The Resumes of Chernobyl
HBO has been on a roll lately and the team at Enhancv has been enjoying every minute of it. Two years ago, we geeked out on Game of Thrones and now we’re indulging in our collective Chernobyl fandom. Why? Well, because it’s fun. But also because we love telling stories. We’re not as good at it as HBO but hey, a software company can dream right? Creating the resumes for Anatoly Dyatlov and Valery Legasov let us explore how to condense the lives of two consequential and (until recently) obscure people into single pages which still managed to tell their stories. We think both have plenty to teach both about the people and about how resumes can (and should) tell compelling stories in general. Hero of the Russian Federation, the resume of Valery Legasov Frankly, we wanted to put together a resume that was a fitting tribute for Legasov. The challenge was to compress his achievements and experience into something that would be interesting for someone familiar with his story and informative for anyone who knows nothing about it. Funnily enough, that’s the challenge most resume writers face. You don’t always know whether the person reading it is going to be steeped in your field or just a random HR person. For Legasov, this meant acknowledging his work in physics and chemistry prior to the Chernobyl disaster, while putting the focus there. It reflects his voice as well as his achievements. A mixed bag, the resume of Anatoly Dyatlov Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen the show yet but Dyatlov is… not the hero. His resume balances his confidence, his genuine accomplishments, and has a little fun along the way. References to his “secret supervision room” aside, it’s a nice reminder that his failures during the Chernobyl disaster shouldn’t overshadow the fact that he had a real experience. He’d even experienced a small scale nuclear accident before! What do these resumes have to teach us? We hope this is a reminder that the history of your work is more than just a list of what you did, it’s your story. How you tell that story makes all the difference. In the meantime, enjoy the show and stay away from those REMs. Otherwise, it’s the end of the world as we know it.
We Analyzed 114,000 Resume Examples and Job Offers but Couldn't Find the Skills Gap
It started with a quick survey of 80 customers. We wanted to understand the biggest challenges they faced when looking for a new job. The greatest difficulty they told us about, one faced by more than 1 in 4 respondents, was matching their skills to what companies are looking for. In a way, this wasn’t surprising. Articles lamenting the ever-growing skills gap are a dime a dozen. Employers cry from the rooftops that they can’t find the skilled workers they need while educators and policymakers scramble to figure out what to do about it. We had the two components: job applicants complaining about how difficult it was to match the skills employers are asking for and employers complaining about not finding the right skilled applicants. This called for an investigation. Where We Found ~114,000 Resume Examples and Job Offers Our search began at Indeed.com, the biggest job search site in the US, to see just how big this gap was. We crawled job offers and resumes for the 102 most common jobs in the US according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The script looked for the top 10 most commonly mentioned skills in both resumes and job descriptions and then compared how often they were mentioned in the resume examples and job offers. Considering all the talk of a skills gap alongside the historically low unemployment rate, we expected to see a major difference between the skills applicants had and what employers wanted. That’s not what we found. We Found a Skill Gap, but It’s Just -0.5% Some resumes had more skills than employers wanted, some job offers asked for skills resumes didn’t have. But if you average them out, the result is pretty close to 0. Does that mean there’s no skills gap? No, it just means there are many small gaps spread throughout various jobs and industries. More on that later. But let’s understand what this percentage actually means. Take Accountants as an example. Looking at 624 accountant resumes we found the 4th most common skill listed was tax preparation. We then looked at 621 job offers for accountants to see how often they asked for tax preparation. This was the result: !function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); So 33.28% more resumes offered the skill of tax preparation than employers asked for it. If more employers want the skill than resumes offered it, the percentage will be negative. So positive numbers indicate “overqualified applicants”* while negative numbers indicate under-qualified candidates. *note: we’re using “overqualified” as shorthand. Some of these applicants may be overqualified while others might have the wrong kind of skills. If you’re curious about details I recommend looking at the complete data for individual jobs. !function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); While looking at the distribution of over and under-qualified jobs, the next question is which jobs are on one extreme or the other? We examined this by looking at four industries: tech, healthcare, architects and engineers, and “low skilled workers”. There’s No Single Skills Gap for Tech Workers 19 of the 102 most common jobs in the US are tech jobs. If we look at how their skills compare to what employers want, where do these tech jobs end up? !function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); Remember, the bars that go below the central line show when resumes tended not to have the skills employers want while bars above the line show where resumes had more skills than the employer want. The blue bars reflect the months of experience in resumes and in job offers. If you were expecting most tech workers to be under-qualified because of the tech skills gap we’ve all heard so much about, you’re probably quite surprised. In fact, the two most overqualified and under-qualified positions are tech workers. On one extreme, there are jobs with skills far below what most companies are asking for. One example is blockchain developers with a -20.5% gap (we know how hard it is to hire blockchain developers). Another is junior software developers with a startling -30.2% gap (it would seem companies and applicants define “junior” differently). With both of these professions, the average applicant has far fewer skills than employers want. On the other extreme, Java and .Net developers offer more skills than required by 33.6% and 33.9% respectively. So a typical Java developer resume has more than a third more skills than required for a Java developer position. Somehow there’s a more than 60% difference between the most over and under-qualified tech jobs. Blockchain developers don’t have anywhere near as many skills as employers want while Java developers have plenty of skills employers aren’t interested in. These two jobs aren’t just both within tech, they’re both software developers. The bigger picture is that while in our minds tech jobs are in demand and there aren’t enough skilled workers to fill them, that doesn’t hold true for all tech jobs. But what about another industry famously facing similar hiring difficulties to tech? The Healthcare Industry Skills Gap Is Similar to Tech A major US Chamber of Commerce study found the greatest employment gap to be among healthcare workers, with 1.44 jobs for every applicant. Yet, in spite of this, we actually found the average healthcare worker to have slightly more skills than asked for in the average job opening. Still, the bigger picture is that there’s a lot of variance within healthcare. Some jobs are hungry for candidates with the missing skills while others aren’t !function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); Once again, the data simply did not meet our expectations based on all the writing about the healthcare skill gap. We expected to see under-qualified applicants, reflecting the difficulty healthcare employers say they are experiencing when finding the right applicants. But that’s not what we see. For example, you can see in the chart above that there’s an enormous skill gap for biophysicists. The big picture for healthcare is more or less the same as that for tech. The skills gap which employers and media discuss at length simply doesn’t show up in these data. What gap there is comes mostly from a few very specific skills like patient care, therapy, mental health, and counseling. On the other hand, there are no skills which stand out as being far too common in resumes. There are, however, two industries where skills gaps are undeniably clear. Architects and Engineers Are Actually Under-Qualified The two job categories where the skill and experience gaps were clear was architects and engineers. With only two small exceptions (visible below) the experience and skills for every job came in at an average of 5.8% below employer expectations. This actually matches the media narrative about the greater need for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) training (unlike the tech industry). The US Chamber of Commerce report mentioned earlier finds 15% more openings than available workers, so this data certainly matches what we’d expect from those numbers. !function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); Still, there are important differences between individual jobs here (most dramatically between chemical and electrical engineers). For example, someone choosing between studying in one of those fields, assuming that they both qualify as engineering jobs and engineering jobs are in demand, would be a mistake. That 15% employment gap doesn’t apply to all engineering jobs equally. On the opposite extreme, the “industry” (more like a category) which saw a consistent pattern where workers had more skills than employers were asking for was “low-skilled workers”. No Surprise, Low-Skilled Applicants Are Overqualified Here we see a confirmation of a media narrative. Decreasing demand for low-skilled jobs like cashiers and customer service representatives without a corresponding decrease in the supply of people willing to work these jobs has led to the average candidate being very overqualified. Every single one of these jobs shows a higher than required skill and experience level, usually by margins of over 15%. No other industry shows anything close to this level of consistency. !function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); Experience Isn’t as Important as You Might Think We also looked at how many months of experience applicants had relative to what employers were asking for. Surprisingly, the average employer wanted only about 1.5 months more experience than the average resume writer had. This further reinforces the conclusion that by taking a top-down view reveals that there isn’t such a big gap between what employers want and what applicants have. One interesting takeaway was that there’s actually little correlation between the skills and experience gap, meaning building your skill set can be effective even if you don’t have that much experience. For anyone interested in changing careers or starting their first one, this is welcome news. Of course, there’s also plenty of data showing which skills are most valuable in various jobs. If you’re thinking about what to study, whether to go back to school, or even where to focus your career development, you may be asking what this means for you. Be Wary of the Big Picture The skills gap isn’t simply that the average worker doesn’t have the skills needed for the average job. It’s rather that the workers have too many skills that aren’t wanted by employers and not enough of skills that are. As that US Chamber of Commerce report put it, we’re not dealing with a single “gap” so much as many “potholes”. The takeaway for average workers is that they cannot simply look at a skill gap affecting a single industry and conclude that it makes sense to move to that industry. People need to be far more precise in the skills they develop and the jobs they pursue. Furthermore, most research on the skills gap (or on job availability) focuses on entire industries. You’ve got the tech skills gap, the healthcare skills gap, and so on. What we’ve shown here is that looking at entire industries very often masks the stark differences within them. If you read an article about the tech skills gap and decide you want to move into the tech industry, you might end up becoming a .Net developer. Problem is, .Net developers are massively overqualified, indicating heavy competition for those positions. US workers should take this to heart. Developing the right skills and changing your job should be focused on the job and not the industry. In addition, thinking about the skills needed, base these on what employers ask for. Often, there’s a substantial gap between the skills employers want and what applicants have. Developing and emphasizing these skills, therefore, can put you at a substantial advantage. You can check out our resume examples page where we’ll be adding more job-specific advice based on these data in the coming weeks.
Paralegal Resume Advice You Can Use
The best advice comes from real people who’ve gone through the same struggles. That’s what brought us to Marwa Elkady, a Paralegal at Ebates, to discuss her career path and what made her paralegal resume successful. Let’s get into the insights and takeaways: Why did you choose to enter this career path? I chose to take this career path because I knew I wanted to attend law school, but wanted to get as much field experience as I could before committing myself to law school. With the rise in tuition costs for law school and the slight decline in attorney employment rates, I needed to be sure that this was the ultimate path I wanted to take. I knew that being a paralegal for a few years would give me the firsthand experience and skills that I needed to determine if law school was the right fit for me. What would you say are the core skills required in the industry these days? I would say that the core skills required in the industry are excellent writing skills, people and communication skills, and the ability to work dynamically with different groups of people in varying positions that are both attorneys and non-attorneys. How much of what you learned in college prepared you for the job, vs other things you had to do to prepare? I majored in Legal Studies in college so I was able to take a variety of courses taught by actual law school professors. College played an integral role in developing my writing, critical thinking, and communication skills. Although college didn’t teach me how to do the job, it taught me the skills I needed to adapt myself and to learn as I gained hands-on experience. What are some typical interview questions you found them asking? Typical interview questions that repeatedly came up were: What are your strengths and weaknesses? What is the most difficult situation you have been in, and how did you handle it? How do you handle stress, and how do you work under pressure? How do you deal with difficult personalities? What things have you learnt on that are important to the job that you realized you could not have picked up in college? Hands on things such as legal research are not taught during college. Additionally, things such as issue spotting (whether that’s in a contract you are trying to negotiate, or a legal brief that you are trying to respond to), and learning how to explain the same concepts and ideas in both legal language and layman’s terms. In the legal field, it is also important to understand the business that you are either representing, or the business that you are working for (even if you are working in the legal department). Understanding the business gives you the right tools to ask the right questions, and ensure that you’re advising the business in the ways that keep the business protected and thriving. What do you love most about your job? I love that I get to learn something new every day, and that my work is diverse and varied. I also love learning about the business side of things, instead of just the legal side. What are the realities of the job that you did not know until you started? It’s extremely stressful, and there’s a pressure to always perform your work efficiently, accurately, and sometimes that means working late hours to meet deadlines. What 3 pieces of advice would you give, based on your learnings, on someone looking to make it in this industry? Get a variety of experience in different legal settings. For me, I varied my experience spending time in the public sector, small law firm, big law firm, and now in-house at a company. Continue to force growth. If you reach a plateau in your position or a glass ceiling, don’t be afraid to make a move to a different place to push yourself and continue to foster growth and learning. We learn by staying out of our comfort zone, and not in it. However, move sensibly, and in the right times. It would not be wise to jump around so much that you become perceived as inconsistent and unprofessional. Don’t shy away from accepting new responsibilities. This goes hand-in-hand with forcing ourselves to grow. If you are offered a chance to participate or take lead in a challenging project, or offered additional responsibilities that may not have been part of your job description, take them. Your Next Steps Armed with these insights, you’re ready to tackle the paralegal job market. Just be sure to use your informal education to the max, get a job referral if you can, and use follow up emails!
Getting Hired in the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency World
Two insider accounts of how hiring works in a field unlike any other If I told you I knew someone with 10 years of experience in banking, there’s no reason you should care. But if I told you I knew someone with 10 years of experience in blockchain, you should sit up and take notice. Because that person could only be the mysterious creator of the technology itself. All that is to say, if someone decided they wanted to hire someone with “at least 10 years of blockchain experience” (common in many other industries for senior positions) they would be out of luck. Those people don’t exist. So in a world where we see existing experience and formal education as the two ways to get hired, how does hiring work? If you’re interested in working in the industry, what can you do? Why blockchain companies are hiring fast When it comes to hiring, the blockchain and crypto industry is being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, ICO (Initial Coin Offerings) have made financing far more available. This has allowed many companies to hire faster than would have been possibly relying on traditional sources of financing. Combine this with an annual growth rate of 51% (even with the occasional hiccup) and it’s clear that companies should be hiring quickly. On the other hand, while the money to hire new workers is often there, the workers themselves aren’t. As should be clear by now, an industry this young is nearly guaranteed to have a dearth of experienced technical professionals. Most blockchain development projects either involve vast sums of money or sensitive information stored on the blockchain. Mistakes can therefore be catastrophic, so companies are under intense pressure to hire development teams they can rely on. Combine those two forces and you have a recipe for real tension. But more importantly, you have a place for huge opportunities for job seekers. The question for many is, how to be one of those getting hired. Insider tips for getting a blockchain developer job Despite the intense need for technical expertise, Nikolay Todorov, founder and CEO of the blockchain development and consulting company Limechain put it bluntly when he said: “tech skills are secondary to culture fit.” As he’s grown his company 5 to 20 employees in its first year, his top priority skills have actually been adaptability and perseverance. The thinking is similar to that of other industries, technical skills (as tricky as they are) can always be taught. But teaching the adaptability and perseverance which is so critical to thriving in an industry like this is far harder. Still, technical expertise is important. This is particularly true for companies developing their own blockchain. For attracting the kind of talent needed for such projects, high salaries and other perks often aren’t enough. Nemanja Cerovac, chief product officer at the cryptocurrency market analysis firm Santiment, points out that “sometimes, it’s not about the money. It’s whether your project’s vision excites the talent enough to be part of it.” This makes sense considering Todorov’s focus on perseverance. With all of the unpredictability of such a new industry, companies need to offer a compelling vision to get through the ups and downs. This also dispels a pernicious myth within the industry, namely that it’s “all about Lambos [and] getting filthy rich” For Cerovac, if you show up under that illusion and you’re not likely to get hired. But aside from insights into getting a job on the technical side, one thing both Todorov and Cerovac emphasized was the need for non-technical workers in the blockchain industry. The surprising opportunities in non-technical blockchain jobs Surprisingly, the toughest positions for Limechain to hire for are non-technical. “[Hiring] blockchain developers is the most straightforward, however, marketing and sales roles are also a challenge as the approach to positioning, marketing message and sales approach is slightly different from the traditional field of the tech sector.” In fact, the most difficult position Limechain has had to hire for is a project manager. Ultimately, Todorov sees some of the biggest opportunities in the field as being in non-technical jobs. Cerovac echoed this when he explained that “experience in blockchain or crypto would be great. If you don’t have any, don’t let that stop you from applying.” The same focus on soft skills exists here as well, with adaptability and perseverance still paramount among them. So demonstrating that you possess these traits will get you a major leg up. All in all, their experiences show how the hype around blockchain and crypto has not been enough to bring in good non-tech hires. But ultimately, for technical and non-technical hires alike, the best way to stand out in hiring is to show the right personality traits and get involved in the community. The most important element in hiring: community involvement A strong and surprisingly small community is at the heart of the blockchain and crypto world. For Santiment, involvement in that community has been critical to growing its team. Looking at the hiring side, Cerovac thinks not enough people realize that “social, community and humanitarian skills are of great value in blockchain space.” As a result, perhaps the most valuable thing you can do to get a job in the industry, whether technical or not, is to join the community. A history there goes a long way towards landing a coveted job and proving that you’re getting involved for the right reasons. Founders like Todorov aren’t interested in bringing on employees who are getting into blockchain development simply because it’s hot at the moment. He describes wanting to see a genuine and sustained interest in the long-term potential of the technology. The challenge is demonstrating that sustained interest from the first time a recruiter sees your resume straight through to the interview. Beyond being an important tool for matching candidates with roles, Cerovac sees strong communities as being the critical element sustaining blockchain and crypto companies as they grow. It’s best to start by looking at local co-working spaces, blockchain companies, or open meetups to get a foothold in your local community. The takeaway: hiring in blockchain and crypto isn’t what you’d imagine If you think you don’t have the technical expertise to work in the field, clearly that element isn’t as important as you thought. For those with the right attitude and a willingness to get involved in their local blockchain community, the opportunities are significant. But in the meantime, companies are still likely to struggle with hiring the talent needed to bring their lofty ambitions to life. Ultimately, if blockchain and crypto technology is going to change the world, it needs to overcome its own HR hurdles first.
A surprising lesson from Maisie Williams about career change
Reading that another celebrity has tried to become a politician, entrepreneur, or different kind of celebrity has always provoked eye-rolls for me. I was always certain a bunch of celebrities couldn’t teach me something about changing careers (something I’ve experienced and written about plenty). I was wrong. It turns out there are universal lessons on making a career change, even for someone . Case and point: Maisie Williams. If you read the headlines, you’d think she had just woken up one day and decided to co-found Daisie, a tech company (specifically, an app for young creative people to build their careers). But it turns out a huge portion of the skills, knowledge, and relationships she’s developed as an actor apply directly to her new role as a co-founder. Actor → Tech Co-Founder It all starts with an exercise we developed to think about how people change careers. The idea is to get you thinking in concrete terms about what each role actually involves. So instead of considering a software engineer job in the abstract, you think about the day to day coding, fixing bugs, debating features to add, etc. Then, you compare the skills, knowledge, and relationships at your current role and your new role. This is where things get interesting. In Williams’ case, many of the skills she developed as an actor apply directly to co-founding a technology company. Her PR training taught her how to handle media as the co-founder of a company, her lessons on choosing the right roles to advance her career has lent her some basis in strategic thinking, etc. Her knowledge of the kinds of challenges young people in creative industries face is also critical for her new role. Luckily, being just one of those people means she has a good understanding of those challenges. Finally, with a devoted fan base and connections in the entertainment industry, Williams has the kinds of relationships that can help her succeed. It’s also worth mentioning what doesn’t show up here: knowledge of technology. Williams doesn’t know how to code, but her transition is a great example of how non-tech people can still bring vital knowledge to tech companies: understanding people, PR, presentation skills, etc. But what are the broader lessons to take away? Old Role → New Role As I learned when I made the transition from academia into marketing, a lot more skills, knowledge, and relationships transfer than you would think. I found research skills, writing abilities, and an understanding of quantitative methods were invaluable. Sure I was studying early 20th century radical agrarian movements, but I had a good understanding of statistical significance and how to write on a deadline. But I learned those lessons organically. It would have been more helpful to realize how much of my skills, knowledge, and relationships would transfer from the beginning. I could have been more confident and leveraged that information to perform better. I hope Williams’ story and my own can inspire you to try this for yourself. You → New You So give it a try, imagine a new role you’d like to have alongside what you do now and see how ready you really are. Whether you’re looking at moving into the tech world like Maisie Williams or myself, or just want to try something new, there’s a lot to learn. It’s just 4 easy steps, so what have you got to lose? SaveSave
Real resume examples that stand out and get people hired
What separates an average resume from a truly great resume? It’s not necessarily the layout, the sections, the formatting, or even the exact content. It’s the feeling of pride you have when use it. A great resumes makes you feel like your best self, someone with the unique knowledge and experience to tackle anything that comes your way. With this in mind, we’re bringing together a collection of just these kinds of resumes. The goal is to show just how you can create your own confidence-inspiring resume through real-life examples. Anyone can create a resume to feel proud of and confident in The first set of examples are taken directly from real Enhancv users. They represent people in a huge variety of fields and with everything from decades of work experience to practically none. What unites them is that each resume is one we’d be proud to hand to a potential employer or even just show to a friend. If you’re looking for your own inspiration and considering how to best show what makes you unique, check these resumes out. But standing out with a resume can mean different things to different people. /content/images/2017/12/ezgif.com-gif-to-mp4.mp4 How can you fit a decades-long career into a single page? Let’s say you’re the first woman CEO of a major tech company, you were the first female employees at Google, and a top influencer in Silicon Valley. There’s no way you could tell your entire resume story in a page, right? Well, look no further than Marissa Mayer. And she’s just the start. We’ve created resumes for global leaders in business, tech, and even politics to show how even the longest and most varied careers can be turned into a one page resume they can be proud of. So check them out, get inspired, and try creating your own resume. You may be surprised and how great it feels to stand out.
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