Mastering the Art of the Resume and Job Hunt 

In this episode of The Matcha Guardians, we explore the challenges of job hunting and resume writing with Angela Buccellato, CEO of The Resume Rescue. Dive in with us as we explore strategies for standing out in the hiring process, how to update your resume with relevant keywords, and why you just may need to update your LinkedIn profile. Drawing from her experience in defense and technical recruiting, Angela emphasizes authenticity, advising job seekers to be open about career gaps, and offers interview tips like using the STAR method to structure responses. If you’re on the job hunt, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR SEASON 2, EPISODE 5 | Mastering the Art of the Resume and Job Hunt

[Music Playing]

Voiceover (00:00):

Welcome to The Matcha Guardians Podcast, brought to you by matcha.com. Here we focus on the biggest trending health topics of our time, featuring the greatest and upcoming wellness advocates. Now here are The Matcha Guardians, licensed dietitian, Diana Weil and medical journalist, Elara Hadjipateras.

Diana Weil (00:18):

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode.

Elara Hadjipateras (00:21):

This week we have an amazing guest joining us, Angela Buccellato, the CEO of The Resume Rescue. The Resume Rescue takes the headache out of finding a job, helping you with resume writing, interview prep, career coaching and more.

Angela's also the host of That's Business, a podcast. She works with clients of all levels. From those just starting out their careers to c-suite individuals. Angela, welcome.

Angela Buccellato (00:44):

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited.

Diana Weil (00:47):

Angela, I'm excited because I feel like this is a topic that maybe at first glance is kind of a little snooze fest, but in reality, is very interesting and so pivotal to so many people's careers in life. So, I would just be kind of curious to hear a bit about your background and what led you into recruiting and kind of how you got here today.

Angela Buccellato (01:08):

So, we'll try to make this short and sweet. And it's hilarious that you say snooze fest because that's one of the reasons why I started this company was just being annoyed with the whole process of being like, “Oh, you have to be suit and tie, buttoned up individual to look for a career and you shouldn't be yourself and hide your personality if you're too much or don't share about your personal life.” Be this perfect box person. And I never was.

So, long story short, I fell into defense recruiting right after I graduated from Penn State University. I have two psychology degrees and thought I wanted to be a therapist. Moved into defense recruiting to help transitioning military vets find work and saw, oh gosh, these resumes were awful, but they were incredible individuals. I didn't want them to be another statistic.

So, I saw what hiring managers were saying and what these resumes looked like. And I'm like, “Oh no, there's a disconnect. We need to help out.”

So, I started writing resumes as a cute little fun side business. I moved into technical recruiting, working with clients like Google and Microsoft and a lot of mom-and-pop shops here in the Metro Detroit area. Then I was like, “This is an everyone thing. This is not just a military veteran thing.”

So, in 2017 I got the LLC, got it legitimate in the state of Michigan. And I worked an awful job at the time. So, transition into when I got into technical recruiting, hated my boss, just was Jekyll and Hyde with us, would throw things across the room like crazy and I would come home crying every day.

And my partner at the time was like, “Look, I love you, but if you do this, talk about your job one more time, I'm done.” I had food poisoning. We had people going through pregnancies in the office, they did not care, was like work, work, work, nothing else.

So, come home from a beautiful two-week vacation to Italy where I'm like, “Live, laugh, love. Why am I stressing out so much? This is so stupid.” The Italians and my family in Italy too just said, “Oh, you work too hard. Why don't you take a break?”

And I was like, “You know what? You're right. Thank you.” And I come home, and I was fired, literally within seconds. Came home and my boss said, “Sorry, we have to let you go.” Because I was trying to do the right thing. I'd call out some of the not so legitimate and compliance driven things that were happening in our office and I reported it to corporate and I was just the little fly that wouldn't go away because I would call things out. I wouldn't just sit there and take it like a lot of my coworkers would.

So, when that happened in 2019, I was like, “You know what? You're never going to feel ready to start this business. You've had it started for two years. Go home and do it.” So, I went home at 9:00 AM, sobbed my eyeballs out, called my mom, my partner. And I was like, “Alright, we're doing it. Let's see how it works.”

So, I worked three jobs at the time and worked on The Resume Rescue until I had enough to quit. And here we are today with three employees, and we've helped over, I think we're at 5,500 people we've helped to date, so-

Elara Hadjipateras (04:11):

That’s amazing. And actually, the way that we got connected is through our amazing podcast producer Jon. Right Jon? Maybe, he can give us a shout out. Hey Jon.

Angela Buccellato (04:20):

We love Jon.

Jon Gay (04:21):

Yeah, Angela and I met here locally in Metro Detroit. My wife has used her to help her re-tweak her resume as she's been looking, doing some job hunting lately. And Angela is the best networked person I know of anybody here in the area.

She is a LinkedIn queen. She is amazing. She's her authentic self on LinkedIn and it works for her, and she knows everybody.

Full disclosure, she's also a client of mine and I produce her podcast. And the guests that she gets from all walks of life in her That's Business podcast- It's a fun listen when I go through them to edit them.

Angela Buccellato (04:53):

Thank you. Thanks for giving me my flowers, Jon, should pay you to do that. Gosh, but-

Jon Gay (04:56):

You do.

Angela Buccellato (04:57):

I do. Exactly. But it's funny that you say that because in my head it was like the scariest thing already happened. I got fired, I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I didn't want to go into a certain career field of journalism because I didn't want to work nights and weekends and holidays. So, instead, I'm an entrepreneur that works nights, weekends, and holidays. So, that was great.

Jon Gay (05:15):

And you're talking to two recovering journalists in Elara and myself, so we understand. Yes.

Angela Buccellato (05:20):

Didn't know that. Elara, that's amazing. When people think of LinkedIn, what do you get? You get that gut wrenching, like, “Ugh, if I hear transformational leader, I'm going to throw up.” And I totally agree where I kind of help the alternative professionals or those that should show up as your authentic self.

And you should be able to talk about your babies, your fur babies, if you're a guitarist on the weekend or whatever. And that's where I built this company on of being myself on LinkedIn, calling out things that aren't right and just saying “Yeah, you can be yourself in a job setting and people should like you; you spend 40 plus hours there a week.”

Elara Hadjipateras (05:57):

So, how long should someone spend creating, let's not say a “perfect” resume, but a really good resume. How much time investment are we talking here?

Angela Buccellato (06:07):

So, it depends. I'm really big on opportunity costs. So, as I would hire someone to build a deck in my backyard, if writing is not your expertise, like Elara, you have a journalism background, but journalism writing and resume writing are very different.

So, I tell people all the time, if it's going to take you days to do this, hire someone. And that's not a selfish plug, it's just a thing. And everyone has this thought that they should be good at resume writing. At what point were you ever trained?

If you give me a stack of resumes of all levels, I will pull out every career center resume from 20 years ago to two months ago because it has not changed.

So, that's where it comes through. And what I tell people instead of the length, update this quarterly. I mean if we've learned anything in the last few years, is no job is guaranteed. So, if you can update your experience quarterly or just have a running list, I mean I'm going to add this to my presentations of where I've been a guest on podcasts and it's just a list.

It's not a pretty resume, it's just, “Hey, I was on this podcast this date, here's all of your social information to reconnect.” So, I definitely say at least quarterly, or very minimum yearly, you should update this.

Diana Weil (07:18):

So, you mentioned that you were fired, and I think that when it comes to finding a job, either being fired or having large breaks in your resume can be really challenging. It doesn't necessarily look good. How do you play off some of those more challenging, “I was fired, or I took a year off,” or something that doesn't scream… that it just doesn't look good.

Angela Buccellato (07:41):

So, great question. I would say if you've been let go from a company, if you just tell the situation, I'm very big on honesty. So, if you were fired because of lack of performance or you didn't show up to work, probably don't want to say that in an interview.

But in my situation, I'm very upfront and honest. I mean I worked in an environment that was very … if you ever watch the show Mad Men, it was very Mad Men style. It was very phone calls, metrics, and I was more on building relationships with clients and that's where I wasn't praised on.

But I'm very open about being fired. I've said that in interviews before I decided to take this as my full-time job. So, when I recruit and when I ask you why are you looking for a new opportunity? And you tell me the story of new boss came in and didn't like you and wanted to find a reason to get rid of you, great, I will take that into account.

And funny enough, I have two psychology degrees and they come into play where it's like I know when someone's lying and I know when they're being truthful, we can really find that authentically.

And how we kind of bring that up, and to kind of answer your question on a gap, so I've helped a lot of parents returning to the workforce. I had a client who had two years of cancer treatments. I've had someone took a sabbatical to travel. So, what you want to do, and let's be clear that a gap is about a year. If you have a few months, it takes a few months to find a job. That's okay. Nothing you have to call out there.

But for my client that had two years of cancer treatments who's now in remission, what we did on his resume was we put the years, I think it let's just say 2017 to 2019 and we listed specific projects he's done.

So, as entrepreneurs or as professionals, and Jon I'm sure can relate to this too, it's, “Oh hey, can you just help me with my resume?” Or “Hey, what do you think of this podcast?” We get asked all the time.

So, take that and put that as a formal job and say hey, even if it's your parents, your friends, your family, whatever, I still give those people free services, but I'm doing the same work I would do for any client.

So, I tell people to put that there. If you're a returning parent to the workforce, if you volunteered, if you're a member of your association where you live, if you're a member of whatever, if you're a member of your sorority or fraternity alumni, alumni of your college, if you went to college, I mean there's so many opportunities that we all look past.

So, definitely want to identify because us recruiters are trained to call out, why do I not want to hire you? Is how we're trained. So, you want to make it easy, it’s possible for me to say yes.

Diana Weil (10:22):

So, basically if you have a gap, make it look like — add, you don't have a gap. Fill that space in with the things that you've been doing, even if it's not paid work.

Angela Buccellato (10:29):

Yes, absolutely. And I'm not asking you to lie, I'm saying the work you've actually done for it. It's just, we're like, “Oh yeah, does it take me five minutes to change a format of a resume?” Yes, but that's work a lot of people can't do, so-

Elara Hadjipateras (10:43):

What are some other red flags on a resume? So, a gap year without any explanation. What are some other ones off the top of your head that we shouldn't have?

Would you say it'd be weird for example, if someone's like, it's too good, it's too perfect, you can tell almost that someone's lying where they're like, “I speak eight languages,” and they're giving their GPA and this person's in their 40s. I don't really understand the relevance of a high school GPA.

Diana Weil (11:09):

And do you have to add your GPA?

Elara Hadjipateras (11:11):

I don’t know. I'm just saying it's just like things they've evolved. And the type of resume you're using when you're in your 40s is very different than the resume you're using right out of college.

Angela Buccellato (11:20):

That's such a great question. I think my absolute favorite is saying they're detail oriented but spelling their job title wrong. I've seen that. (Laughter)

Elara Hadjipateras (11:28):

That's really great.

Angela Buccellato (11:30):

That's been a good one. Or just the basics. People laugh at me in presentations where I say what are four key takeaways? And my third one is always grammar, spelling, I'm human. We're all human. Use Grammarly.

Use a free resource that plugs into all of your documents that will say, “Hey, you forgot a number in your phone number.” I've had that. How am I supposed to get in contact with you?

I've had, let's see, other red flags. I mean ageism does exist. We can all live in this perfect world where we can pretend it doesn't, but it absolutely does. I don't want that you graduated high school in 1980 or 1970 or something there and I think ageism is one of the dumbest things in the history of the world. But that's podcast for another time where that's a big thing.

Or if, let's say you're in a sales role or I'll pick on Jon. Jon has on his resume, “Works with clients and edits podcasts.” Okay, well what kind of podcast? How many clients are you working with?

Instead, you want to say, “Align synergies with clients nationally to edit podcasts based on compliance needs.” And he could list the number of podcasts he works on, or the type of podcast: mine’s a business podcast, healthcare podcast, financial podcasts. Just knowing a little of your repertoire of clients.

Jon Gay (12:50):

We've been on each other's shows.

Angela Buccellato (12:51):

Yes.

Jon Gay (12:52):

Angela, can I ask you a follow-up question because as the old person in this group here- and I'll be 44 later this year, and my wife is, I'll say close in age to me. How do you deal with that where you don't want to tell a potential employer, “Hey I'm in my mid or late 40s or 50s,” or whatever it is, but you still need to get all your experience in there. Do you just take dates off? How do you navigate that fine line?

Angela Buccellato (13:17):

Another great question. So, what I do for my younger clients because you're too young, you're too old, I swear I still don't know what the perfect age is. I think it's between 35 and 45. So, you're still in that range. So, you should be good but in a corporate setting.

So, what I like to do is I like to knock off some of your earlier experience or if it was really … and Jon I know in your case you had really great early experience where you have big names for your resume, you could take off dates.

So, you could just say additional experience, put on air producer, list where you worked and all those and you could take off the dates. That's not a red flag because we have to verify seven years of employment. So, if it's over seven years, that's okay.

And I've worked since I was 14. I come from entrepreneurs both sides of the family. So, I've been working I think since 13 or 14. So, I'm not going to put every single one of those jobs on the resume. But I'm going to focus really, I like to say in your case Jon about 15, 20 years.

Because you have to think, like you said of the pay differential. I don't know who came up with a thing of like only put 10 years on your resume. No, the pay between 10 years, 15 and 20 is very different. So, I don't know who came up with that, but I hate that advice. So, just think of what the job description’s asking and make sure that's aligned there.

Diana Weil (14:42):

And what about job experience that has no relevance to what you're applying. For example, my early jobs were working as a host or a waitress, do you put that job experience if you are now a professional trying to get a corporate job?

Angela Buccellato (14:55):

So, I would shorten that experience. But here's a little something-something that a lot of people don't admit, I prefer clients that work in food and beverage, retail and hospitality. Because you see the worst of people and you can work in any situation.

So, funny enough, all of my employees, my resume writer, my business operations, my copywriter, all have worked food and beverage or some type of retail training perspective there.

So, you don't have to necessarily list all those Diana, to your point. But you can put in your overview or career highlights, previous industry experience, encompassing food and beverage, retail, whatever that looks like for you.

Because I also was in the same boat, and I worked at a restaurant for 10 years in high school and college and post-college. But I still wanted that on the resume. And that's actually what got me my first internship because I was the head host trainer for all new employees at 17-years-old.

Diana Weil (15:54):

Very interesting.

Elara Hadjipateras (15:55):

I was a cater waitress as well. Cater waitress, waitress, worked at a bakery. I do like bringing it up in my interviews that I've had.

Angela Buccellato (16:02):

Yes. And if you don't have the space on your resume, because you still want to keep it to two pages, you can bring it up in an interview or I always say put it on LinkedIn or just keep it short and sweet because a lot of people don't realize how much formatting room you have on your resume.

Because I have clients all the time, they're like, “I don't know, it's four pages, I can't do it,” and I'll mess with it while I'm on the phone with them. I'm like, “Well I got it to two and a half without deleting anything. Just changing your margins and changing your fonts.” They're like, “Oh okay.”

Jon Gay (16:27):

So, you said two, there used to be an old tale Angela, that you had to keep it all on one page. You're okay with two?

Angela Buccellato (16:33):

We're okay with two because that was when you were physically walking it in somewhere to handing it to someone, which we know we are far past, so they wouldn't lose your resume.

But now that everything's online, and I would even argue I have a lot of IT project managers or people that work with so many clients that they are allowed to have three, four-page resumes because one job is a page with all the different client work they do.

So, case by case where I had this incredibly talented individual who I did allow her to have a four-page resume, but we differentiated her experience. But she's given global presentations. She is a subject matter expert in her field. I'm not going to take away her presentations and public speaking and podcast appearances.

So, we separate the two documents where she still technically has a two-page resume, but then she has two pages worth of appearances, presentations and everything like that. So, “know your audience” is really what it comes down to.

Diana Weil (17:30):

So, you've mentioned LinkedIn and online quite a few times and I'm very curious about this because I hate … I have a LinkedIn, but I absolutely do not use it. It is not updated. Elara, do you have one?

Elara Hadjipateras (17:41):

I do, but I am not an avid LinkedIn user.

Diana Weil (17:44):

No, I don't even — yeah, I don't think …

Elara Hadjipateras (17:45):

I'm not verified. I don't even know if I'm a real person on LinkedIn.

Diana Weil (17:48):

I don't even remember the last time I logged into it. So, how important is it that Elara and I get our LinkedIn — I mean we're not looking for jobs currently. We're very happy where we are.

But how important is it that you have a LinkedIn in today's society? And add-on question: What about other social media while you're going through the interviewing process? Should you delete them or put them on private? Give us a social media spiel please.

Angela Buccellato (18:15):

I am a former social media hater to the point where my friends were like, “Yo, Ang, you alive over there? You've been radio silent on everything.” So, I'm talking 2016, 2017, I didn't do anything social wise, nothing. I had them, I didn't really touch them, whatever. It was more of a lurker if we will.

So, it was like 2017 to 2018 I saw LinkedIn's popularity, especially in recruiting, grow. And I'm like, “Alright, let's just see.” I set a goal of how many connections I wanted to build and then I just trial and error and I was like, “If I roll my eyes at your post, you're getting unfollowed.” And I still follow that rule to this day.

So, my newsfeed is curated of people like myself who are like “The job search process sucks, looking for a job, sucks. Being an entrepreneur is the hardest job in the world.” And it's just really real conversations.

There's a lot of diversity, equity, inclusion on LinkedIn. I have so many different perspectives where my newsfeed, I enjoy it. And if there's anyone that comes in and is like, “I hired someone that no showed the interview three times, but I wanted to give them a chance.” No, you didn't.

So those type of vibes, which is what I feel like LinkedIn gave so many people  that negative tone are long gone. I mean there's still those people on there. They're just not in my network.

So, you have to think about for SEO purposes of how you’re coming up. Jon, that gave me my lovely flowers beginning of this podcast. I meet so many of my guests off LinkedIn or I have just a slew of LinkedIn friends that I'm getting flown out to New York, I'm going to Dallas to give speaking engagements from people I met off LinkedIn.

And granted I know I'm in a biased industry. What do you do when you're looking for a job? You go to LinkedIn. But from our LinkedIn coaching, which is one of the services we offer, I encourage you to be yourself, be yourself, post about yourself and who you are because it's all part of your personal brand.

Why do you buy into celebrities? Why do you buy into whatever professional athlete influencer? Because you like what they're doing, and you'd like to see a day in their life. So, you just need to be that person.

And I remember my friend shout out to my boy Nick, who had me start the podcast, which met me Jon and now we're here. So, full circle. He's like, “Well, who's telling you, you can't post that way?” I'm like, “Well, me.” He's like, “Okay do you or do you not run your own business?” I'm like, “You’re right, okay, let's do it.”

So, this is where I not only get a lot of business out of it, I've made so many friends off LinkedIn and other social media platforms. And to answer your question Diana, as far as should you put them on private, it's up to you.

If you are an awful person that maybe shouldn't put some racist things out there, which fun fact I have had to rescind job offers for. I could tell you a whole slew of horror stories then yeah, you probably should put it on private.

But it's just your comfort level too, at the end of the day where I will be honest, that's the first thing I do when I hire employees. I will look through their social media. But in this case, so Destiny who was my very first employee and still with me almost four years now, which is crazy.

I found her Facebook and I found we had a mutual friend. I texted mutual friend, I'm like, “How do you know Destiny Hinson here?” Well Lopez at the time, she goes, “Oh my God, I loved her. I grew up with her like she's the best.”

So, our mutual friend Kate telling me that was getting me even more excited to hire her and had that better mentality when I went to interview her. So, in that situation it played out very nice.

And same with my second employee. Allison, same thing. She had a Gordon Ramsay hat for graduation that said she was an “idiot sandwich” that she graduated. And I was like, “I am obsessed with you, and I want to hire you.”

So, in both those situations it played out, but it's personal preference. It doesn't hurt to put it on private if you don't want people to see them. And on another thing, you do not have to accept your bosses and your coworkers’ invitations to be friends. You don't have to. Let me put that out there too.

Jon Gay (22:18):

Something Angela told me once, which was — because I'm pretty active on Facebook and I'll post a lot of personal stuff on Facebook and Angela said to me probably a couple months ago, “Jon, why don't you put that stuff on LinkedIn? Your content is good.”

My training is as a radio DJ and the key is always connect with your audience, share personal things about yourself on the air that your audience will connect with. So, I started doing a little bit more of that on LinkedIn as well as Facebook. And it's creating interaction, it's creating-

Elara Hadjipateras (22:29):

You're building your brand.

Angela Buccellato (22:47):

Branding. Yep.

Jon Gay (22:49):

It's creating interaction and branding and connection with folks that keeps me active in their feeds and keeps me top of mind for them.

Angela Buccellato (22:56):

Well, and the amount of people that come back and they're like, okay. And I curate my posts around what's making me mad or what's kind of like jazzing me up today. And again, I'm very neuro divergent. I have severe ADHD, but it makes me a great business owner in this way where everyone has said, you need to plan out your posts, you need to plan them out.

And every time I would, it just wouldn't work for me. And I don't think it's a one size fits all when I'm more of a night owl. I'm not a morning person. So, I just came up with a post a few months ago at, it was like 11:00 PM and it just said, “It's okay to quit a job after a month. It's okay to quit without a backup plan. It's okay to be fired. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.”

And it was all the reasons my clients gave me over the last month or so of why they left their opportunity. Do you know that post got me, I think five or six clients out of it. I did it at 11:00 PM on whatever day of the week it was.

So, it is important to be on there but make it easy. Take a cute little picture of us right here. It could be, “Hey we're recording our podcast,” or it could be Elara and Diana, you were talking about pregnancy and how tired you are and especially having a five-month-old and Diana going through and having a new kiddo on the way.

I mean, people will vibe with that and understand it. I could give you 20,000 podcast ideas but that's another one where it's working parents or how do you show up to your job after you've been sleep deprived and haven't slept in five months? Or how do you mentally handle that? When do you know when to take a break?

So, I'm very vulnerable about mental health. I did a mental health post, not that you have to give all your dirty laundry out there, but I just said, “Hey, you haven't heard from me because I had a whole mental breakdown.”

And this is what led me to be burnt out. I got 11 clients out of that post. It had nothing to do with careers. It was just like; I admit, I did this to myself, and this is what happened. These are the steps I'm taking.

But because people saw that related to it was like, “Oh you actually understand this from not only holistic perspective but a psychological perspective,” because it takes a lot of tools looking for a job and this is a very vulnerable process.

Elara Hadjipateras (25:14):

That's amazing and amazingly real in terms of how you're using LinkedIn out there. It's kind of inspiring me. I think I could get a little bit more active on the LinkedIn. More vulnerable.

I mean I'm pretty vulnerable when it comes to these videos that we make for matcha.com's social media. I always try and be as genuine as possible. There's no makeup going on my face. I am looking disheveled, I'm tired, I'm sweating as I am now. It's not glistening.

Angela Buccellato (25:40):

With your perfect beautiful skin.

Elara Hadjipateras (25:41):

Please. Yeah, it's just the sweat. But no, it kind of brings me around to the question of AI. So, on one side, you have these amazing authentic selves like yourself who you're sharing out there. It's really connecting.

And then there's this other half of people I think that they want to be involved with that conversation, but they're intimidated especially if maybe they're not naturally a writer or sharing that way. So, they're turning to AI to help them out. Can you kind of clearly sniff out the AI content out there when it comes to the resumes?

Angela Buccellato (26:13):

For resumes, absolutely. That was something I forgot to bring up on an earlier question, but I can tell because they're just too broad and they just all say the same type of verbiage.

Elara Hadjipateras (26:25):

They love delightful. I feel like that's a common AI thing. Delightful. It’s delightful.

Angela Buccellato (26:30):

It's delightful. Yes. But it's a good starting point. Let me be clear. It's a great starting point and I think for social media, I hate cover letters too. I think it's great for a cover letter. Do I write cover letters all day every day? Yes. And I cannot wait for the day that they're obsolete. I'll die on that hill. I hate cover letters. They're stupid.

So, I think it's great for those situations or to just give you an outline, so you cannot just take this and run with it. And LinkedIn just actually added an AI generate or I think it's called an AI helper; I forget what it's called.

Jon Gay (27:04):

Yeah, when you're writing a post, right?

Angela Buccellato (27:04):

Yes. So, I think it's a great tool to embrace. It's not going to do all the work for you. We can tell as recruiters and even my friend that's a teacher, she's like, “I know when my students used AI, I don't need the scanner of ‘is this plagiarized?’ I can tell by the verbiage because it's too robotic.”

Diana Weil (27:23):

Can we talk about cover letters, and I am so curious why you hate them. And just also, when do you use them? I mean, are we still in an age of cover letters?

Angela Buccellato (27:32):

We're half and half. So, some, I'm not going to say they're obsolete, we're getting away from them, which is good. Where people are turning to LinkedIn or another online platform to justify who you are, what you're looking for, everything like that.

But cover letters to me, were always just like a more drawn-out resume and I never read them and neither did any of my Fortune 500 clients. I mean if you are in marketing let's say and you wanted to have a portfolio, great, love that, put the portfolio link or give me samples of that.

But cover letters were just … it's the same information on your resume and your LinkedIn. Why do I need it again? And why people are still using them, I'm not really sure but I'd rather you attach like a link to your LinkedIn or a link to for all of your work.

All of us honestly, a link to the podcast to listen to and understand how we work professionally or how we interview things like that. So, what I would recommend when you do it is obviously if it's required, but if it's optional, I wouldn't.

And I think of this too, your time is valuable. I'm very big on opportunity costs as I mentioned earlier. If it's taken you an hour plus to do an application that you're not even guaranteed an interview, like no, under 15 maybe 20 minutes.

But my time's valuable, your time's valuable. Don't give this company and you shouldn't do work for free. Like free presentations and free what ideas do you have? No.

Elara Hadjipateras (28:57):

Yeah, how do we feel about that? Because that's something — I work in marketing and so does Diana and I work in content marketing. So, clients love meeting with me and just kind of saying, “What's in the magic box?” They're like, “Okay, give us all your tricks.”

Basically, like you're saying, put together a business plan, give us a budget, give us all the ideas and a PowerPoint and I'm just thinking, but that's kind of the secret sauce from the start.

So, I have mixed feelings about that in terms of I like to, when I have an interview, I want them to kind of walk me through how they might handle a situation. Not that I'm going to give them a case study task, i.e. maybe a task I want to get done but I'm going to just have them do it for me.

But I talk them through what the task might be and I just kind of like, “So, off the top of your head what would your approach be to this?”

Angela Buccellato (29:44):

And that's great. Or you can even do, I've had a client that they would have their executive sales manager walk through how would you sell this client? And they made a fake portfolio in a fake company, that was appropriate. That's okay because it's not using what the company's doing. They gave all the company logistics. So, to me that was okay to do.

But in your case Elara, it's very much you have demonstrated work experience. They either like it or they don’t, and they could see what your experience is. So, I hate the whole, “How would you solve our problems? Tell us more.”

Because they don't even have to hire you. And this happened to my friend for an executive director role. I told her not to do it and she did it, but it was write a three-page document of ideas you have or I forget, it was a case study.

Not only did she not get hired, they took them and now they're already implementing one of her ideas because we could see it on social media. So, I'd say, “Who told you not to do it? Did I do that?” So, I was nice at first but now she has a new job, and we can laugh about it, so-

Jon Gay (30:49):

Angela, you talked about AI a moment ago. What is your perspective on the whole, how do I beat the AI scanners with resumes? I feel like that's something that a lot of job seekers are worried about is how do I get the right keywords in my resume? Because the first scan might be a machine as opposed to a person. How do you tell your clients to navigate that?

Angela Buccellato (31:08):

Ready, we're all going to say it together. An ATS is not a robot. Let's be clear on that because that's what everyone always thinks. What it is, is if you think of on your keyboard, that control F function that finds keywords for you, that's all it is.

So, an applicant tracking system is meant to help recruiters filter through thousands of applicants. And what you want to do is when you're reading through a job description and it says, let's say for a sales role and it says, “Client facing, KPI driven, client, client, client, client, work with teams, work with teams, work with teams,” put those words on your resume. That's it.

So, you want to make sure those key terms are on there. And that's how it gets filtered. So, if you get that auto reject email, that's set up by a recruiter or if you answer no to some of those preliminary questions, do you have five years of experience in social media content? If you say no, auto trigger back, you get rejected.

So, us recruiters set that up, we do that. And if you get that auto reject email that you're like, “This robot set me up,” I could go through and checkbox all my clients, send the reject email to or candidates I should say.

Or another thing a lot of people don't know if they close the job, put it on hold, you automatically get that reject email even if they didn't look at your application. So, one more time, it's not a robot, it's just a virtual filing system.

And I again, I don't know who started another fun rumor of that it's a robot because it's not. So, that's how you can tell who's worked, worked in recruiting and who hasn't when they're like, “Get past the ATS robot,” you haven't worked in recruiting.

Jon Gay (32:43):

Put the keywords in your resume to match the job description. Just obviously don't keyword stuff with a bunch of irrelevant stuff that's not relevant to you as a candidate.

Angela Buccellato (32:51):

Right. Instead of saying, “I'm a good communicator,” say C-suite presentations or technical communication. Instead of saying leadership, you could say C-suite leadership or training and mentoring employees. We play the synonym game is what I like to say.

Jon Gay (33:07):

You’re a thesaurus.

Angela Buccellato (33:08):

I am a thesaurus. Honestly, that's what it is. So, I know you have to play this game. I'm fully cognizant of that and I wish we could just be honest, real on resumes, but we're not there yet. So, here we are.

Diana Weil (33:18):

So interesting. So, Angela and Elara, you guys were kind of talking about the next step of you get your resume read and then you get an interview. Can you talk us through some interviewing tips and some of the best ways to prep for an interview?

Angela Buccellato (33:31):

Fun quick story and then I'll answer. I used to be horrific at interviewing. I would never get offers. I'm like, “What am I doing wrong? I don't understand.”

But what I would do is I would downplay my personality because as you've gathered from this podcast, I like to talk a lot and I am a lot for some people, but I'm very passionate about what I do.

So, in my head I was like, “Okay, need to chill with the passion. You need to just like go in and be this person you should pretend to be because that's what they want to see.”

So, then after one summer, I took all the time to read every how to interview body language book out there. And I was like, “The reoccurring theme is be yourself.” So, I know that's cheesy and cliche and we don't want to hear that, but you should be yourself because — and the this is a whole mindset too.

Instead of, “I hope they like me,” come in with it, “I hope I like them.” That's what we need to change it to. And you should ask the tough questions and it should be more of an interview format, a natural conversation format rather than, “I can't ask any questions, I got to wait until the end to ask any questions I have.”

No, you have a question, ask it right there. If I say “Elara, tell me about your leadership style,” and you answer it, then you could throw it back on me and say, “Angela, what kind of leader are you looking for? What type of leader is successful in your organization?” Then you have the inside scoop.

There's what's called the STAR method in interviewing. So, it stands for situation, task, action, results. It's just a way of storytelling. So, if any of you are readers or of course we like podcasts that we're all on this, you can talk through and you have a mental picture where someone's describing something to you, and you have that mental picture when you're reading or listening to something. That's what you should be doing in interviews.

So, when I worked at The Resume Rescue, I did, this was X problem, I solved it with Y, and this is what resulted Z. So, that's how we kind of framed the STAR method. And to practice, practice with the person closest to you, your partner, your friend, your family member.

I have given presentations to audiences of thousands. I still get nervous to present to my partner or my employees who've heard this thousands of times. But I'm like, “This is gross and cringey.” It's the thing that makes you cringe the most that you should be doing because complete strangers are going to be a walk in the park.

Funny enough, Jon, I'll call you out here where I was on … he edits my podcast, he listens to it, yes, every week. But on a podcast, I got asked to be on where he was a co-host. I was like, “Oh my God, I'm so nervous,” and I didn't like that you were off-camera.

I'm like, “Did I do this right? Is he looking at me weird?” And he's edited, what, 120 of my episodes?

Jon Gay (36:10):

Something like that. Yeah.

Angela Buccellato (36:11):

It's just like that. It's again, that mentality around it. So, I tell people to prepare for the interview. I am music driven. So, I have a playlist called “Bad B” that I have all the songs that hype me up, put me in a good mood and I play it every day. I do it when I'm in a bad mood. I do it when I need to be pumped for a presentation.

I actually listened to it right before we got on this. So, I was more energized, and I set myself up for success. Whether it's a virtual interview or in person, take your coffee mug, if you're a coffee drinker, tea drinker. I know it doesn't take much from the cabinet, but put it out, put out your outfit, still treat it even if it's virtual as if it's in person.

Check your tech please. Wi-Fi goes out all the time if you've had.. (Jon's clapping over here). But just check your tech, check your background. We had talked about early on the podcast, my door being open and distracting, close the door, make it easy.

So, it's just like little easy things like that and treat it like a conversation. I mean do your research straight up like an FBI agent. Try to find what you can.

Another story, I'm full of stories today, sorry, but one of the stories I have for my internship, I found the year, it was a FIFA Cup year, and I was really into soccer at the time. I still watch it occasionally, but not as big of a fan as I was then.

And I found out the CEO of the company who I was interviewing with, huge soccer fan, taught his kids, coach on the side in weekends, huge, huge, huge soccer fan, played in college.

So, in my head, I'm keeping this in my head, I'm like, “Alright, alright. Sam's a soccer fan. Sam's a soccer fan. When am I going to bring this up?”

So, whatever conversation, I forget the what the question was, and I brought up the World Cup and I was like, “Oh yeah, I was watching World Cup the other day on so and so and so and so,” and he — I wish I could demonstrate for you.

He takes my resume, slams it down, moves it over, and he leans back in his chair all unprofessional. He is like, “What do you know about soccer?” And I go, “I played for 10 years.” And he's like, “Shut the (something) up.” He turned off corporate him and we just BS’ed the whole time. And I walked out of there with a job offer.

So, I can train your skills. I cannot train your personality. And that's where people go wrong all the time. My favorite story to date and Allison, my resume writer, and I like to joke about this. We had about 50 I think applicants for our resume writing position three years ago. I had this candidate number one who I was like — we'll call her Ann.

Ann was perfect. I was like, “She is the one, she has the certifications, the experience, she is it. She interviews, Destiny and I interview her. She's telling me everything I want to hear in a corporate setting. “Oh, the client's right. I do what I need to do. We work.” Just like all the corporate buzzwords.

But she was a dream for a corporation, not for my small business where we need to switch tasks, we need to put out fires every day and we need to work as a team, and you need to admit fault because we need to communicate when things need to change to no fault of anyone's own.

So, I was like, “Man, that interview was not it.” So, Allison who was in the bottom of the applicants because she didn't have as much experience, but again, I liked her experience in retail. So, I was like, “Alright, we're going to interview her. Let's see.” She had brief resume writing experience and she, hilariously enough, thought the job was a joke because who's heard of a resume writer as a job?

So, I had emailed her, and I was like, “Hey, for the interview, you do not have to be professional. You don't have to dress professional; it's going to be 5:30 because you're getting off work. Come as you are.” And she replies back and says, “So, I should put my ball gown away. Got it.”

And Destiny and I cracked up. I'm like, “I'm in love with her already.” And that was before we even interviewed her. So, this is where, and where she did really well in the interview is because she admitted where she made the wrong decision. She admitted what she learned from it.

We're not perfect. And if a company's going to come to you and a hiring manager and say, “Well, you screwed up.” I screw up all the time as a boss. I'm not perfect. I'm learning as I'm going along being a business owner, I was never trained on any of this.

So, it was just the flexibility. And we are a very close team, very tight knit and she’s blown every expectation out of the water. Because I could train her on skills, she's willing to learn and that's how she's just an absolute incredible resume writer and copywriter for us.

So, that's something people need to think about. It is personality. And this is even coming from corporate where a lot of these companies want someone that's excited enough about the position. You still have to come up with the personality end of it too.

Jon Gay (40:51):

I love your FIFA analogy in the soccer story, Angela, because even when you're at a networking event, it's a after hours, five o'clock cocktail thing at a networking event and you find someone, “Oh, we like the same sports team,” or “Oh, we're from the same hometown,” or “Oh, we are both interested in this random sport or activity or whatever it is.”

I think your combination of advice of be yourself, but also find that way to connect with the person who is interviewing you. It's the whole “know your audience” thing. Once you find a way to connect and be your authentic self, that probably speaks volumes more than a piece of paper.

Angela Buccellato (41:27):

Yes, exactly. And Elara, I've noticed you have beautiful plants in your background and surfboards, and I would ask you about that in an interview. Or Diana, you have beautiful flowers and books in your background and I'm a huge reader.

So, it's funny enough that those are the things we connect on, and we want to talk about. You think me as the interviewer who's done this 20 times today, I want to keep talking about the same thing? No, I'm just as not excited to be here as you are.

And something else to think about, we want to hire you. I don't know where we went wrong where it's like, “They're going to be upset, they don't want to hire me.” I don't want to start this process over.

I want to hire you. Please, we pray, we vibe, we manifest, whatever you want to say that please don't be crazy. Please be a good candidate. Please, I want to hire you. I mean we do. Any hiring manager I've worked with has said the same thing. Any business owner has said the same thing. So, we have to think about it and have that confidence in yourself too.

Elara Hadjipateras (42:24):

Love that. That's so true. Going into an interview thinking about how much they need you. Yeah. That's very good advice.

You were talking about the example of your resume. What do you think is going on with the current job market?

Diana Weil (42:38):

I want to know that too.

Angela Buccellato (42:41):

This is going to be a real soapbox and I'm so sorry, but yes, me to be on it. So, it sucks right now, and it is to no one's fault, but these corporations.

Elara Hadjipateras (42:50):

Who does it suck for? Does it suck to be an employee, also a future employer? It just sucks both ends?

Angela Buccellato (42:56):

I think both ends, where I just talked about this on my podcast with one of my friends who's the president of SHRM here in Detroit and huge in HR. On the candidate side, it's some people do think that you could just spray and pray your resume and it'll stick. It does not work that way anymore.

So, you do have to take the time. I don't want you to spray and pray. It's quality over quantity, where you could do this 5, 10 years ago. You could send your resume at 20 social media manager jobs, and one will stick. That's not working now.

What you have to do is take the time to … if they're looking, I'll just take social media manager, if they want experience managing TikTok, they want experience using Salesforce CRM, if they want experience working with healthcare clients, whatever, put that verbiage on your resume. If it's not on there, I'm assuming you don't have that experience.

So, that's number one where people that maybe haven't had to look for a job are needing to get up to date or just talk to, I mean I'll toot my own horn, talk to me. I offer free consultations and a bunch of free resources on my website, but it's just like this process is vulnerable enough, stop making it so hard on yourself.

But the employer side I would argue is worse because as in they are making it worse. Because I've had so many people currently where so many clients coming to me, “Angela, I worked with you in ‘21, 2020, I am doing the exact same thing that landed me this job and now I'm ready for my next step. What the heck is happening?”

And it's to the point where I think we got away from human decency. And this is not a statement like obviously there are great companies to work for and great hiring process, but just in general, I'll just say where I had one client go through nine rounds of interviews. Why? Nine rounds? You need to know if you like the person or not, I don't know who has time to interview someone nine times.

And then I've had a lot of clients get to the final stage and just, “We went with someone else.” How do you not know this at this point? We lost the art of communication, and I just went on a LinkedIn rant about this that actually performed very well too because I was very passionate about it.

But it's the art of communication and I think a lot of people or a lot of these executives or hiring managers, I don't know who the problem is, but it's just like, “Oh, we're going to post this job. Just kidding, we're going to close it.”

It is so psychologically draining to go through the hiring process, let alone if you have bills to pay, you got mouths to feed and you get let go from your job with no severance, nothing. And you're trying to make it work.

And I still think it's a great opportunity, but you're having to work a lot harder. You need to have a great resume, you have to be great at interviewing, you need to network on LinkedIn, use your platforms, exhaust all of your resources there.

So, I'm going to take my own — let's just say Google. You apply to Google, and you actually can find this information on LinkedIn. And I swear LinkedIn doesn't pay me, but we need to get some type of kickback for all the love I give them.

So, with Google you can look at the employees, you could look at the employees in Utah or Connecticut and you can see who lives in my area that works for Google, who's an alumni of the companies I used to work for that I can connect with.

Again, we're going back to the connection we talked about with interviewing. I want to make a connection with you. Like I said, I don't want to talk about the same, what's your biggest strength and weakness? It's just as draining on me as it is on you.

So, I like to build that connection and exhaust those resources. And that's another reason why I am taking job searching in the market a little differently where LinkedIn has changed and all these other platforms where LinkedIn's trying to compete with the job board.

So, Monster, CareerBuilder, ZipRecruiter. And then on another front, they're trying to compete with TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all the other socials. So, they've made this platform for creators and for people to demonstrate their work.

I mean now it recommends you people, and I will toot my own horn. I don't pay for ads on LinkedIn. And we come up in search results more than some of our clients or our competition that has millions of followers because we engage with people, we answer messages quicker and we're posting things that put us in a lot of different news feeds there.

So, if you're looking for a job, I don't want to sit here and say good, best of luck to you. It's not going to work. It can work, but you should be putting yourself out there. Go to networking groups, virtual in person, hybrid, whatever those groups are doing, if you're in Metro Detroit, check out The List Detroit, check out Eventbrite globally.

I mean, there's so many different groups available to social media managers or sales professionals or SHRM if you're in HR, I mean this is where your connections are opening the door for you a lot more. So, we're going back old school, I got someone that can open the door for you, but you also need to have the good resume to get you there too.

Diana Weil (47:53):

So interesting. I feel like this is going to be really valuable for hopefully a lot of people because I know that it's tough when you are trying to find a new job and you don't necessarily know how to get there.

One last question before we kind of wrap up. What do you think is the best way to even get through the door and have your resume read?

Elara Hadjipateras (48:12):

Like should you give it colored ink?

Diana Weil (48:15):

Or what was it? What was the … oh my gosh. She sprays her resume with perfume. Legally Blonde. Legally Blonde. Where she sprays it and it's all pink. I mean, how do you even get your resume read and I mean I think a lot of these resumes are online now, so it's not even a physical resume. But how do you even get through the door?

Angela Buccellato (48:34):

If I have — and I see this all the time, I'm connected with a lot of hiring managers and recruiters in these posts. And so, I'm not just pulling this out of my own experience. This is from my research too.

If you message someone, so if I have 200 applicants on a job and I'm like, “I don't want to go through all 200,” but if you message me and say, “Hey Angela, I see you have this opening for a podcast editor. I just went ahead and applied to it.

I have over 13 years of podcast editing experience. I used to work for X, Y, and Z companies. I know I'd be a great fit for your organization. I've attached my resume. Let me know if you have any questions.”

Yes, it's a cover letter. I'm being contradicting, but it's less formal than a cover letter and it's just more because what are you going to do? We're all notification driven. I'm like, “You took the time to find me and say something to me. Let me look.”

I had a story on this too. And so, I had a client I used to hire for Verizon, their telecommunications, I forget what it was. I think it was a developer role, a project manager role. I remember, and this individual found me on LinkedIn, said, “Hey, I think this role's for Verizon.”

I'm not sure because we had to be confidential with it, but “I'm a good fit. I worked for them five years ago. This is my experience; this is my expertise. And then I've attached my resume,” and he did my job for me.

And I'm like, “Absolutely.” I had him hired in the door a month and a half later. You're never going to offend me because we get so bogged down and especially with layoffs and everything happening, who's first to go? Recruiters, because they don't have any open jobs.

So, now these hiring managers are stuck in these roles they didn't ask for and it's everyone's kind of trying to figure it out. So, this is where, just, send the message. Take the two seconds, play investigator, Google's a valid resource for you and just figure it out.

And if you have questions on it, again, head with my website, I have a bunch of free resources on how to do this. And we actually do a template bundle that I write the messages for you. So, you don't even have to try.

Jon Gay (50:30):

Angela's contact information is going to be in the show notes but give your website and any socials you want to plug, real quick, before Diane and Elara get to our last two questions.

Angela Buccellato (50:38):

So, I'm on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, of course under The Resume Rescue. My name Angela Buccellato, which head to the show notes to spell that one. And then our website is just theresumerescue.com. Schedule your free consultation. You don't have to work with me, but at least I'll answer your career questions for you.

Elara Hadjipateras (50:55):

So, what is something right now when reflecting you'd say you had to learn the hard way?

Angela Buccellato (51:03):

I would say stop being so hard on yourself. I mean, who's telling you these negative thoughts? I'm reading this book right now that was recommended to me. I think it was published in the 70s or 80s. It's an older book, but it's called a Psycho-Cybernetics. And it's just this plastic surgeon talk through psychologically how people come to his office and what happens.

So, we did a bunch of research on everything and it's very interesting of, okay, when we present situations, if we have social anxiety or if we have, “Oh my gosh, I'm going to fail. I'm so tired, I'm so this.”

Instead of thinking of the negative memories where this happened, why don't you think of the positive memories? And I'm not one of those “meditate and I'm healed.” I'm not one of those people. But it's really interesting and I'm halfway through it of just reframing your mindset there.

And I try when I have those negative days, I've been clinically diagnosed with depression and it's like, who's telling you this? It's your own craziness. And my therapist said, it's like a mean girl. So that mean girl in your head saying these things.

So, I try to be like, okay, “Well, who's this mean girl? She needs to go away. Nobody likes her.” So, I think that's the hardest part. We're all trying to figure it out. Nobody's perfect. I know I talked about how important social media is, but there's so many people faking it on there.

Find your people, find who inspires you. Or I always say, I feel like I can run a marathon and I'm not a runner. I have bad ankles; I've broken them. I can't run. But if I feel like I can run a marathon, those are the people I want to keep in my life or those situations that energize me, so to say.

Diana Weil (52:42):

I love that answer. I think that's so important, especially in today's age of social media. So, kind of the opposite of a life lesson that you've had to learn the hard way. What is a mantra or something that you live by, life advice that you have taken from an important person in your life?

Angela Buccellato (53:02):

It's hard to pick one important person, but I will say, I'll pick a few and we'll just generalize not to name names, but I think it's just more of, I always say this is again super cheesy, but rip the band aid off and take the chance.

I mean, starting a podcast I put off for three years until my friend, as I mentioned was like, “I'm sick of you saying you're going to start it. We're starting it. We're recording in two weeks, and this is what we're going to do, stop. We're doing it.” I'm like, “Okay, fine.”

And I love it, now I love the podcast and if you would've asked me to be on this podcast three years ago, I would've been like, “I can't do it. I cannot do this. This is devastating.” But now it's super fun and I love doing it.

So, I think it's just, take the chance not to be scary because what I think is scarier is seeing what would've never happened or how many friends I wouldn't have in my life right now, Jon included. I would not have met any of you out right here had I not made the tough decision to work my booty off and make it happen. And not every day is a walk in the park.

There are plenty of days I cry, or I stayed up till 11:00 PM the other night just to get stuff done. So, I think it's just like, do the thing that scares the heck out of you. Because If it doesn't work out, fine, but what if it does? Instead of what if it doesn't work out? What if it does work out?

Elara Hadjipateras (54:17):

What if it does? I love that advice.

Diana Weil (54:19):

What if it does?

Angela Buccellato (54:19):

What if it does? Yes.

Diana Weil (54:21):

Well Angela, thank you so much for being here. I think especially with how tough the job market is, people really need help, and I don't know, maybe you'll see Elara and I on LinkedIn.

Angela Buccellato (54:31):

I hope so.

Elara Hadjipateras (54:33):

Coming up.

Angela Buccellato (54:34):

Thank you, guys. This was so much fun.

Voiceover (54:38):

Sip, savor, and live well with new episodes of The Matcha Guardians every Wednesday. Follow our show for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening right now. Leave your questions and comments below. Find us on Instagram at The Matcha Guardians or click on matcha.com.