Your CV represents the biggest sale of your life - you; your skills
Let’s play a game. Let's imagine that you want to buy a phone. You’re not sure which phone to buy. How long do you research before making a decision?
Your answer is probably in a few hours or days. You want to research every tiny feature - the camera, the microphone, the design, longevity. You want to feel it in your hands, look at the colours, think about how easy it is to silence it when you're in a meeting, or how amazing it would be to show it off at the next dinner party. Now imagine, that instead of the $1k budget, hypothetically that you’re spending $25k on the phone and you don’t know when you can next buy another one. Does your answer change?
Of course! You now spend more time and energy researching.
Yet when it comes to our resumes, we don’t spend as much time. You see, we never think of ourselves as the seller of our skillset. No one ever quantifies the value of our CV to us.
But this is exactly what hiring managers are thinking while hiring you. Only with a cost much higher than $1k! They hardly know anything about you. They don’t know if you get on with the team, if you’re a problem solver, or how long you’re going to stick around. And they’re supposed to initially assess whether you’re worth the salary you’re asking for, looking at your resume.
Knowing what I know now, I don’t regret spending over 5 years finessing my resume
Hi, I am Sudeshna, who unlike most coaches in the market, actually has a REAL JOB, and a decade ago, when I was a student, I wanted to create a system to craft a resume that always gets interview calls.
I spent 5 YEARS writing my CV, and tweaking it. Why? Because this is stuff I geek out on! I applied to banks like HSBC and JP Morgan, consulting firms like McKinsey and Deloitte, tech companies like Facebook and Google, only to either receive “regret emails” rejecting me or, never hear back at all!
When I sent my resume to a company, I was excited like a child on candy- counting the chickens before the eggs! I wanted to tell them why there could be no one more suited to the job than me! But then started the wait… more wait… and then finally either getting an automated email response to hear about their regret to inform me that there are better candidates, or worse even… NOT HEARING back at all! I kept doing it over and over again, thinking, “This time it will be different!”. Then started the next phase - did they even get my resume? Did they check it? Is my email working fine or is the response to my job application in my spam folder?
Urrghhh! I wish this didn’t happen more than just a few times, but it did. It happened like a zillion times!
And that’s when I let out my inner geek! I am a Leo, so not very good at getting ignored! So I started with getting advice from my college placement cell. Then reached out to my seniors in various industries. Spoke to career consultants. Read every article and book on resume writing tips that I could. And I fine-tuned my CV over and over again… for 3 years.
And then something changed. I got an internship. I kept at my CV, and then I landed a job. And then another. And another! From Deloitte, from HSBC, from PwC, Accenture and so on.
The last few times I changed jobs, I had so many offers that I had to politely remind companies that if they were interested in making me an offer, it better be better than an offer I currently had. And when I was changing jobs just a couple of years back, I had to go about deleting my CV from most job portals to stop my phone go ringing!
An amazing resume can open up a ton of opportunities.
Now, I've been on both sides of the table — as a candidate AND as a hiring manager.
And I’ve a confession to make on behalf of all hiring managers
Most of us HATE hiring (they wish they could retain the previous person in the role instead of hiring you TBH!) and with your CV, you basically get 6 seconds to make or break.
ALL your skills… ALL your talents… your work-ethics and personality…ALL the years of hard work… they are just worth 6 seconds. Not because you’re not important, but because they just have a hundred other things to do.
For many of us, our CV is the first and only thing about us that a hiring manager sees. You might be asking for a $100k salary but your CV represents EVERYTHING that you want the company to know about you. If all the skills you put on your CV is not worth a $100k as well, chuck it!
Call me crazy but isn’t that a LOT of pressure on one piece of paper?!
In 6 seconds, hiring managers can decide whether we get our dream jobs!
So, of course we get nervous writing our resumes!
That’s why we either write them in “professional language”, full of jargons. OR worse even, we don’t even work on it! We play the numbers game, hoping that the law of large numbers will somehow bestow its luck upon us this one time!
And then we get dejected either because we’ve not heard back, or because we’re even too afraid to start our job search!
But what can we do other than being depressed?
I'll tell you what... We’ll apply to other jobs like maniacs. And when that fails, we’ll do it all over again! As if getting our resumes picked is some sort of a lottery to be won!
On the other hand, our friends and co-workers have found a better job, a better salary, and our life just seems mundane compared to theirs. What a terrible way to live!
Looking around we see only happiness and glory, logging onto social media, we find everyone’s life is perfect.
And then we start on the self-doubt phase.
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"I’ve worked here for 3 years. Have I really done nothing??"
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"Maybe I don’t even have enough experience, will apply next year."
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"There are hundreds of people better than me…"
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I've a career gap and now no one will hire me!"
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"I am shit at networking, there's no hope for me!"
And this is it! I’ve some terrible news- you’re stuck! Whether or not you have enough experience is immaterial if your CV looks like EVERY OTHER candidate out there. In fact, if your CV was impressive enough, wouldn’t you see it opening doors for you already?
It sure feels like the game is rigged… AGAINST US! These powers that be in their fancy offices don’t even need to reply… they choose who they want for the job! And who has to wake up to the same mundane life again? Yes, that’s right! US!!
How can we write resumes that land us our dream job when no one has ever taught us how to? Google “tips” and “tricks” and you’ll be served reminders of grammar check and paragraph alignment.
When you fail enough number of times, eventually you figure out the right answer
I made all the rookie mistakes and some more. I worried about font size and colour and tried spacing paragraphs from 1.15 to 1.18! Unfortunately, I don’t have a time machine to go kick my 18 year old self in the butt!
However, one thing I learned was that most of the experts who advice you on your CV or career, have never even gotten a top-tier job! Never managed teams, never hired people… so why do they keep dishing out shit advice?
I'll tell you why- because it’s easy and it’ll make you feel empowered!
If you want to play World Cup football, would you hire someone who has only watched football matches as your coach?
No? EXACTLY!!
I want to let you onto the secrets I uncovered while tweaking my CV for 5 years. I have only shared these with a small group of friends who are as crazy as me about perfection. And with some coaching clients I’ve had. Until now!
How is what I let you onto better than what most tips you find elsewhere?
"It was my first step towards editing my CV after 9 years and very helpful to understand the current market… I did get quite a lot of calls for interview and secured 6 jobs based in and around London.” Ajay
As I started secured more jobs than I could handle, I had learned the rules of the game.
And you might be surprised that there’s something that matters a LOT more than ugly fonts and spacing! Most CVs that end up top of pile have one thing in common: A STORY.
A story ties your entire CV together. When all you have is 6 seconds of the hiring manager’s time, it is important to have a powerful story that makes the hiring manager instantly say, “I want to meet this person!”
I want to show you EXACTLY how to achieve this - including templates and spreadsheets which come as close to plug and play as possible.
And this is what most “expert advice” misses. And CV writers? Well… even if they’re brilliant, they are not you. So chances are rare that a CV written by a professional CV writer will be better than what you can write yourself.
Story telling is an art and when you learn this, you can be picked over people who have 3 or even 5 years of experience more than you. How do I know this? Well, I started heading my team when I was 30. Most top performers don’t reach there until 35 or 40! Do the ones with more experience know more than me? Possibly! Does it matter? Probably not if you can tell the story better.
But of course, DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!
Let’s play a game…
Imagine you’re the hiring manager…
They pick up your CV and what do they know about you in the next 6 seconds?
This is the litmus test! Get your CV out and pretend that you don’t know yourself. Skim for 6 seconds.
What jumps out as amazing projects? Do you think it’s memorable? Would you want to talk to you?
Don’t worry if not. I will help you revise your CV for it to become an interview magnet.
I can guarantee that you’ll be amazed with the results from applying my secrets about resume writing.
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Your CV will almost always rise to the top of the pile
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When you go in for the interview, they will already feel like they know you… and LIKE you…
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And because they already like you, the interview will be easier
Let me show you how to turn your CV into an interview magnet.
"I have not only landed my dream job but also was able to change my career. Once I took onboard all the different suggestion my CV gained much more visibility." Maria C.
Why wait when we can start right now?
The 3 rookie mistakes we make while writing our resumes
MISTAKE 1: WORRYING ABOUT WHICH FONT SIZE AND HOW MUCH SPACING
I’ve spent most of my career in Consulting. So, I won’t tell you that formatting, font size and spacing are not important. But should that really be your focus? Have you heard the popular “Keep the CV to one page” advice? Again, that’s a good to have but definitely not THE most important! Unlike a lot of gurus, I actually think there’s good reason for this advice but it doesn’t work everywhere… and I’ll tell you where it works and where not. And WHY!
MISTAKE 2: MY CV SHOULD HAVE EVERYTHING I DID SINCE I WAS 5 YEARS OLD
B.S. ALERT! Your CV is not a list of “I went to school and then to university and then to work at place 1, 2, 3”. Even if you did something earth-shatteringly beautiful, if it doesn’t support your story, leave it out! Companies never want to see a random list of irrelevant projects and jobs.
MISTAKE 3: WRITE “PROFESSIONALLY”
We hate fluff but we do this on our CV! WHY GOD WHY?! Actual phrase from resumes I have received as a hiring manager: "Proven ability to operate under pressure and in demanding situations whilst still having relentless drive to deliver with enthusiasm."
19 words, 2 lines worth of space… that tells me NOTHING!
And another 3 blasphemous blunders we keep REPEATING on our resumes
Never again! Three blasphemous blunders I kept making… sort these and just watch your phone ring for interview after interview after interview.
BLUNDER 1: IRRELEVANT BANTER
So many consultants are guilty of this one! Consultants typically have a running list of short projects they’ve worked on and somehow want to talk about all the awesome projects from saving health services to putting a mission on Mars… for a sales job in banking!
BLUNDER 2: CLAIMING AWESOMENESS… INSTEAD OF DEMONSTRATING IT
Which of the two people would you remember more:
1. "I'm passionate about computer science."
2. "For example, I've taken 20 courses on Udemy and Coursera on Machine Learning, listen to the TWiML podcast, and spent the last weekend in an AI conference, where I learned about BERT models."
And these?
1. "I'm excellent at stake-holder management."
2. "For example, I present to CEOs and Boards regularly. I am known to create consensus among various stake-holder groups by discussing and anticipating problem areas and working with operational teams to create buy-ins."
Demonstrate awesomeness instead of claiming it- make it obvious! This is THE BIGGEST MISTAKE we are guilty of. And if you open up your CV, you’ll know what I am talking about!
BLUNDER 3: NOT BEING IN THE EMPLOYERS’ SHOES
This is in fact the biggest mistake! Reading resumes is definitely not a fun activity. So are you incentivising the hiring manager to read it? Are you speaking to the challenges that the company and hiring manager is facing? Does it use their language?
No? So you’re basically another drop in the ocean!
I see this all the time when people apply to my jobs, and say I can code in SQL and Python and have implemented deep neural nets in the previous job. They don’t understand when I either reply with a no or worse even, don’t reply. They don’t understand that I don’t need knowledge of deep neural nets to solve my problems.
Remember, 6 seconds. If you haven't provided enough thought to what the hiring manager wants, you might as well pull the curtain on that dream. If 6 seconds is all you have, how can you make sure that you don’t waste it?
Today, I want to give you a copy of my actual resume so that you can use it as a guide for your job search. I'd like to give you a copy of this actual resume so you can use it in your job search.
But there’s something more than that I want you to know. I want you to know WHY this CV works, so that you can apply the insights to your resume too. This will help you sail past your competition like a breeze.
By the way, before letting you onto the resume secrets, I made sure that they work, even if you have no experience, even if you think you don’t have the relevant skills or haven’t updated your CV for a decade. I have tested this with my private clients and now it’s up for grabs!
I literally spent TWO YEARS finessing this course behind the curtain, with feedback from juniors, mentors, and in fact someone just like you who had reached out for help… I tweaked and tuned it to perfection in the normal geeky way that I do, until it was just right to be out in the world.
FINALLY… it’s out in the open for you to get results like how I did, like how my students did…
I am excited… very excited to share this course with you… because secrets were never shared unless you personally coached with me.
Introducing…
With this brand new self-led course, you get instant access to my course, including word-for-word resume templates, plug and play spreadsheets. I have not held back anything, and in fact I have been wishing that this course existed years back and I wouldn’t have to make so many mistakes!
You can revamp your resume from average to OUTSTANDING… in a matter of hours! And then do it over and over again, as many times as you want… as many times as you want to change jobs, as many times as you want to change careers!
What you will learn:
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Actual resume templates that landed people their dream jobs, including tear-downs of the psychology behind
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How to make your experience stand out, even if you think you don't have the required experience
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The EXACT tactics to use in your CV to "control" what the reader sees
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How to put a $ value on your CV… even when you’re not a Sales Person
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Unnecessary jargon killer: how to communicate in Plain English on your CV
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How to ditch the label of being a “job hopper”
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The beauty of focus
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Steps to sail past your competition
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Using the transferable skills technique to switch careers and industries
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How to be irresistibly good for the job, without lying. I stand behind every word I say in this course.
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Narrative toolbox that will help you engage effortlessly with your dream company
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And more…
With this, you'll get instant access to
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Instant access to my 6-module long self-paced course that literally takes you step by step to create your perfect resume and LinkedIn profile
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An e-book that takes you through my best insights on writing a CV that is an interview magnet. I deliberately kept it easy to flick through and great for commutes...
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Actual stellar CVs from my students. Including actual anonymous resumes that secured great jobs. These are exclusively available with me because these are directly from my successful students.
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Example comparisons of vanilla and full-fat narratives. I don't want to just dump theory on you. I walk-through examples and the psychology of why all the way through.
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Half an hour resume / LinkedIn review by me for as long as I can support the demand
I struggled to put a price on this
“All of this is great, Sudeshna, but how much does it cost?” I hear you ask. Like I said, I deliberated over it for 2 years.
I took courses and paid thousands of dollars to understand what the market offered. I found some good courses that were well priced for the value (like Ramit Sethi's) and some $20 courses which were not just a waste of money but also time. I quickly realised that you either pay with money or with time, and time is always more expensive!
Then I thought I’d re-write your CV and charge you £300. But that won’t help you – you will be out of £300 and a mediocre resume written by someone who doesn’t really know you. And the next time you want an update you’ll resort back to me again for £300. This is too expensive for most people to get an average result.
I thought I’ll do some free coaching, and I did. That helped a few people but most of them got off the call and forgot about their resume and went back to their daily lives of mediocrity.
I then did some paid coaching. I surprised myself – I wasn’t ready. One of my students got a job at Apple… and she had just graduated, and had no work experience. Another got a 40% raise. Another one landed her dream job…
With results like this I kept getting more requests from people to sit down and talk about their CV and career. Not because they didn’t have a career service at their firm, not because there were not other coaches outside (who btw charge £300 per hour to consult), but because I had lived their lives, I had been through what they have been, and most importantly, I am not a coach who coaches for a job- I have my normal day job to take care of!
But there was no way I could honour their requests while being in a full-time job. And if I did, it would have costed them £1000 an hour. What could I do to help more people and yet not quit my job?
This course was the answer! I have plugged in everything I have shared privately, and more about resumes on this course. And you get to keep it on your drive / laptop / tablet instead of the fleeting 1 hour you could spend with me for £1000. And if I was to ever revise the course, you’ll get that too.
Because I am launching this for the first time, I am offering a rock-bottom price. This offer will end and the price will go up. Why do I want to charge you? Because it has costed me many months of research, years of learning and even tons of money to put all of this together. If I told you launching this course has been breezy easy, I would be lying and you know how I feel about lying…
I researched a lot…
And when I did, I found a lot of the same material generic and rehashed… they were everywhere. On Udemy, on Coursera… on newspapers and placement cells.
"Follow your passion!" "Spell-check."
Urrrghhh! What do they even mean? What should I say? How do I even get started?
That's not good enough for the geek in me, and nor should it be for you.
That's why instead of creating yet another set of slides with voice-overs, I invested my time and money into building what I believe to be the most bang for your buck (AND time) CV course. I have shared CVs from the REAL life that helped me and my students land dream jobs. This stuff works because I have gotten email after email, text after text, from successful students. And now you’re about to get access to that material.
That's why I am confident about this course.
It couldn’t be simpler: Take the course, follow through the exercises, and see if works.
The decision is yours today
Keep sending your current CV, clunky and off-paced to company after company. When you don’t hear back blame it on your experience… or even worse, the government and its immigration policies… baby boomers!
OR you can take action. You can get the same insights that secured me and my students jobs in Deloitte, McKinsey and Apple.
You will get access to the same material that my "pilot students" used to turn average CVs into outstanding ones, which got them interviews — and then their dream job offers.
It depresses me when people who get poor responses to their CV…
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Decide that somehow sending out 100 more copies of the same resume will help (as if it somehow is bound by the law of large numbers)
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Hire a professional CV writer (who neither knows anything about your experience or your hiring manager’s perspective)
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Blame the economic policies, and worse even… immigrants! (sad, since most companies are also struggling to fill all positions)
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Start doubting their abilities (and delay the search)
All this instead of actually learning how to write the perfect resume which only takes a few hours!
Self-doubt is easy, I get it! It’s easy to think of reasons why you’re not the best person for the job… it’s easy to struggle to create a narrative around your experience. It’s easy to believe that no one would want to hire you.
But there also are solutions and strategies to showcase the best version of you to the job market- completely ethically, and not sounding like a dork using words that sound “professional”.
I want to reveal to you the secrets that me, and my students used over and over again to land interviews at their dream companies or for their dream roles.
And they can work for you too.
I've stitched up this material to be the best bang for your buck. In a few hours, for only £97, you can start to seize the career of your dreams.
Still confused? Well, I don't charge money for advice that doesn't work. In fact, I am so sure that it works that if you use the material and don't get results, let me know and I'll refund you within the first 30 days of purchase.
Now stop second-guessing yourself and join in. This price is never coming back!
About
Hi, am Sudeshna. I am a professional Strategist who helps businesses make more money. My core belief is that professional success is effortless when your career and life aligns. And I am on a mission to help people do their best work in the world because that creates more happiness and financial abundance in the world.
Be in Touch
Email us: sudeshna@theabundancepsyche.com