📃 Your Remote Ready Resume (3 Steps)

Hello, Connectors 😎

Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn how to update your resume for a remote job hunt effectively. This playbook walks you through the three crucial steps to nail your resume's narrative, align with your target roles, and increase your chances of landing a remote job.

Plus, the best links and resources on remote work. You'll learn:

• 👩‍🏫 How remote work affects on the job learning

• 🔮 Remote & hybrid have stabalized; so what’s next?  

• 👏 How employees are clapping back against RTO mandates

Let’s jump in:

📃 Your Remote Ready Resume (3 Steps)

My friend needed help updating her resume to land her next remote job.

Here's the advice she got from her career coach:

There are a lot of problems with this approach…

But at the highest level, the problem is:

Her coach focused completely on optimizing her resume. She was trying to get the resume from 80% → 100%.

What my friend actually needed:

Resume narrative work.

She needed to get her resume from 50% → 80% first. Then she could focus on optimization. 

It’s getting harder to land a remote job. Getting this sequence right is crucial.

To get from 50% → 80%, here's what you need to do:

Let’s dive into these steps: 

1/ Narrow in on target roles

You have to get the target role right.

Remote job hunting is too competitive and unforgiving. If you get the exact title wrong, it’s an uphill battle when you’re in the applicant tracking system (ATS). 

It won’t matter how qualified you are. Hiring managers and recruiters won’t be able to find you. 

This leads to the question:

First, write down the role(s) you want. Write down the exact titles. 

Second, write down the names of people who are doing interesting work you want to do. Then write down their exact titles (pull these from LinkedIn). 

Finally, do what I call “reverse engineering your role”. Here’s how you do this: 

Based on what you discover in reverse engineering your role, keep the roles that still interest you. Remove the rest. 

2/ Demand test those roles

Next, you want to see if companies are actively hiring for these roles. This is called a demand test.

Why demand test? To eliminate any guesswork about whether or not we’re using the right title.

Small differences in title make a huge difference in demand. For example: 

• Digital Specialist vs. Digital Marketing Associate

• Content Creator vs. Social Media Manager

• Account Executive vs. Customer Success Manager 

Here’s how you demand test:

• Go to a job board (LinkedIn, Google, etc. any will do)

• Enter titles and compare how many open roles are available

• Go to LinkedIn and search how many people have those specific titles

• Click into roles and see which ones are a good fit for you (this is important. Fit is a higher priority than quantity)

This is a back-of-the-napkin test that helps you quickly assess both fit and demand. When you’ve found the right one, that’s the title you’ll use in the next step. 

3/ Use the role title in your resume (honestly and ethically)

You know which title has the best fit and highest demand. Now incorporate this title throughout the resume. In particular, it should be in your summary and as much of your work experience as possible.

What if it’s not the exact name of your previous role? Can you still use it?

If you’re worried about whether this is ethical, remember this:

Titles are fungible. Most titles are made up. 

(Have you seen LinkedIn lately? Chief Happiness Officer, Automation Specialist, Customer Support Rockstar... I mean, people are literally making shit up.)

By ethically including the title of the role you're targeting in your work experience, you're going to improve your chances of interviewing for that role.

What does "ethically" mean?

If you were a Marketing Manager, don't promote yourself to a Director. If you are Sr. Product Manager, Growth, don't upgrade yourself to Head of Growth.

But if you’re a "digital services specialist” and have been doing all the same work as a marketing associate… call yourself a marketing associate (or whatever you uncover in your demand test).

Titles matter. They:

• Signal ability. "Can you handle these responsibilities?"

• Signal scale. "Can you operate at this altitude?"

• Open doors. "If you did X, you can probably do Y."

Of course, they're not the end all be all. You have to back up the title with your output.

But they're certainly the tip of the spear when it comes to your career.

Conclusion

My friend and I used these 3 steps to get her resume from 50% → 80%. 

Then (and only then) did we start to optimize her resume. We fixed the formatting, highlighted her impact, and polished the resume. 

Once we walked through these steps, it was like day and night:

Injecting yogababble and action words into your resume doesn’t work. 

Instead, follow these steps to find your target roles and ethically work them into your resume. 

Happy hunting.

🧭 Want to Land Multiple Remote Job Offers?

The Land A Remote Job program launches soon March 6.

Click here to learn more.

Details at a glance:

• Goal: Land an awesome remote job for a life with more freedom and autonomy

• You get: The full program with lessons & videos, group coaching, office hours calls, direct feedback from me, accountability, a personalized resume review, a personalized cover letter review, and more

• Land A Remote Job program: The end-to-end system I use to land my remote roles, and exactly what I teach my clients.

• Group coaching: Direct feedback from me on your toughest questions, support and accountability from your peers, office hours calls (over Zoom)

• When/where: The program starts in late February. Office hours are on 3/6, 3/20, 4/3, 4/17. All video calls, time TBD but likely 8-9 pm EST.

• Seats left: 6 5 4 3

• My promise: If you keep putting in the work, I'll keep working with you until you land a remote job

Click here to learn more.

That’s a wrap. See you next week 👋

🤝 3 ways I can help you with remote work: