I Read 2,216 Resumes. Here's How You Stand Out 🚀 (1)
As soon as we saw that, we were like, "Oh my God, this guy actually really went above and beyond. Hell yeah, we need to interview him." This is an absolute dream cover letter to read.
I want to show you some examples of what bullshit looks like.
There's a few things wrong with this.
Number one, this is such a red flag in an application.
Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
So over the last two years, I have gone through 100s, if not 1000s of job applications, and resumes, and CVs. And so in this video, I'm going to give you 15 tips for next time you're applying for a job.
And I'm going to show you physical, real life examples of people's CVs, and the resumes, and the cover letters, and what are the good things that I'd be looking for as an employer, and that other employers would be looking for. And what are the things to potentially avoid.
Let's get into it.
In business, in life, in everything, it's a bit like a nightclub in that there are three doors.
The first door is the door where people queue up to be let into the nightclub.
The second door is the door around the back for the billionaires and the celebrities.
But what no one tells you is that in life and in business and in everything else, there is always a third door.
And the third door is the door where you go down the alleyway, you pop open the kitchen window, you sneak in the back.
You make friends with the wait staff in the kitchen, and then you get into the nightclub through the third door.
Whether it was Steven Spielberg landing his first film gig, or Bill Gates landing his first, I don't know, software, sale, or whatever, all of these people succeeded by taking the third door.
All right. The next tip is to slide into people's proverbial or physical DMs.
Now this is a for example, third door application technique.
A first door application technique would be to go on the company's, or the creator's, or the whatever's job pages and be like, "Are they looking for a vacancy that matches me perfectly? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Oh, no, I don't have that much experience. I'm not going to apply."
But actually what you could just do is cold email or cold DM people, or companies, or individuals who you know are potentially looking to hire who you might potentially want to work for.
Now here, I want to show you an email that Angus, who is now our general manager, sent to me two years ago.
"Dear Ali, I hope this email finds you well, I've been a long time view of your YouTube videos, and the last Easter I sent you an email regarding blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm emailing to acquire today about a separate issue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want to basically work for you. I have attached to my CV. Do you need anything at all?"
Now, it just so happened that at the time Angus sent this email, I'd been thinking, maybe I want to hire another writer. And he literally sent the email at the right time.
And I was like, oh hello, this person lives in Cambridge. He's got a Cambridge degree. He seems legit. He's attached his CV. He's clearly done this sort of writing thing before, he's into journalism and stuff.
This is the sort of person I need. Let me at least give him a chance.
Angus now has been with the business for the last like two and a half years, and has ascended the ranks to become a general manager, and is doing the sort of thing that he says is his absolute dream job.
And as a 25, 26 year old, there's basically no way he would've had such a cool job had he not taken the initiative to make that first cold email by sliding into the proverbial Dms.
The other thing is you might send one of these emails and they mightnot reply, but you could just send another one, and another one, and another one. You could send four emails in the space of four months, and maybe at the right time, the rightperson will see that email and be like, "Hey, actually, let's give this person a shot."
And this segues to the next piece of advice, which is to be an opportunist.
The exampleI want to use here is Elizabeth Phillips, who is now a YouTuber linked down below. Andshe started off about two years ago as my personal assistant. And the way she got the job is that she just DMed me. I was doing an Instagram Live at like 1:00 in the morning for some reason. It was the middle of lockdown, whatever. I was doing an Instagram Live, and someone asked a question, and I mentioned vaguely briefly, threw it out there that maybe I'm looking to hire a personal assistant, but I'm not really sure. I've heard that it's kind of good.
And what Elizabeth did was that straight after that Instagram Live, she just DMed me on Instagram, knowing that I was on Instagram after the Instagram Live, saying, "Hey, I want to be your personal assistant. I'm a medical student based in London, I'm in my second year," or whatever she was at the time. "Here are the skills I have. Here is why I'd be really good at the job."
And then it was like, oh. I mean, I hadn't really been seriously thinking about hiring assistant, but okay, let's give this a go. And then we hopped on a call, and now she's been with the company for the last two years and has ascended the ranks to now no longer be my personal assistant, and instead help out with really making our part-time YouTuber Academy the success that it currently is.
To be honest, there's a lot of people, a lot of CEOs, who are on Instagram, and have personal Instagram accounts that you can find that are not on Twitter or not on LinkedIn, or trying to get hold of them by email is going to be impossible.
But if you follow them on Instagram, you start kind of maybe sliding into some of the DMs, you could actually get a lot of interesting relationships built that way.
Trying to find the platform that they're active on, that there's not like zillions of other people trying to vibe for their attention on.
Now, the way Elizabeth made this super easy is that, what she said was, "To be honest, I know you don't know what you want from this, but it's an experiment. Let's just try it for a month. At the end of the month, if you don't like my services, you don't have to pay me. I will just have done the stuff for free, and it'll be a learning opportunity for both of us."
I was like, damn, the fact that she said that made me actually be like, you know what, let's try it for a month as an experiment, I will pay you anyway, because I had the money to pay.
And I was like, okay, cool. This is, this seems very reasonable, but she just made it so easy to say yes. Angus made it so easy to say yes.
Anyone who've hired through these third door channels has made it super easy to say yes to at least giving them a shot. And one of the ways you can do that, is by making it seem as if it's like a no brainer thing for your employer.
This is something Naval Ravikant talks about. Fantastic book, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Beautiful source of life advice and wisdom. Naval says is that if he was broke and landed in a new city, the way he would get a job is by building up his portfolio, going after people, and basically offering to work for them for free for a whole month or several weeks, so that it's super, super easy for them to say yes.
I didn't realise this until I became an employer, but actually hiring is really hard for companies.
You have to do so much faff to find the right person. And then you know that like, "Oh, I need to make sure I find the right person, because if I don't then they'll be in the company and then it's going to be a real faff trying to fire them, because I'm going to need all this feedback, and all this constructive criticism." And all this it's such an absolute nightmare hiring, and then also firing people. That if someone props into a lap who has the right skills, who's like, "Hey, I want you to give me a shot. I'll make it super easy for you. If you don't like it, we will try it out for a few weeks, we will try it out for a month, you can just fire me. No questions asked. I'm not going to care."
Just anything that makes it easier for the employer to say yes to you, will get your foot in the door.
And once your foot in the door, obviously you're going to perform really well because you're actually good at the job. And now you're in this job, which is potentially a job that's more interesting than a job you could have gone through the standard sort of first door pathway.
So if you do want to apply or get your dream job, then to be honest, the work starts way before you actually apply.
What you want to do is, you want to build a portfolio of skills and assets that will convince your employer to take you on, rather than someone else who's applied for the job.
For example, Gordon, who is the videographer that we hired after looking through 400 video applications, and a trialling about 15 different people, ended up actually being selected for a shortlist because his portfolio was really good.
Similarly, Jamie who got hired as a YouTube producer, his portfolio was the fact that he had his own YouTube channel, and he had put together this body of work. And even though admittedly his YouTube channel wasn't huge. He only had a few thousand subscribers. It was still a level of doing the work that we wanted to hire him for.
This is for example, what journalist, and YouTuber Johnny Harris did. He worked at an architecture regulation firm, and he got paid to make loads and loads and loads of cool stuff.
Got to make so much freaking stuff. And I was doing it, and I was getting paid for it.
And then through the experience he got at that, he ended up landing a really legit job at Vox Media doing animations and journalism and stuff. And then that segued into his own YouTube channel, which has become ridiculously successful. But it all started because he was being paid to, and in a way, build a portfolio of cool stuff in a job that was somewhat related, but not entirely related to the thing he actually wanted to do.
All right, before we get to the next point, I am genuinely absolutely fricking delighted to say that this video is actually sponsored by 80,000 Hours. 80,000 Hours is an absolute, freaking incredible organisation that I first came across a few years ago, when I was trying to figure out how do I have genuine impact in my career?
And it's called 80,000 Hours because that is the amount of time we spend in the average career. And because that's such a huge amount of time, that means that your career is probably the best way that you can have a personal impact on the world.
And the whole point of 80,000...
