Sam stood out among 20,000 applicants with an Enhancv resume
Enhanced Lives is a series which aims to put our customers in the spotlight. In a short interview, we ask about their background, the experience they had with Enhancv and how it helped to improve their career.
Our third star is Sam. A busy New Yorker with years of experience in financial industry. Sam used Enhancv to shift her career and get a job at Spotify. How did our platform help her do that?
Hi Sam, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hey, I’m Sam. I’m originally from Washington, D.C., but I’ve lived in New York City since 2010.
I’m a chef turned Economics student, turned investment banker, turned strategy and ops professional. Recently I made the jump from working at a financial services institution to working at Spotify as Strategy Operations Lead.
When I’m not working I love to cook with my wife, read science fiction, and compete in bar trivia nights with my friends. In 2016 I traveled to Japan, Thailand, Ireland, Scotland, England, and Sweden. For my birthday this year, I hosted “bubble soccer,” which you should totally Google.
What was the reason you created your resume?
I wanted to move from the banking sector into the startup world. As you can imagine, working in investment banking means having a very specific looking resume. Basically, it’s pretty boring.
As you can see from my photo, that old banking resume didn’t match who I really was or the image I wanted to project to potential employers at startups. I needed something much more visually compelling because I’m more compelling in person than I am on paper.
I saw a Business Insider article on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s resume crafted by Enhancv and it caught my eye instantly. It was exactly the look I needed, so I signed up for the premium account straight away. The platform was easy to use and made my resume look completely different from anything else out there.
What do you like about Enhancv? Did you learn anything from it
My new resume got a lot of attention. Within 90 days of using Enhancv, I got interviews with startups I had applied to in the past and never heard from. I attended a tech conference where companies like NBC Universal, Bloomberg, and Dell were recruiting. All of the recruiters said they don’t normally take resumes, but they wanted a copy of mine.
What I’m hearing from recruiters in the tech field is that cover letters are dead. They’re looking at people’s LinkedIn and checking resumes on their mobiles. Enhancv looks great on mobile and it let me put all the stuff I would have packed into a cover letter right on the resume.
Also, changing the look of my resume actually changed the entire tone of my interviews. After I added Favorite Books and Interests sections to my resume, interviewers would say, “dude, you love the same books I do,” or, “where do you do trivia?” It provided an opportunity for a more natural conversation. My resume with Enhancv gave potential employers more insight into who I am and whether I was a personality fit for their team.
I know for a fact that Spotify gets more than 20,000 applications per day. After I put my Enhancv resume up through the system, it immediately went to the right person!
What message would you send to other job seekers out there?
If you’re not finding your dream job, it’s probably not you. Your resume is just getting lost. Sending a boring banker-style resume and cover letter got me exactly zero interviews.
I had to step up my game, which meant a lot of networking, creating a kickass Linkedin profile, and using Enchancv. When a recruiter is scrolling through a thousand black and white resumes, having a colorful, information-rich, visually striking resume is a serious advantage.
Here’s my advice: Try out the Enhancv platform. You have nothing to lose!
I would like to thank Sam for sharing her inspiring story with us. It means a lot and we hope it will motivate many others to get started and upgrade to more human-centric and performance-based resumes.
Make one that's truly you.
