Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep80: Is your resume discounting your VALUE?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Welcome back to another episode of my Guru Career Online and Offline podcast. So this is the second last episode of my 30-day client success story series where I share with you inspirational as well as empowering stories

Starting point is 00:00:41 of my clients who have really transformed their corporate career. So today I actually want to share with you all a, I think a very important mistake or rather important piece of the job search and career growth process that I think a lot of people take for granted and it is actually about positioning yourself for the right value. So in other words, are you positioning your value correctly so that it is actually well understood by recruiters, HR, hiring managers, and even your boss at the workplace, right? So this is really about positioning of value. So positioning of value is not so much how good you think you are, it's how your skills, background, and experiences is being perceived as helpful. It is being perceived as something that other companies

Starting point is 00:01:38 and other organizations would really, really value. And I think this is a really important point to raise is because recently I've been seeing on LinkedIn some, I guess, viral posts of people talking about, oh, you know, too bad the hiring manager didn't recognize my value, or too bad, you know, these people don't recognize me, they didn't know what I could do. I'm like, okay, fine, like these kind of comments are fair but i think the missing the missing part to this sort of um i guess complaints or expression actually it is about okay um it's fine that you know i mean it's not it's fine but um you can't help it if people don't

Starting point is 00:02:22 want to recognize you but you need to make sure that you have gone 100% full out and provided the best way possible to articulate as well as to express your value. And I find that that's something actually a lot of people don't know how to do. And this is in today's story as well. So this particular client of mine, we have been working together to improve workplace performance for some time. And when the time is right, she told me that she wanted to look for a new job. So she actually went ahead and applied for multiple roles before she even reached out to me for resume review. She was confident in her own abilities and she went ahead and applied but what she found very

Starting point is 00:03:08 confusing and something that she didn't really understand was that how come she is already making five figure salary right now she's already making five figures but when she was invited for an interview somehow the positions that they were interviewing her for were actually more junior positions. So what that means is that they, looking at their, her resume, the positions where she was invited to interview for were actually offering salary or positions that were way lower than her actual position. So for example, she was a senior manager, but the positions where she was invited for interview were either senior executives or manager, which is more junior than what she was a senior manager but the positions where she was invited for interview were either senior executives or manager which is more junior than what she was doing and from a salary standpoint

Starting point is 00:03:50 they could not match what she was making at all because of the nature of the level of seniority of the position. So when she booked the one-on-one session with me that was something that she really couldn't understand so she asked me how come I'm really making a lot of money right now but these companies just don't recognize that and they somehow are offering me positions that are a lot more junior than what I'm supposed to be doing so what I proceeded to do with this client is that I actually went to look at her resume and after having a read just a quick look at her resume I told her that if you were to write your resume this way even me like as a former hiring manager even me I will probably only I'll probably

Starting point is 00:04:36 think that you're very junior because that is what your resume is conveying right now and you might not see it specifically because you are maybe not that skilled in resume writing or maybe you know you haven't actually been a hiring manager before so you might not be aware of it but I'm telling you from a hiring manager perspective like your resume actually looks very junior you are discounting your value and expertise so that was something quite mind-blowing for her because she didn't realize that such impressions could actually be made just by some of the things that she wrote in her resume. So some of the example things that she wrote was that she made, I mean, in terms of mistakes of her resume was that it is too colorful, the fonts were very difficult to read. Basically, it was

Starting point is 00:05:20 designed to look fancy rather than actually functional or effective and the other thing also is that she didn't actually give enough information and context on the nature of work that she's doing so um whatever that she wrote in there was just very vague and if i were to read it i don't really know what she has done and because i don't know what she has done or yeah or i know the extent of context of what she has actually achieved and delivered and actually done, then as a hiring manager, and I'm sure the recruiters, HR, whoever that picked up her resume also felt the same way, the only conclusion that we can make is that she hasn't done much. And that might not be correct, but that is the impression that is being created.

Starting point is 00:06:03 So for this particular client i had to help her reposition her value and the main message i told her is that you need to make sure that whatever that you're writing you're actually not discounting your overall value because if you can't even articulate and express that clearly then how can you expect other people to be able to understand that so for her particular situation if from five figures she was already making five figures for like a few years and now being out there in the job market she's only offered four figures something is actually really really wrong right i mean it's one thing being offered slightly less than what you're making but it's a really big difference being offered like almost half of what you're

Starting point is 00:06:42 making like that is not good so that was actually the situation of this client and i also want to let you all know that actually such situations are very common i also work with other clients before where even the way that they write their resume like i cannot tell that they are very senior people probably if i were to look at it fresh i might think that you know probably they only have half of the experiences that they say they have. And this is actually very common, like even fresh graduates all the way to very, very senior people I work with, like almost C-suite level, sometimes they also face this issue. So the point I'm trying to make here is that make sure that you bring out your value. And if you really can't do it or you can't see it because it's not so easy to see our own our own um how do i put it um blind spots right then make sure you go and speak to an expert make

Starting point is 00:07:30 sure that you speak to somebody who can help you pull out the value because otherwise it will actually affect your career in the long run because if you are unable to get a job that pays what you are making right now right it's actually paying a lot less and a lot more junior positions, what that actually means in your career is that you're moving backwards. People are moving forward, but you are moving backwards in your career. And that is actually not a good thing. So make sure that your resume actually directly positions your seniority and value. I think that's very important. And this is the same advice i will give to even um fresh graduates as well so this this there's this other story that's sort of related to this one

Starting point is 00:08:10 where i had a client who was working for about six seven months then she consists when she applied she consistently told everybody that oh i'm i'm just a fresh graduate i don't have any experience i don't have any experience but the thing is that she has really been working for six seven months so definitely she has some experience compared to a you know hundred percent fresh graduate right but because she went around sending this message and that similar thing is reflected in her resume then yeah of course she didn't get any calls so once i was in a one-on-one session i helped her restructure that actually she managed to join a global multinational company from a very small company and in fact from a pay standpoint she was actually paid double

Starting point is 00:08:50 what she was making at the small company so yeah 200 increment immediately the moment she knew how to really leverage on any experience that she has right and also improving the mindset by stop saying that she doesn't have any experience and not believing in herself so those are just like really really two um quick examples i can share with you but the main point really is about are you yourself clear on your value if you're not even clear on your value you need to get some clarity around that before you rush around doing your resume rush around with linkedin or rush around with job search because if you are not clear what your value is then it's going to be difficult for you to get a job. Because even if you manage to get an interview, during the interview process, you are

Starting point is 00:09:33 definitely going to struggle. Because how can you actually explain something that you don't even know or you don't even believe in? It doesn't work like that. So get clear on your value, then learn how to articulate, express your value clearly and make sure that you consistently communicate it, whether you are actively job searching or even as part of networking, you know, for future career opportunities. Make sure that you are very, very clear on this

Starting point is 00:09:58 because aside from future opportunities, the other reason why it's going to be important is so that you continue to stay motivated in your career, right? So you can see what's ahead in your career rather than struggling, feeling stuck, and really not sure, you know, what are you actually trying to do in your career? So there are actually multiple implications,

Starting point is 00:10:20 but it really starts by getting clear on like what your value is and actually what you can bring to the table and making sure that you're not discounting your value as a yeah as a very good corporate professional so with that um i hope that these actually these two stories i think today i shared uh two stories um these two stories actually inspires you and empower you to get clear on your value and really learning how to position that whether you're actively job searching or you're just open to future career opportunities um yeah as part of your networking efforts so get started get i would say get clear get started

Starting point is 00:10:59 and definitely commit to it so with that, I will end today's episode. If you find this client success story inspiring and empowering, make sure you can like and subscribe to this video and make sure you also check out the other client success stories in this 30-day series as well. So with that, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep80: Is your resume discounting your VALUE?

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