Meet Your Instructor

Ryan is a licensed, award-winning career coach, resume writer, and job search strategist. Here's how he can help you.

Modern Job Search Terminology

Understanding job search terminology gives you an advantage. It helps you move with purpose, communicate clearly, and make informed decisions throughout your career journey. In this lesson, you explored essential terms that shape the hiring process. From applicant tracking systems to Boolean search, from recruiters to the hidden job market, each concept gives you tools to navigate the system and stand out. These aren’t just definitions. They are insights you can use to strengthen your resume, improve your outreach, and position yourself with clarity and confidence. Now that you know the language, you can move forward with precision and intent.

The Three F's: Freedom, Fulfilment, and Financial Security

Now we'll explore the core drivers behind a meaningful career: freedom, fulfilment, and financial security. You’ll define what each one means to you and learn how to prioritise them in your job search. This clarity will shape smarter decisions, stronger applications, and a career path built on purpose, not pressure

Career Satisfaction Survey

Finding the right career path can be a daunting task, filled with uncertainties and questions about what truly matters to you. To navigate this journey effectively, it's crucial to identify your career must-haves—the non-negotiable elements you seek in your next role.

Applicant Tracking Systems (Bots, AI Agents, and Software)

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can filter you out before a human even sees your resume, so avoiding common missteps is essential. Avoid using inflated titles like “Founder” or “CEO” unless necessary, these can raise questions about fit or manageability. Instead, use clear, functional titles that reflect your actual responsibilities. Similarly, listing more than 15–20 years of experience can trigger age filters. Focus on your most recent roles and summarise older ones without going into detail. If you’ve had multiple short-term roles or side gigs, be strategic in how you present them. Group similar positions, avoid overlapping dates, and tell a cohesive career story that emphasises value, not volatility. Recruiters want to see clarity, focus, and progression, so your formatting and narrative must reflect that.

Humans (Recruiters, Headhunters, and Hiring Managers)

Your resume shouldn’t read like a static job description. It should play like a movie trailer, spotlighting your biggest achievements and making hiring managers eager to learn more. By focusing on impact over duties, you show how you’ve driven results, solved problems, and created value. This approach isn’t just theory. It’s backed by years of research, recruiter insights, and a 99% client success rate. When done right, your resume doesn’t just tell your story, it sells it.

Resume Guidelines

Resume Guidelines Resume formatting basics - a topic so often brushed over yet so integral to your success. Ever notice how an effortlessly chic individual stands out in a crowded room? That's because they know the secret - simplicity never fails. The same principle applies to your resume. Contact Information: This section should include your name, phone number, email address, LinkedIn profile, and your city and state. Remember, omit your full mailing address - it's not necessary and takes up valuable space. Professional Summary: Consider this your elevator pitch. 2-4 brief paragraphs showcasing who you are as a professional and your core competencies. Be succinct yet impactful. Areas of Expertise: This is a section to spotlight your professional skills and knowledge areas that are particularly relevant to the job you're applying for. These could include technical skills, languages, project management methodologies, or any industry-specific knowledge. Notable Achievements: Here, you will highlight 3-5 key accomplishments that demonstrate your abilities and value. They can be from any point in your career, so long as they're impressive and relevant. Always aim to quantify these where possible. Experience/Achievements: This is the meat and potatoes of your resume. List your job title, company, dates of employment, and bullet-point achievements and responsibilities under each role. This should not be a simple list of duties but a showcase of your accomplishments . Education/Qualifications/Certifications: In this section, you list your degree(s), the institution(s) you attended, and graduation date(s) if recent. If you have relevant certifications, those should be included here as well. Volunteerism: An often-overlooked section that can make a significant impact, especially if you're newer to the workforce or if the volunteer work is particularly relevant to the job you're applying for. Detail your role, the dates of involvement, and your accomplishments or contributions there. Remember, the order of these sections can change based on what stage you're at in your career. For instance, a recent graduate might place the "Education/Qualifications/Certifications" section before their "Experience/Achievements". Always tailor your resume to highlight your most impressive and relevant features first.

Resume Length

You can skip this section if you already have a good idea of how long your resume should be and how much content you'd like to include. However, we strongly recommend completing this section if... 1. You're building your document from scratch2. You currently have a 3+ page document3. You are new to modern resume standards4. You're having trouble figuring out how much information to include

Achievement-based Resume

Achievement-based Document My documents break down into four key areas based on the amount of content you should aim for. Achievements = 40%Professional Summary = 25%Responsibilities = 15%Everything Else = 10% (Name, Contact Info, Job Titles, Company Names, Dates, Education, Training)

Choose Your Format

After years of experience, I’ve learned that job hunters need confidence in every aspect of their application materials—resume, CV, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, and beyond. That confidence extends to the visual presentation of their resume. It’s not just about what the document says but how it looks and whether it reflects the candidate's professionalism and potential. That’s why selecting the right resume template is critical.

Writing Your Resume: Professional Summary (Part 1)

This section sets the tone for your entire document. The first few words, the summary’s length, and tone can significantly influence how a reader perceives you, the level of value you may bring to a new company, and how much he or she will continue to read.

Writing Your Resume: Professional Summary (Part 2)

In most situations, we want the professional summary to include three paragraphs that each include 25-35 words. The pattern for each paragraph includes descriptors, actions you perform on the job, and how you’ll apply it. The overall aim is to describe yourself in ways that provide ample insight using the least amount of words.

Writing Your Resume: Professional Summary (Part 3)

The second paragraph focuses on communication skills and how you apply them.

Writing Your Resume: Professional Summary (Part 4)

While the first paragraph describes what you have done and the second paragraph talks about what kind of communicator you are, the third paragraph states what you will do.

Generate Your Resume Summary

Instructions for how to generate your resume's summary.

Writing Your Resume: Areas of Expertise

Flexibility is key with any winning resume. We have to tailor and target the document, depending on the job, and the 'Areas of Expertise' section offers a prime opportunity to do so. Each format we’ve provided has an 'Areas of Expertise' section either to the side or directly below the Professional Summary. We generally want to keep the list between 8-12 examples or we risk making you look like the Jack/Jill of all trades and master of none.

Generate Your Areas of Expertise

This GPT generates concise, two-word areas of expertise tailored to a user’s specific job title, industry, and focus areas. It uses proven resume data, current industry keywords, and role-specific knowledge to ensure each phrase is relevant, professional, and optimized for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). It excludes soft skills, focusing solely on technical and functional capabilities—so a software engineer might receive “Database Management” or “API Development,” while a marketing professional might see “Brand Strategy” or “Market Research.” Its purpose is to provide a precise, ready-to-use list for the “Areas of Expertise” section of a resume, boosting clarity and impact.

Writing Your Resume: Achievements (Part 1)

Let's think about your resume like a highlight reel. You wouldn't want to show every single move you made during the game, right? You'd want to focus on the home runs, the game-changing plays, those key achievements that really made an impact. That's the same approach you should take with your resume. Sure, the day-to-day tasks are important, but what really grabs attention are the moments you stood out - when you boosted sales by 20%, managed a project that saved costs, or developed a system that increased efficiency. Those are the stories that make potential employers sit up and think, "Wow, this person can really deliver results." So, let's keep it focused, let's keep it impactful. Remember, your resume/CV isn't just a list of jobs - it's your professional story, told through the lens of what you've achieved. And in the world of job hunting, that's a story that's guaranteed to be a page-turner.

Writing Your Resume: Achievements (Part 2)

Imagine for a moment you're at an art gallery. Now, there are two kinds of paintings that really catch your eye. There's the bold, standalone masterpiece that instantly draws you in. Then, there's the series of related pieces, each highlighting a different aspect of the same story, which together create a captivating narrative. Your resume is quite similar to this gallery.

Writing Your Resume: Achievements (Part 3)

On the other hand, including job-specific achievements within the 'Professional Experience' section is like that series of related paintings. Here, you're weaving a story of consistent success, painting a picture of your career progression. Each achievement shows how you've made an impact in specific roles, demonstrating your ability to deliver results time and again. This gives employers a deeper insight into how you operate within a role and how you could be a game-changer for their organization.

Generate Your Achievements

This GPT is a specialized tool designed to create powerful, results-driven resume achievement statements tailored to each user’s career history and industry. It extracts key details about the user’s role, level of responsibility, actions taken, and outcomes achieved, then transforms them into concise, high-impact bullet points. Each statement begins with an action verb, features two bolded industry-relevant keywords, and is precisely worded to reflect whether the user led an initiative or made critical contributions as part of a team. By aligning achievements with industry-specific language and measurable results, this GPT ensures professionals present their experience in a compelling, employer-focused format that maximizes career impact.

Writing Your Resume: Job Responsibilities

If you think that a long, exhaustive list of job duties is what makes a resume/CV shine, well, I hate to break it to you, but that's as helpful as a screen door on a submarine. Okay, I hear you saying, "But surely, I need to mention the tasks I performed at each job?" Of course, you do. But the key is striking the right balance. If your resume feels like an encyclopedia of duties and tasks, with just a pinch of achievements, it's time for a drastic shift.

Generate Your Job Responsibilities

This GPT transforms complex professional experiences into concise, action-driven resume descriptions by analyzing detailed job histories and achievements across diverse industries. It structures each role into three clear, active-voice sentences without articles or participial phrases, ensuring consistency in tone, verb variety, and professional impact. Drawing from best practices and proven resume language, it emphasizes leadership, accountability, and measurable contributions to create polished, recruiter-ready content tailored to the tense and context of each position.

Writing Your Resume: Education Section

Navigating the education and training section of your resume might feel like a balancing act, but fear not. Here's a helpful rule of thumb: less is more. Whether your degree is in business, engineering, or quantum physics, the key facts are your degree and the institution, not whether it's an Ivy League or a state-run college. Navigating the education and training section of your resume might feel like a balancing act, but fear not. Here's a helpful rule of thumb: less is more. Whether your degree is in business, engineering, or quantum physics, the key facts are your degree and the institution, not whether it's an Ivy League or a state-run college.

Writing Your Resume: Editing & Proofreading (Part 1)

Remember, a typo or two might slip through the cracks, but maintaining professionalism is paramount. Tools like Grammarly are a lifesaver for avoiding cringe-worthy mix-ups - you wouldn't want to claim an entrepreneurial "sprit" or recount how you successfully "prostituted" a defendant. And let's not forget the hero who managed the store's busy afternoon "shits" by recruiting extra staff.

Writing Your Resume: Editing & Proofreading (Part 2)

Line spacing refers to the vertical distance between lines of text in your document. In MS Word, this is automatically set to 1.15 lines in newer versions, which gives a bit of breathing room between lines. But depending on what you're working on, you may want to adjust this.

Writing Your Resume: Editing & Proofreading (Part 3)

So, kerning is a typography term that refers to the space between characters in a piece of text. By default, when you type something on MS Word, the program will automatically space the letters out for you. But sometimes, the spacing isn't perfect, especially between certain combinations of letters. For example, if you have the letter 'V' next to an 'A', there can be a bit too much space left between them, and that's where kerning comes in.

Where to Look

In this section of the course, we’ll explore two powerful tools for finding job opportunities: Google Job Search and LinkedIn Job Search. These platforms are essential for discovering a wide range of roles and connecting directly with employers. You’ll learn how to optimize your searches, set up alerts, and leverage key features that save time and increase your chances of landing interviews. By the end of this module, you’ll feel confident using these tools to streamline your job search and uncover hidden opportunities.Google Job Search

Networking

There are bad words, dirty words, and then there are words like networking. Networking scares people for the same reason dating does. You may have to introduce yourself to a stranger, and that stranger may ignore you. Even worse, that stranger might flat out reject you. Just remember; it's all a part of the game.

Approaching Hiring Managers

Here’s a secret that’s going to really piss some people off. Some recruiters and HR staff are lazy. They want an easy life and smooth sailing when it comes to finding talent and getting them on the job.To be fair, most people want the path of least resistance. Who wants to have 50 phone screeners with a half interested recruiter or go through a boring interrogation with the HR manager about God knows what?

Resume Edits

A recap of your next steps during the six-week masterclass.

Group Sessions

Weekly webinars where Ryan will present a different topic that will prepare you for the job market.

1:1 Coaching Sessions

As part of the Masterclass, you’ll receive three private 45-minute coaching sessions with me. These are designed to give you personalised guidance and ensure you stay on track during your job search.