questions about what it's like to work with a resume writer. I was just looking at this in prep to record this episode.

Diana Alt [00:56:05]:
You have one of the best FAQ session sections I've seen. And you have pretty good price transparency, too. Like, there's so many different things that impact the price of a resume. You've done a really great job showing. Right.

Virginia Franco [00:56:19]:
You. Yeah, I've tried to show ranges. I don't love a la carte or a bundled stuff only because I am not good at math and. And so I'd rather just let people. And honestly, I just want people to pick and choose what they need and take it from there, so.

Diana Alt [00:56:34]:
Right. Well, thank you very much for coming. I appreciate it. You are one of my very favorite resume storytellers hopefully we'll get we'll get to do this again sometime.

Virginia Franco [00:56:45]:
I'm glad you're in my life. I've loved knowing you these last couple of years.

Diana Alt [00:56:48]:
Oh, I appreciate that so much. We enjoyed knowing you too. Thanks. Not quite sure what to put on your resume or what to leave off. Grab my free Resume Don'ts guide so you can stop guessing and start standing out. Head on over to dianateaches.com to get yours today. And that's it for this episode of Work should feel good if something made you laugh, think, cross, 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.

Diana Alt [00:57:27]:
You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good. Let's make that your reality.