HOW TO PACKAGE YOURSELF: A GUIDE FOR JOB-SEEKERS

A mediocre resume and cover letter holds you back. A stellar one gets your foot in the door and opens up that door to all sorts of possibilities.

You already knew that.

But it's hard to tell if you're doing it right, because the jobs you're applying for? They're not exactly sharing why you didn't make the cut, and that's even if you spent hours tailoring your resume and cover letter.

So you chalk it up to lack of experience. (And yeah, some of them will tell you this is why, if they're extra nice and have the time to even get back to you. But they probably won't. Many job postings get hundreds of applications. And lack of experience is kind of right, but it's not the whole picture.)

Here's the thing: I lacked experience. A lot of it. I've cobbled together a career mostly doing entry level jobs, but I managed to do it, mostly because I paid attention to the other side, what employers and hiring managers really wanted to know and how to catch their attention. (I did have a head start: I've been editing resumes and cover letters for over 20 years, and working as a copywriter selling things with words for over 10.)

Eventually, I found myself on the other side, as the hiring manager for jobs too.

And it's true: we do get hundreds of applications. Not always, but more often than we'd like because we know that means more people we have to say no to.

Like everything else right now, there's a lot of noise and it takes just a few seconds for your resume to go into the yes or no pile. 

And if you're not a big yes, you're a maybe, which is actually a no.

My track record with job hunting is pretty impressive, which I didn't realize until I started hearing horror stories from people who were sending out hundreds of resumes and not getting a single interview callback. People who job-hunted for months and some for a year or more. I watched as my partner spent an entire year job-hunting, while I, not looking for a job, sent one application in and got it; we started our new jobs on the same day.

In my entire career over the last decade+, my resume and cover letter has had a 70%+ success rate. That means for every 10 resumes I've sent, I've interviewed for 7 companies.

No, I didn't have connections, and my highest level of education is community college. And for the most part, I didn't even have any technical skills (but I learned that I had way more than I thought.) I still ended up working at some really amazing companies, two of which are actually named the most innovative companies in the world in 2020.

In fact, two of my past employers told me after I was hired that they didn't even interview anyone else, they were that confident based on my resume and cover letter alone. (Lucky for them, they liked me in person too.)

Another employer told me I had the best resume they've ever read.

There are a lot of resume guides out there. I've read a lot of them. But they're all missing something, that little something extra.

They're focused on best practices. Best practices land everyone in the maybe pile. That's not enough.

Let's do better than that.

All you need to do is start to look at the job hunting process from the other side: there's what they say they want and all the people who send in applications that match, and then there's the person that will make an impression right from the start.

By the way, that person that makes a strong impression? They don't even have to meet all the job requirements. There are a few things every single employer and smart hiring manager will be looking for, cues they're intuitively on the hunt for, and these won't be on their job descriptions. 

And if you learn to package yourself with that in mind, you're setting yourself up for success.

The secret is, it's all just basic marketing and design principles, applied to the job hunting process (and I don't mean making things pretty, because trust me, that doesn't matter at all).

Get yourself out of the mediocre maybe pile, with just a few tweaks (well okay, maybe an entire rethink) to your resume and cover letter. It's the easiest, fastest thing you can do to vastly improve your job hunt success rate so that you can start or change your career, land your dream job, and make more money.

You'll learn:

• Top mistakes: what will immediately put you in the "no" pile
• How to communicate value when you don't have any experience
• The difference between a performance-based resume and an impact-based resume
• What to leave out and what to keep so that you always stick to 1-2 pages
• How to make generic transferable and soft skills stand out
• The magic resume format that helps you tell your story, clearly
• My cover letter formula 
• How to make more money with your next job by making this tweak on your resume
• and more!

Who is this for?

This handbook is written for people who traditionally struggle with packaging (or repackaging) themselves. 

That could be someone early in their career or changing careers. It could be non-technical creatives and generalists, people who don't have a defined career pathway (ie you're not a junior developer -> developer -> senior developer), either by choice or circumstance.

This handbook goes through ways to communicate value and impact, regardless of experience, skill or industry. Focusing on value and impact demonstrates to future employers some important things that will have an impact on your perceived value and therefore, the salary you'll earn. 

So lastly, this handbook is for anyone looking to make a leap into a higher paying job from lower-paying entry level work, by showing you how to close the gap with your resume and cover letter.

What you'll get

• A 100+ page ebook in pdf format
• Templates
• Actual resume and cover letter examples I've used to land jobs

About Ana

Hi! I'm Ana. What seems like forever ago, I graduated with a fashion design degree. Since then, I've:

• More than quadrupled (4x!) my income from my first real, full-time job.
• Changed industries and careers multiple times.
• Achieved a 70%+ job hunt success rate.
• Been on hiring teams as well as been the hiring manager for roles at companies like Shopify.
• Read thousands of resumes and cover letters (well, more like scanned—but with my own human eyes) for all kinds of roles in tech. I've seen what works and what goes into the "no" pile immediately.
• Worked in operational, leadership, brand, marketing and content roles, including coaching my own team to land other roles internally.
• Edited the resumes and cover letters of dozens of peers for industries from healthcare to beauty, technology to marketing (told you I was a generalist—and yes, they got the jobs).
• Dished career advice over at SuperHi, an online code and design school, 1:1 as well as through dozens of articles I wrote for their blog and two ebooks on getting started in brand new fields.

In 2021, I left my job in a Head of Content role helping creative people learn new technical skills and change careers. These days, I'm a writer in the technology space working with global brands, with a focus on making technical content engaging. I also run a content studio, Wonder Machine, where I produce independent work. 

I started from the ground up (more than once too). Now I have my dream job working for myself, and I spend some of my time making products like this. 

I'm passionate about breaking down elusive or challenging/dry topics to make them more practical and engaging for more people, especially when these topics have a real impact on breaking down barriers to money, access and jobs. Why? These jobs impact our world, who builds the technologies we use, the money that goes around and who it's flowing to. 

So this is me emptying everything I've learned about the job hunting process into an easy-to-read ready-to-apply handbook.

Refund policy

If you're not 100% satisfied, I offer a 14 day money back guarantee. Just email me anytime and I'll issue a refund.