This is Rebecca. Thank you for joining today. So today we're going to talk about how to build a bulletproof resume. So, I've put together a course to help you build a resume that will make you extremely attractive to recruiters and hiring managers out there. I'm a career coach, and my job is to help you find a job. I've been doing that for a number of years, and I've helped hundreds of people.

And I've placed a lot of people in different markets, highly competitive markets like Silicon Valley, Switzerland, London, you name it. And I've developed a method to help people find jobs in under 12 weeks. Bear with me, I will show you how it works. I want you to be proud of your resume. If you're not yet in that space where you feel, you know, really proud of your LinkedIn profile and your cover letter and you feel that you've really sell you're able to sell yourself and sell your skills in a way that is convincing and attractive. If you're not there yet, then I will take you there.

I want you to feel proud of who you are. And I want you to do justice to yourself on your resume. I don't know if you're marketing yourself in the right way. But we will assess that together now. So this course is for you. If you have applied for jobs lately, and you got no response, no interviews.

And you don't know why? Well, it's because your resume is not optimized. It's not selling you. It's not doing you justice. So you have to change that. So I will teach you how to tweak it.

You are also in this course if you're planning to grow your international career internationally if you want to maybe relocate abroad. So this is going to help you as well. If you're if you're trying to become more attractive, more visible on on your social media on your LinkedIn Especially this is for you as well. And I want you to understand that this is for people who are open to due to doing things differently to you know, you have to be open to change, you have to be open minded because if you're not coachable, it's going to be hard for you to be successful in this course. That that's the only thing that I think would would stop you from succeeding. So about me, let's understand a little bit what I do.

This is one of my clients. She's based out in San Francisco. She is localization specialist at Google. And she, her we work together throughout her job transitions. And I've helped her find the best fit for her and and we also prepared for a few interviews together. So I think she was really happy with with the outcome.

In the end, she she got the job that she wanted, and I'm really proud of her. So I wanted to Share this success story with you and I wanted to inspire you because this could be you. Why me, like I said, I am a real profiler. I've been doing that for many years. I started in San Francisco now I live in Switzerland. And I've been, you know, coaching hundreds of people throughout this career that I absolutely adore.

And I put all of my Intel into this course, all my tips, all of my strategies, everything that I you know, developed over the years with my clients, everything that I've tested is now packaged for you to go away and be successful on your own terms. I promise that if you follow these steps, if you follow my method, you will get the job that you want. In under 12 weeks. You just have to really stick with what's written and and put in the work of course, because I can do that for you. So here's the agenda. I broke it down in seven, seven sections.

And then the last section is going to be bonuses. So the first is going to be you know the basics of a resume of a CV. We're going to talk about the secrets, what makes a good resume, what makes a good CV, we're going to talk about how to make your achievements look big, how to talk about what you've done in your career, how you can tie it to the bottom line, we're going to talk about how to get past the filters into screenings of selection processes, so that you can get to the interview phase, then we're going to talk about gaps in consistencies because some of you have you know, you probably took a maternity leave you relocate it internationally or you shifted industries or you're unemployed for a little while and, and this you know, you have to calibrate all of that to make it look as you know, elegant as possible.

So we're going to look at that. And we're going to understand what makes you visible and irresistible to recruiters and hiring managers out there. We're going to learn how to speak their language, how to tell them exactly what they want to hear. And then we're going to talk about your LinkedIn profile, what makes a good LinkedIn profile, we're gonna look at examples of good LinkedIn profiles as well, and understand how to optimize it is really important. At this point, we won't talk about how to network on LinkedIn. That's a separate course.

And we also won't talk about how to prepare for interviews because that's a complete different course and I'm putting that together for you as well. And then finally, we'll see how to make good recommendation letters, how to build them, and what you must include in those letters. And the last part is the bonuses. Inside the bonuses. You will find a video around how to pitch your skills So how to talk about yourself, you know, when they ask you in the interview, it's usually the first question that is asked, tell me about yourself. So this is something we will learn to answer together in under one minute and make it really optimized and practice keywords, then you're going to have a template for your cover letter, a one size fits all.

And then you will have I think, five or six slides of key words and expressions that I prepared so that you almost I mean, you can probably copy paste some of those into your, your CV because there's a lot of value in those, you know, trendy buzzwords and expressions that are out there that you can see in most job descriptions. So I kind of listed them out for you. And so because most of my clients you know, they always asked me, I get it, I know what you do, but I just can't write today. The way that you write about my achievements, so I wrote it for you so so you can understand how to phrase it. I think that's probably the most valuable piece of the course. So why does this matter?

It matters because you know, an average CV will get you so far, we'll get you an average job will get you, you know, average opportunities. But if you have a really aggressive CV with a lot of buzzwords and you know, big achievements tied to the bottom line, if you know how to sell your skills, then you will get the shot that you're after. There's no lying, there's no exaggeration, this is just learning how to optimize your resume. Okay, so And why does your LinkedIn matter? I know a lot of people tell me Oh, but I don't have LinkedIn. I don't need it.

Yes, you do, because this is where recruiters are hiring talent. This is where there's sourcing and finding candidates. So, you need to be there and not just there you need to be visible, you need to be attractive, you need to make your profile look sexy, okay. So, recruiters, you must understand one more thing is that recruiters, they will treat you based on what they see on your LinkedIn on your CV on your cover letter. So, if they see that you are average, they will treat you as an average candidate. If if they if they get the impression that you have, you know, achieved a lot in your career, then they will treat you as such.

And it's not just recruiters, I mean, it's everyone. Right. So I think it's a good reminder. Again, if you believe in yourself, then everybody else will. It's following the same sort of pattern and I've noticed that when I was working with my clients on one on one well, you know, I don't do magic. I don't do any miracles.

But I believe in you so much so that you start to believe that you can actually do it. And then it changes the game and then you change your speech. And then the way you talk about yourself is transformed. And you're able to convince people that you can do the job and the task at hand. And this is where the magic happens. So let's get started.

I hope you can focus right now just switch off your phone and let's just really try to understand what makes the difference in a good resume, you know, what makes a bulletproof resume. So the first thing I want you to understand is that you should only include your first name and your last name, I don't want you to include your middle name and you know, some people have a lot of names depending on where you come from. I want it to be as simple as possible. Minimal Because I don't want you to give away too much information around that just first name and last name, you have to be as neutral as possible in a way, I want no full addresses, you can just put the postcode and the city where you live, that's enough. I also want to see no nationality except if you're trying to prove that you can legally work in the country where you're applying for work.

So I don't want to see your nationality on your on your resume. Okay? No date of birth. I really don't think that's going to help you in any way. I also with no religion. And some people they add, you know, their family status.

Some people say, you know, I'm married or I'm single, or I have kids and how many kids? I don't want to see that. No, none of that. And maybe a picture but that depends on where you're based. I know it doesn't work for the US market but in Europe, It's still very common to see pictures on resume. So if you are going to put a picture on your resume, I have actually listed in the bonuses, the type of pictures that I want to see.

Okay, so it has to be really good quality stuff. I don't want to see something average. And if you want to be kind of, yeah, like I would say, if you don't want to give away too much, you can add a black and white picture, that's a good way of, you know, sort of staying neutral. Although I am quite against putting pictures on resume, but in some cases, it's necessary. And to be honest with you, nowadays, people can see your picture on your social media profile anyway, so it's kind of hard to avoid it, right. I want you to stay safe.

I just don't want you to go into you know, sort of biased data Dynamic because the more personal information you put out there, the more the selection process is going to be biased. It is biased anyways, I think. But we want to make it as neutral as possible, as fair as possible. So stay safe and enter only what was asked from the recruiter right? When you're talking with the recruiter. Usually, when you apply for a job, you get a first call from the recruiter saying, Hey, I just want to chat with you real quick.

I just want to know, you know, how much you want to make. When can you start? Do you have, you know, the main skills? And it's like a 30 minute conversation, right? That conversation is so so so, so, so important. You must remember to answer only what was asked.

That's it. Don't go above, don't go beyond and make sure that you have a question for them as well. So prepare your own questions at the end, because it's important to show that you're prepared for the call. Even if, if the call is not necessarily scheduled in advance, I know that sometimes they can call you. And it's not really scheduled, or it's not really planned, I would say avoid unplanned calls with recruiters because they're really sneaky and cheeky. And I want you to, to have the time to prepare for it at least, you know, 24 hours.

So don't take you know, unexpected calls from recruiters. Just tell them Oh, sorry, there's no read time. Can you call me tomorrow at the same time, and that will give you a bit of time to prepare your questions and your answers okay. So but we'll talk about this in a separate course when we will go over interview preparation. recruiters are masters and making you talk they they will ask you one question, you will answer it and then they'll stay quiet. And you know, you will feel a bit awkward with the silence you will want to fill that silence with more information that wasn't asked in the first place.

That's when they get you. So please be mindful of that don't over share. So here's an example of how you know, the header should look like. So the first name, and then the last name. So I've just put an initial B and T. But I would suggest you put your, your full name, not an initial, right. And then you can put, for example, if you don't want people to know where you're based, if you're you know, I had a client who was based in China, and he wanted to find a job in Europe.

So he was applying for jobs and friends. So he didn't want people to know that he was actually based outside of friends while he was applying. So he just put down his Skype address. So that helped a lot sort of mask the fact that he wasn't yet based out in the place where he wanted to work. So if you don't want them to know your phone, just put your skype address for example. And if you don't want to give away you know, the city where you live, you could play Just your LinkedIn link.

But make sure that your LinkedIn because on LinkedIn, you have to display where you're based. So make sure that it's aligned. Right? If you are applying for jobs and friends, but you're based in China, make sure that your LinkedIn is displaying that you're based in friends and not in China, because that's going to make a difference. recruiters are going to be really discouraged to contact you if you're not based in the place where they're hiring. Okay, so you need to trick them a little bit, if you don't want to give away Yeah, so the location and the phone so you can always use Skype and the LinkedIn link, no date of birth, like I said, No full name, I mean, just just the last name and the first name.

So keep it really simple, neutral, minimal, so that you can avoid a bias selection process. Another example here, like if you're happy to inform where you're from, where your base you can just put your postcode yourself And then your phone. And in this case, this person here, she added her citizenship. So she she said she was half Swiss, half Italian, because she wanted to demonstrate that she has the legal right to work in Switzerland. So that that helps to some people and you know the type of permit that they have. I'll show you an example of that because it's important for the recruiters to know that you're legally allowed to work where you want to work.

And then your email, of course. So the other example is right here. Yes, US Employment Authorization card, and Europeans citizenship. So this person here has the right to work in both Europe and the US and she made sure to state it out loud in her CV because it's important, it makes a difference. And it encourages the recruiter to reach out to you if the job is in the US or in Europe. And then she added her city, her postcode, her phone, and her email if you're happy to inform where your base is.

Then Then please do that. You don't have to add the full address, there's no need for that. You just have to add the city because they just want to know where you're based. You know, where is your location? Are you close enough to the office that you're applying to work for? That's what matters.

So it should look like this. I gave you the example of my CV, so I put in my city, my postcode, then I have my email, and then I'm saying that I'm a B permit holder. So that's the type of permit here in Switzerland that allows me to work and then I have my phone. This is kind of, you know, a good way to start the Heather, right. When it comes to the executive summary, this is the first thing and the most important thing that comes right after the Heather. This is the thing that the recruiters actually check, first and foremost, and if it's attractive, they keep on reading.

If it's not, they stop right there. So the executive summary is the most of important piece of the puzzle and he has to be absolutely spotless, it has to include a few key items. And I will show you a few examples so that you can understand what I'm talking about. It has to have. So I would, I would build it out in bullet points. So you have your header, and then you have a section that's called executive summary.

And then you have bullet points. The first one should be the years of experience and the main technical knowledge, okay. And then you should also include the industries that you worked in any renowned companies that you worked for any famous client that you served, and lots of buzzwords and keywords. I want you to add the number of people that you've managed, the amount of money that you've managed, the international exposure that you had, maybe you live in a lot of different countries, I want you to add it there, and also languages. So we'll see that that's the Last point, announced any outstanding academic degrees, you know, for people who have PhDs and, and you know, postdocs, I want you to add that there any prestigious academic institution that you attended, I want it to be visible there. And also, you know, the language skills, softer skills and openness to travel for people who are, you know, in sales, or in different, you know, functions that require a lot of travel, I want you to listed up there that your availability to travel is, I don't know, 25 30% of the time, and you have no you know, family ties, maybe I want you to put it out there so that they know exactly what to expect.

So, this is kind of your pitch. We're going to look at that later. But this is you in a nutshell, very, you know, sort of, we're cutting out all of the facts. It's just the executive. Yeah, is the summary of who you are, in a very short, objective way. So here are some examples that I want you to look at.

So for example, I took this this client that I worked with. So she was talking about herself as a growth expert, with nearly 10 years of solid international exposure experience. So here you see, she's talking about the fact that she's a growth expert. She's not saying that she's a product developer or a project manager or an account manager, No, she's not putting a title out there. She's putting in expertise. So there's a difference between a title and an expertise.

So this is really what matters, what is your expertise, not your title, and then the years of experience, and the second line has, you know, the name of procedures companies that she worked for, in this case, you know, I took it down because I want to, you know, I don't want to share her private information, but I have here you know, worked alongside thought leaders and the company. XYZ, so I want you to list it out there and consistent record of jumpstarting in managing operations and cost wisely and effectively. So she is someone who has already met managed money, it's really important to show that you've already managed people and money. And she managed on boarded and identify talents, a team of 50 plus people. So here's the amount of people that she managed, and even in directly, even if it was interns, temps, you know, vendors out there, you know, consultants, contractors, it doesn't matter.

You've managed the work of people that you maybe you hired, maybe you didn't, but it's important to show that you had a certain amount of responsibilities. And so it's like counts, it really does count. If you unboard it if you trained. If, if you coached or mentored people. This looks extremely On the CV, and it has to be mentioned. So it says here she's seasoned in business intelligence, innovation and entrepreneurship, having studied in the most renowned institution for entrepreneurs, the college XYZ.

So here is a list of buzzwords that I that I really like to see. Because surely these buzzwords are going to be in the job descriptions that she is applying for business intelligence, a big buzzword innovation, everybody's talking about that and entrepreneurship. So it's important to have those keywords out there, because there's surely going to be a match to the words that are listed in the job descriptions that you're applying for. So and then she says she has accumulated expertise in logistics and ability, shipment, customer relationship management, while working across the globe, and all these different countries. So here another list of buzzwords, super important to have buzzwords in your area. executive summary, international exposure so you list the countries where you lived and worked.

And then you can add the name of any prestigious academic institution that you've attended. And maybe you did attend, you know, online courses. There's a lot of online courses out there, promoted by a very prestigious academic institutions. Maybe you weren't personally in the university, you know, physically. But you you you signed up for an online an online course. And I want you to mention it here.

You don't have to mention very specifically that it was an online course. Okay. So let's try to be a bit strategic here. Here's another example. high performing business executive was a bold 15 years career in building leading teams, owning strategic planning and driving results across finance and trade. Okay, so here you have years of experience again, then you have expertise, not titles.

Then the second line, you have name of companies. So a fast and impactful career and auditing and consulting firms such as and then you, you mentioned the firms in Latin America, and in Europe, the big force. So for people who are in finance and auditing, it's important to mention that you have worked in one of the big fours because this is definitely a way to stand out procedures companies that you work for again, so he's a finance VP was proven capacity to drive and manage change, standardize, standardize processes, systems and to implement and stabilize internal control environment, in alignment with best market practices. So this is the magnitude of his responsibilities. This is a little line that I think, you know, could be very much aligned with his current job description and also with the future job description that he has He is looking at at the moment.

So it's important to have this marriage of words, you know, what I'm doing today is aligned with what I want to do tomorrow, because this isn't, this is what recruiters want to see. They want to see essentially, have you done the job that you're applying for? And have you done it for a certain number of years. He's saying that he led financial activities for the business with, you know, over 2 billion in revenue and he oversaw five offices, and Miami's Zurich, Madrid, Singapore, Dubai. So this gives us an idea of how big his responsibilities are, how big of a budget he managed, how much people that he, you know, managed and, and this is this, this looks really good on your CV. If you've managed people, if you've managed the budget, make sure to include that.

And then he says, you know, he's known for implementing risk management. So that's the buzzword. Risk Management mindsets, innovative business processes. That's another thing. buzzword and sound financial practices to help develop and motivate multicultural teams and an international environment. He managed and mentored 20 plus finance leaders and created a performance based culture results oriented environment and leveraged in employee engagement.

So employee engagement is something that people are, are really looking at achieving, you know, most companies are trying to make sure that people are engaged in their in their jobs. So it's important to have leaders who can do just that. So that's another great buzzword. If you're looking at managing people, you want to be someone who can leverage on employee engagement, somebody who's result oriented, that's a really great buzzword, somebody who's performance based, somebody who's innovative in the business processes that you that you're able to automate and optimize those processes to gain time and you know, optimize. Why do you want to optimize well, to save resources, Essentially write and amplify your return on investment. So he's saying that he managed and mentored 20 plus people this looks very, very good on CVS, to see that you've been, you know, the kind of person who not he was not only interested in her growth, but also in other people's growth.

And you help them achieve that by coaching and mentoring them. So a thought leader providing insights on competitive advantage, elements of differentiation to create value for customers and stakeholders. That's another big word. Everybody talks about stakeholders. It's just you know, it's, it's, it's a team, or it could be interpreted in different ways. It could be, you know, the, the consultants or the vendors.

You can use it in different ways. But, but this is just a little bit of a that chat. You know, I want you to understand Then how you can make your profile look a lot more interesting and attractive than it already is. And this is a person who I worked with as well. So she makes sure to stay here that she has a page, the 14 years of experience in food and beverage that she has worked internationally in the nonprofit sector, because now she's trying to land a job in the nonprofit sector. So she's making sure to mention that she season in the development of partnerships with local development and was the private sector.

That's another thing that I think you should mention if you're trying to get into the nonprofit sector, because they're looking at partnering with the private sector and with local government agencies. So you want to mention that. You also want to mention that you have, you know, built for example, in in her case, so she built educational programs, but she has an exceptional ability to raise funds. If you want to penetrate the nonprofit job market, you need to know how to raise funds, you need to mention that you need to make sure that it's out there for people to see. Another thing that's important here in the nonprofit sector is monitoring and evaluation of projects to make sure that you have, you know, the best outcome that you're using the resources at the maximum because they have limited resources in this in the nonprofit so you want to mention that as well.

Very sought after skill and the must haves here. If you're looking you know, for a managerial type of role. You want to be someone who has influencing power and outstanding networking skills, who's committed to the development of capacities to building capabilities to training, onboarding, you know, having people grow around you because this is this is really what it manager should be. should know how to do right. So again, you mentioned a number of people that you've managed. You mentioned the fact that you you know, you're able to train and, and build capabilities that's extremely important for for any sector but especially for the nonprofit.

And then the languages of course, because some of these job descriptions have you know, series of language that you are supposed to speak fluently. So you want to mention it here. And make sure that you tie everything up. I think this is very beautifully done. And I if you if you're looking for a job in the nonprofit, I think this would be a good example to follow. I want you to keep in mind that the executive summary is really what will make the recruiter look further, right.

If you want to be likable. If you want to be attractive to them. You need to have a strong executive summary The keywords that are going to be listed there should be matching the keywords of the job that you're applying for. So make sure to have a strong executive summary, that's the most important part of any resume, any CV, any LinkedIn profile, the summary has to be spot on. It has to have all the keywords, all the people, you've managed all the projects, you know, the amount, you know, the, the magnitude, you know, of the budget, the, the, you know, the prestigious clients that you had, you know, I had this client once, she was an event manager and she she, she used to prepare, you know, organize events and concerts. And I asked her, you know, who did you organize events for and she, she told me a few a few names amongst, you know, one of them was Madonna, and it wasn't even listed in your, in her CV that she had actually, you know, prepared, prepared the concert or helped or, you know, contributed in any way even if it's in a small way, but she was part of the team who organized the concert for Madonna.

So this is really important to show. I don't want you to be shy. I don't want you to downplay, I don't want you to sort of admit information that can make you look more attractive to recruiters and hiring managers. buzzwords are really important as well, prestigious companies. Explain to them that you have, you know, lived abroad, if you did mention the countries where you lived abroad mentioned the languages that you can speak, and also the fact that you're able to travel, your software skills, all of that should be packaged very tightly in your executive summary, so that they are excited about reading further and going deeper into your profile. So I hope this helps.

Let's go into the next section. And I'm going to talk about making your achievements big making them some time. them to the bottom line. That's really what matters when you're talking about your achievements, when you listen right under. So that's what comes right after the executive summary. All right, I'll see you in a bit.