Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host, Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world. And I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality, and here's the successful entrepreneur who provides insights and guidance you can use to move along your vision path. Listen to my shows at www.TonyD-U-R-S-O.com, or go to your favourite podcast platform such as Apple podcasts and search for Tony D-U-R-S-O. So now before we get going, please stay tuned for important messages from our sponsors. Just ahead, I'll be talking about shaving with Harry's razors. I've been using them for years, and we're giving you a trial set at www.harrys.com/D-U-R-S-O, and check out Master Class. Now is the time to become the expert in the field of your interest. Listen for my story just ahead on what class I'm taking, and with an annual pass, you get a free one to share at www.masterclass.com/D-U-R-S-O. More details just ahead so please stay tuned. Today's show's about putting together that million dollar resume with Greg Faherty. With the current rise in unemployment, some of you may be looking for work, and that means submitting your resume. Well, how can you get the hiring personnel to read your resume and bring you in for that interview? How do you beat the odds? Here's some advice and tips that can help you get ahead of the crowd and hopefully land the job you need. If you want to craft an exceptional resume to get the job you want, then study this interview in detail. Let's see what we can learn today. And at the end of this interview, I'm going to do a summary recap of what we went over. So stay tuned for that. Here's some info on Greg Faherty. Greg is a Certified Professional Resume Writer. He brings 20 years of resume writing experience to the table through his own companies, and as a senior writer for several of the world's largest internet resume firms. His accomplishments include producing more than 15,000 resumes, serving as a resume and cover letter subject matter expert for multiple newspapers and websites, and introducing cutting edge resume products to the industry. Here we go.

Tony:

Hi Greg. Welcome to our show.

Greg:

Hi. Thank you and it's great to be here.

Tony:

The honour is mine. We have a lot of solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sometimes they have applicants who want them to hire them, but also sometimes you need to do a resume. Even if you're a solopreneur or entrepreneur, there's times you need a resume for this, that, or the other, or maybe you're hacking your entrepreneur job with a part time job or something like that. It's always good to know what's happening out there. I myself have done so many resumes in the past, and I know that the world changes. So I really look forward to finding out what's out there, what's important and all that, Greg. But before we do, I want to follow your journey to success. So please tell us how did it all start for you? What's your back story?

Greg:

Well, it's interesting. For me, I kind of fell into this role. I was working for many years in the medical research fields, and this is going back, I'm going to say about 20 years ago. Back then that field was very much like it or human resources are now. There was a lot of movement. Companies were moving. Companies were closing, companies were opening. So as someone employed in that, I was constantly either through choice or through circumstance, moving from job to job as well. And I was with a company and they downsized and I received a very nice severance package. And I said, I am just tired of working for other people. I want to work for myself. So I'm going to take two months and dedicate myself to trying to find self-employment. And one of the ads that I answered was for a resume writing position. At the time online internet resume companies really didn't exist. You had to go to a local company and I hooked up with resume.com, which was probably the first major online company doing resumes for people. I had a lot of experience like you were just mentioning before, writing resumes for myself and for my friends. I come from a writing background. So I sent them some samples. They hired me a couple of months later, I went and got my certification. So I'm actually a Certified Professional Resume Writer. And from then on, it just took off. Within the first year, I was doing contract work for two companies and then I started my own company, which was www.a-perfect-resume.com - it's still in existence - and since then I probably do 50% of my work through that company and my other Million Dollar Resumes, as well as subcontracting to some of the really big international firms. So it was a convoluted process in that I never intended to do it, but once I started doing it, I fell in love with it.

Tony:

That's very interesting, Greg. Now I understand that you fell into it and that you had a choice. You made a choice. You were responding to ads looking to hire and you chose to respond to an ad about writing resumes. So what was your vision? What were you looking? What were you thinking? Now you've built something amazing, but I want to go back to your vision and how that came about, and how that fostered and brought about the success that you have.

Greg:

It's an interesting question because sometimes it's more serendipity than it is planning. I mean, there's planning involved in that you have to know about the industry before you just jump into it. So when I saw that ad, I said, I never knew you could really make a living at resume writing. I mean, I knew there were resume companies out there in town, that sort of thing, but I always assumed they were just Human Resources people who were doing it on the side. Back then you had to go to the library and do some research, had to take out those books. I don't know if you remember What color is my balloon, that sort of thing. And I investigated what the process involved in terms of doing this for a living and it seemed like something that would be a good fit for me. I can only say it that way, because in my other jobs, I did a lot of technical writing. I wrote standard operating procedures, manuals for equipment, things like that. In college, I was an English major and then I gradually shifted over to the sciences. The sciences require a lot of writing as well. Once I realized, all right, this is going to be writing. I'll be dealing with clients, but my time is my own. I have the freedom within the broad range of what resumes are supposed to look like to create my own content, to develop new styles and new formats and see how they work, and that interested me. And then when I started working and doing it, it was almost like it was natural. I felt at home and once I had that feeling and really for the first time in my life, I loved going to work every day. So that just told me, Hey, this is something you need to turn into a career as opposed to a job.

Tony:

That is a total indicator that you're on purpose, and that you're actually following the purpose line that is you, that makes you, and I understand you've done a lot of writing, so this just fits right in. So it begs the question. What's the purpose for what you do, Greg?

Greg:

The purpose for me or the purpose for the clients?

Tony:

Well, the purpose for you as a million dollar resume writer, you create amazing resumes for your clients who turn out to be very successful for them. And I understand that you to write and you love to do this, and I'm just wondering, what's that purpose behind it? What's the reason for doing this? Why are you doing what you're doing?

Greg:

I would say that there's three reasons, and it's probably the same for me as for almost anyone who's in sort of a career or a job that they enjoy. Number one is I get satisfaction out of it. I am able to produce something every day, multiple times a day, that I can be proud of. It's almost like being an artist, you might say. You create a statue, you create a painting, you create something. I am creating something for every client that's unique. You can say, oh, everybody's resume looks the same. Well, if you look at it from 10 yards away, they might look the same, but they're really all unique because they have to be formatted and the content has to be individualized for each person. So there's that sense of satisfaction in producing something of a high quality. There's the sense of satisfaction of knowing I'm helping someone else. Yes, they're paying me, and that's always a good part of the job too, is getting paid for what you do. But I'm also doing something that helps other people. I could never picture myself in a role where I had the opposite effect. And as much as we need attorneys, we need other types of salesmen. We need all these different people in our world. For me, that's not what I want to do. And probably sales is the hardest part of my job, because I don't want to, I guess you could say rip people off, charge them too much. I am well below the top of the line in what I charge my customers, simply because I think some companies do overcharge simply because the customers don't understand the market value. So that's another thing for me is I want to help the people that are coming to me. And the third thing is it just goes back to enjoyment. I love what I do. And it doesn't matter if you dig a ditch, install a toilet, write a resume, or build a rocket, if you love what you do, everything else kind of falls in place around it.

Tony:

I'm very curious about the title. Why is it a million dollar resume? Because some of your clients have actually gotten million dollar jobs or it's something that is worth a million dollars?

Greg:

It's kind of a combination of both of those. Like I said, I have two different companies. Million Dollar Resumes is a website that... a company, that's the website name that I've put together really focusing on high level executives. So the million dollar resume comes about because it's creating a sense of value. These resumes could be worth a million dollars to somebody, maybe not instantly, but if you're the CEO of a company and you're looking to make $500,000 a year, will you invest 1000 or 2000 on a resume that's going to get you that salary? I think so. And that million dollar term just, I think denotes quality, it denotes a level of value that's above the average. People strive to be millionaires. People strive to make a million dollars. People strive to buy a million-dollar home or a million-dollar jet, whatever it might be. So to me, that term just both implied the quality of the service I'm providing, but also attracting the level of clientele that I want.

Tony:

This is Greg Faherty's Million Dollar Resumes, and you can find him at www.milliondollarresumes.com. I'll spell that out. We know million; we know dollar - we're all too familiar with that - resumes. Folks is R-E-S-U-M-E-S.com www.milliondollarresumes.com. This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about million dollar resumes with Greg Faherty. But first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. Be sure to friend us on Facebook. You can do it right now. Visit us on facebook.com/Voice America or search for us at keyword Voice America.

Tony:

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Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show, where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about million dollar resumes with Greg Flaherty. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Greg conducts regular resume writing and interview preparation seminars for schools, libraries, and non-profit groups. He's the author of The New Guide to Writing a Perfect Resume, and has been featured in "Designing a Cover Letter to ‘WOW' Hiring Personnel, 2nd Ed.," "Cracking the Code to Pharmaceutical Sales," and "Professional Cover Letter Examples for Managers & Executives." All right. And now back to the chat with Greg.

Greg:

So for million dollar resumes, if you're a grad student or a person who's working at the local store, this isn't the company, this isn't the website for you to go to. That's what my other company is for. This one is just focused strictly on top level executives.

Tony:

Greg, let's get into your vision path. We talked about the value of the resumes a little bit and the very cool title Million Dollar Resumes and that you have top level executives that really need something that is outstanding. As you mentioned, the CEO is looking to get a job that would pay him $500,000 a year. And aside from perhaps CEOs, which of course we'll have some in the audience listening, we have people in the audience who believe that they could be the CEO, there are many executives in other capacities that need an exceptional resume. So I would really like to tear apart what you do and what makes it so different and so unique and exceptional.

Greg:

Well, you're exactly right. There are other executives. I talk about the CXO level clientele, but really, we're looking at vice president and up because it depends on the industry, the size of the company they work for, that sort of thing. So any anyone in a senior level executive role can come to me for this. What's different about it is two things. I did a survey when I went to start this company really of the competition, and you look at pricing, you look at the services they offer, you look at the value received, that sort of thing. So I said, I need to provide strong services, customized services for these people, because number one, they're used to that kind of treatment. Number two, they really do need to stand out in a different way than other levels of employment. So what I've done is I've created a tiered system. I offer three different packages for my clients - bronze, silver, gold - and they each contain different documents. Every package includes a resume, a cover letter and a thank you letter. And then as you move up, you also can get LinkedIn profiles, executive biographies, and other documents that top level executives need. Where I differ probably from a lot of other companies is that not only do I offer those documents in a package, I also offer telephone consultations and a lot of companies offer that, but mine are more in depth. And I really work with the client. I send them questions ahead of time so that they're prepared for the call so that they can gather their information together for when we discuss it. And most importantly, what I offer is, I guess you could call it 'white glove' treatment. I'm there for them. When they have a question, they can call me. If they want to send me an email, I'm going to respond to that. My turnaround time is much faster than most other companies. A lot of companies I see, their turnaround time for the resume is 7 to 10 days. Mine is 3 to 5 business days. And probably a key factor is they work with me. A lot of the larger companies, they hire consultants and subcontractors to do the work. When these clients come to me, I am the only person in the company they deal with. I do the writing. I do the intake. I do the edits. It's all me.

Tony:

Greg, this is very interesting. Now I'm looking at the high calibre person, the executive, and I'm kind of assuming that role. I've been a vice president of Sales and Marketing many, many years ago. I've been in corporate America for a long time. And when you get up that way, you have to think a lot of yourself because you were up there, you've made it, you've climbed up that ladder. And so I'm going to take that position here and ask you a question. You've answered part of it already, but we can drill down into it a little bit. Here I am. I'm going to apply for a very key job as a VP somewhere. I'm good. I think I'm good. I know I'm good. I believe I can get that job. And I know I can write, and I know I'm executive calibre. So why do I need your help to write it? What's the difference, please?

Greg:

I always hesitate before I answer this question because it's something where you need to be delicate, but also firm, I guess would be the word. Many, many, many people think they can write and they might be able to write a report. They might be able to write an email. They might be able to write a summary of a project or a whole bunch of other things. Very few people can write a good resume. It requires a different type of English. We use a lot of incomplete sentences, and we don't necessarily start sentences the same way as other documents would. And the reason for that is when someone's reading the resume - and I don't care what level you're at - the first time they read that resume, they're skimming it. If you look online, you can see all sorts of statistics about that. A resume the first time it's read, the person is usually going to take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to look at that resume, which means they're going to get about three quarters of the way down the first page. Your choice of words, your placement of sentences, the way the spacing is set up, all sorts of different factors go into this. Within that 30 to 60 seconds, that document has to not only capture someone's attention, but deliver enough pertinent information so that that person wants to call you up on the phone and say let's interview you. And that's not as easy as it sounds. And that's why there are a couple of organizations out there that do these resume certification programs, because people like me that come from different backgrounds, we don't necessarily know how to write a resume. We know how to write, but it's different. Just like if you write for a magazine, it's different than writing for a medical textbook. It's different than writing for a fiction novel. It's different than writing for any type of industry. They all have their own formats that they use. You've heard of the Chicago manual of style, the AP style, very different types of English. So that's a key part of it. And the other part is knowing what information to put into the resume. A lot of people know how to write and what they do is they sit down and they write and they write and they write, and you end up with a three, four page resume filled with information that's not necessary. All it's doing is hiding the important facts, or you have people that think they need to be so brief that, oh, my experience, we need a one page resume. Then they end up cutting out 90% of the important facts that would get them the job. So there's a lot more that goes into this than just taking someone's information and putting it into the right format.

Tony:

Totally with you on that, Greg and it's changed so much. Years ago, I would be able to look up how to do resumes and look at styles and formats, make a resume, submit it for a job, and 100% of the time I got the job. Now that was years and years ago. Now fast forward to before I started podcasting, I thought, I want to go back into corporate maybe, and I again did the same drill and I went and I looked for some choice positions that I knew I was overqualified for and I did the same thing. I put together some resumes on my own and submitted them. And guess what, Greg?

Greg:

You heard nothing.

Tony:

100%, no, nothing. 100%. I used to always get to juggle so I was even being careful. I'm only going to apply for two or three places, cause I know they're all gonna say yes. None of them did and it took me awhile, and I learned computers look at these things. Not even people anymore, it's computers. You got to know your words, you got to know all sorts of stuff. So please tell us about the changes and how your resumes adapt and take into consideration, take into account all those changes.

Greg:

It's funny because when you say computers, it's actually more than just the wording of the resume that comes into play there with the new systems. Human resources, offices use what are called applicant tracking systems. It's just basically a fancy way of saying a database. A resume comes in and it comes in through email or somebody cuts and pastes it into the job box on a company's website, and it gets stored in a database. Now let's say they need to fill the position of Vice President of Marketing. Human resources person goes into the database and they type in Vice President of Marketing. Every resume with those words in it comes up. So obviously that's a keyword that you want in your resume if you're applying for that type of role. But what if you've never been the Vice President of Marketing anywhere? What if you were the Director of Marketing? You might not come up in that search. Or if you were the Vice President of Marketing and this company calls it the Executive Marketing Officer or the Sales and Marketing Program Manager. You know that every company has different terms for similar positions. So there's more than just one keyword or set of keywords that have to be worked into the resumes to help you come up in those searches. The more keywords you have in your resume, the better the odds of popping up in that database.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about million dollar resumes with Greg Faherty. But first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. We're making it easier to listen to the Voice America Talk Radio Network live, wherever you go on iPhone, Blackberry or Android. Download it from the Apple iTunes App Store, Blackberry App World or Android market.

Tony:

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Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show, where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about million dollar resumes with Greg Faherty. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. All right. And now back to the chat with Greg.

Greg:

And then format comes into play as well. You said you've written a lot of resumes. You were in the corporate world. So you've probably also seen a lot of resumes. Do you recall seeing or writing a resume that maybe had a lot of fancy graphics on it and tables and charts and things that were outlined and underlined and all that.

Tony:

I've hired a lot of people and usually it was a cover letter, two pages max, and then sometimes some testimonials or references and things like that. Nothing about tables and graphs. Greg, what are you talking about? Do people want that when you apply for a job these days?

Greg:

No, that's just it. I see a lot of resumes come out that have those graphics in them, or maybe they use sections to separate parts of the resume, or tables or columns. What happens when that resume goes into a database and it becomes a digital file is that the system can't read those types of resumes. If you send somebody a PDF file as opposed to a word document, many HR databases cannot read a PDF file properly. So what happens is you send these resumes in that aren't in the format that the databases prefer and you don't come up in those searches.

Tony:

Greg, this is some very valuable Intel for anyone out there in the audience looking to do a resume. This is really good stuff here. Now we've talked a little bit about mistakes and I've told you a little bit about my history and the world has changed on this. Could you give us some of the common mistakes that people make when they are preparing their resumes?

Greg:

Sure. Number one right off the bat is not proofreading the resume. I see, cause part of my process is people send me resumes and I evaluate them, I analyze them and then I tell them what we can do to improve that resume. So I see and I keep track of a lot of these issues that you see with resumes, and proofreading is number one. I can't tell you how many times a week I see resumes come to me where people have spelled their own email wrong, or their own telephone number wrong, or the name of their company wrong or the name of their job title wrong. If a HR person sees that or a hiring manager sees that, their automatic instinct is going to be, we're never hiring this person. Because if you're not taking the time to send out a resume that doesn't have mistakes in it, what does that say about the kind of job you're going to do for the company? So right off the bat, proofreading, typos, grammatical errors, spelling errors. That's THE number one problem with resumes today.

Tony:

And you know what, Greg? To go back to something you mentioned before where you said it was the most sensitive question you could ever answer and you danced on it so politely about the spelling ability and the literacy level of people, which we all think we're really good and that's why we're applying for the job. But it's just amazing what we think is good. Some of us, we don't realize that our spelling, our vocabulary, our nomenclature, how we spell things. I see so many titles in just emails coming to me, it's just astounding. And while some people think, oh yeah, well I can spell. I can read. I beg to differ because it's more of an issue. For example, when people come to apply and say, Hey, I'd love to be a guest on your show. They fill out a form. And one of the things is that there's a little list of you have a quiet room, have a headset, have a microphone. There's just some simple things, and I hate to say, but too many times it's not done because it's not read. It's glanced, it's skimmed. I think this is a skim society where people just glance and skim. So to have a resume really thoroughly done and have it give it that really good once-over hey for again, for a job that's going to make you six digits or close to six digits, or the future of making six digits or even seven digits, it's all too worth having a really good resume with absolutely not only no typos, but the right keywords, the right proper word. It makes all the difference. I mean, again, I'm astounded. I was overqualified for these jobs and they didn't hire me. It was crazy, and I'm glad because I'm podcasting now and I've really found my purpose and my niche here, but it just goes to show how important it is to have someone do a resume. It's not like the old days.

Greg:

No, it's not. And when you mentioned people today not reading and not writing properly, actually every year the problems get worse and worse, and it's not the education of the clients. These are people that are coming out of nice schools and I see it even more at the executive level. So they have advanced education, sometimes Masters degrees, multiple certifications in their field, that sort of thing. It's more, I hesitate to use the term laziness, but I think it's bad habits that people have gotten into. They're so used to spellcheck, they're so used to writing something and then giving it to their secretary who then fixes everything for them, that when they are doing their own documents, their own resume, their own cover letter, they don't even realize that they have to go back and proofread. They don't realize that they've spelled things wrong. They're just writing it and sending it. And the same thing with instructions. They don't read instructions if it's more than three lines long.

Tony:

And I was going to say on that, Greg, some people believe that they know how to spell a word and I didn't prepare examples, but some words they are not spelled that way. For example, the word Axle. You know, I I have to fix the axle on my Jeep. Most people will spell it A-X-E-L. That's wrong, folks. But you don't know that it's wrong. You think you're right but it's not right. So we'll even think we know the answer. We'll think it, but it turns out not to be right because we had no clue that it really was misspelled.

Greg:

And along the lines of that, the second thing I see is what I call the buzzwords problem. And the buzzwords problem has two parts to it. Number one is industry buzzwords. I don't know what part of the corporate world you were in, but marketing has their own buzzwords. Sales has their own buzzwords. Project management has its own buzz words. Every industry has them. And the thing is you should never ever use them in a resume, especially if they're made upwards. A few years ago for a while, one of the popular buzzwords I was seeing over and over again was 'reviewuate'.

Tony:

What?

Greg:

Yep. It was a combination of evaluate and review. We're going to 'reviewuate' something, and people were putting that in the resume. Another guy, and again this is a couple of years ago, the first words of the summary of his resume and he was going for a CEO or COO role, that type of thing. I am a tiger in the boardroom. Well, really, that sounds great probably when you're at a cocktail party and you're schmoozing with somebody and you're trying to build up some references or something like that, but on a resume? Number one, it says that you have no sense of how to write a business document, and number two, it's wasted words because it actually doesn't tell you anything. I'm a tiger in the boardroom. Does that mean you yell a lot? Does that mean you get angry with people and attack them? Does that mean you're aggressive? Does that mean you're sly and sneaky and moving through the bushes? There's no meaning to it.

Tony:

Oh, I know the meaning to that, Greg. Oh I know the meaning to that. The meaning is don't hire me - unfortunately - because who wants to go work for someone that's going to rip them apart all the time? It's no fun. We like to have fun when we work.

Greg:

Right. So I see a lot of things like that and I have to tell people this document is your marketing tool, your only marketing tool. Everything else is secondary to your resume, and that includes your cover letter, your LinkedIn profile, everything. It all stems from the resume. And sometimes it helps when you say to people, if you were to put together a marketing document, an online ad, a billboard, a business card, whatever it might be, you wouldn't want spelling mistakes on it. You want it to be clean, concise, and get the information across in as few words as possible. And that brings us to the third problem about resumes. People that get very, very wordy. I see it most often with sales people and with technology people. They feel that they have to either explain everything they've ever done, or list every single project they've ever worked on in detail. Sorry. That might be great for an internal document, but for a resume where you're trying to get a job, you need to be concise. And I always tell people remember the old saying - keep it short and simple?

Tony:

Oh yeah, kiss.

Greg:

Kiss applies to your resume and your cover letter, and brevity is sometimes a hard concept to get across to people who aren't naturally like that. They feel like the document is missing something, that it won't be effective. And then I tell them, I said, well, how long have you been using the resume you wrote? Oh, six months, I've got no jobs. So obviously that tells you that what you're doing isn't effective. Let's try it this way. Always go back to the other one if you don't like it, but try and go see if it works. And 99% of the time my clients come back and tell me it worked. You were right.

Tony:

Good job on that. And one of the things that we did not use to do when I was writing resumes back then was including the LinkedIn profile. So this is new to me. Why is that so important today?

Greg:

It gets more and more important every year too. It's amazing. I'm going to say about eight or nine years ago, there was a brief trend with resumes where people were doing online resumes. They were taking their resume and they were getting a little free website and posting their resume there. And you'd hand out a business card to somebody and you could have the link to that resume at the bottom of the business card. Say, Oh, you can go here and look at my resume. Great new tool, the internet. LinkedIn really is the new version of that. It is your resume. Now people say it's a marketing tool, it's a tool for networking and yes, it's all those things. You can find jobs, post jobs, meet people, make all sorts of things.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about million dollar resumes with Greg Faherty, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. Follow us on Twitter at Voice America TRN. Get the low down on guests, new shows and your favourites. That's Voice America TRN It's time to unlock some of the best kept secrets in health, wealth, and happiness. Are you ready to live your life to the fullest and hear insider tips from today's experts? Then tune in to the Forbes Factor with celebrity TV host and inspirational icon, Forbes Riley. She's a bestselling author and TV fitness expert and you know her from QVC and HSN. Now she brings her expert advice and guests to the Voice America Influencers channel. Tune in live every Wednesday at 11:00 AM Pacific time and 2:00 PM Eastern time for the Forbes Factor. We guarantee it will be the best hour of your week. Do you feel you have a bigger life's purpose than you're currently living? Of course, you do. Activate your passion as you tune in to Sovereign Self with host Zofia Rennea Morales. Become the conscious creator of your own life. Connect with your most powerful and purposeful self in order to make big things happen for you now. Zofia and her guests are doing every day, and are sharing how you can step into this power too. Listen to Sovereign Self every Monday at 4:00 PM Pacific time, 7:00 PM Eastern on the Voice America Influencers channel. We're with you wherever Alexa and Google are - at home, in the car, on your smart TV and your connected devices. Hey Alexa! Hey Google! Play my favourite Voice America podcast on Tune In. It's just that easy, but don't forget to make sure you actually mention the name of the podcast show to make it work. You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with special VIP guests. Now back to Tony and his guest.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show, where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about million dollar resumes with Greg Faherty. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Greg Faherty, CPRW earned his certification as a professional resume writer from the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches, the oldest certifying organization in the field. In addition to being a member in good standing of the PARWCC, he's also a member of several writing associations and now back to the chat with Greg.

Greg:

But really the initial purpose and still the main purpose of LinkedIn is that it's your resume online and the only difference is, it's social media, so you don't want to just take your resume and stick it up there like as a picture or a PDF file or anything like that. We rewrite them in a casual conversational tone, but you have to think of it this way. I tell this to my clients all the time when they say I want my resume and my LinkedIn to be very different. You really don't. Because if you apply for a job, you send them your resume and your resume has certain information on it. And the first thing any company does is when they're interested in hiring you, they do a social media search. They search Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. And when they get to your LinkedIn profile, if the information there is different from what's on your resume, they're going to be suspicious about that. How come these two things don't match? And likewise, if somebody is on LinkedIn and they're looking to fill a position, so again, companies can search LinkedIn for applicants to jobs. They can say Vice Presidents of Sales, and people who are interested in those types of positions, who have held those positions will come up in that search. So this is the first time now that that company is seeing your information. Wouldn't you want the same information there for them that's on your resume? You want to attract them and get them to interview you. So the two things have to match. They're not identical. They're written in a different way, but it's different in the same way a resume and a cover letter are different. The style is different. The format is different, but the information's the same because you want to attract the person. And then when they get into that LinkedIn profile, I say, Hey, let's interview this guy. They call you up, they say send me your resume. Again it has to match because if it's different, they're going to want to know why.

Tony:

Good point. And you know, Greg, what about the cover letter? I personally don't think it's important. I'm not hiring anyone folks, so my opinion doesn't count. But if I was hiring, I would just want to see the applicant, are you experienced or good in the area that I'm looking for? I don't need to be schmoozed and told why you're so great for that. But that's me and again, I'm not hiring. I'm not the expert here. So please tell us - is a cover letter really needed these days and why?

Greg:

My answer is yes. And the reasoning is when you read surveys of hiring managers, HR professionals, professional recruiters, about 50% of them will tell you that they don't read the cover letter. So like you, they don't feel it's important. They want to go right to the resume. The other 50% will say, if you don't send in a cover letter, they will not read your resume because it's all about following professional protocol. You're supposed to send that cover letter, and if you don't do that, I guess the term would be you're kind of taking the lazy way. You're skipping a step, and that's going to imply to them that you're going to skip steps and be lazy in your work as well, and 50% of jobs turning you down instantly because you don't have a cover letter. That's a big number, especially when you consider these facts, and this is where I always scare people a little bit. If you write your own resume or if you have a non-professional resume writer write your resume, you'll probably average, depending on your industry, your level of experience and what type of position you're applying for, you may average two to three interviews out of every hundred resumes you send out. If you get a professional to write your resume - me, any one of the other recognized, certified resume writers who are out there who have been doing this for a while, who are good at what they do - you might get 30 to 40 interviews out of every hundred resumes you sent out.

Tony:

Big difference. Amazing! Once again, this is Greg Faherty million dollar resumes. You can find him at www.milliondollarresumes.com. Greg, we have just a couple of minutes here and there are some important questions I want to make sure I get in. What are you looking to accomplish in the next couple of years? What goals do you have your sights set on?

Greg:

My goals I think are to number one, keep my businesses growing and shifting to meet the demands, the changing demands of the industry. Like you were saying before, things are changing rapidly and the resume business has to keep up with that. Over the years I've developed new styles, new formats, offered new services. One of the things that I do now is really pushing the executive profiles and the biographies and the LinkedIn profiles, because they've now become as important as the resumes and again, because they're alternate versions of the resumes. The other thing is I really want to let people know, I want to let the world out there know that I am really doing a lot of work now with federal employees and military employees because we're seeing a lot of people, one of the trends right now is seeing a lot of people leaving the federal government, leaving the military and trying to break into the civilian world, and there's very few resume writers that do that. So I've kind of established a little niche there for myself or a sub niche, and I think that that's something that's going to grow in the next few years. So I'm really studying, I guess you could say, the way that government is changing their requirements for what they want in terms of people going into the federal government, and what the organizations, the companies, the commercial world wants to see of people coming out of the federal government and making that transition into the corporate sector. So one of my goals is to really keep ahead of that trend and, and have an idea of what's going on. For me, company-wise I'm always looking for ways to streamline my workflow. Everybody wants to do things more efficiently. Everybody wants to do things faster. I want to just keep reworking what I do so that I can offer my clients the services they need without putting myself into a hole where I can't keep up with demand. And I guess finally I want what everybody wants, and that's too make a good living at what you do and increase revenue, decrease the time spent on the non-revenue producing things. So I'm sure you have a lot of people that you interview who focus on streamlining workflow, developing better ways to run your business. And as a business owner, that's my goal is to always find a better way to run my business.

Tony:

Great goal. Very good. And lastly, are there any great resources that you would like to share with our audience visionaries?

Greg:

Yes, and I'm going to separate them out into two sort of sections. For people that are looking to get a resume, I always advise my clients. Yes, people come to me, evaluate my resume, give me a price quote, etcetera, etcetera. I'm one person. I'm good at what I do, and I'm not saying that to be bragging. I've just been doing it a long time and I've become good at what I do. I've been doing this for 20 years now, but if I was going to invest a good chunk of my money and this is going to be something that gets me my next job, it's just like anything else. Go out and get a couple of estimates, two or three estimates from different people. So the resource I'm going to say for that is there's a website for the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. It's a long, long word there, but just think PARWCC. Google that. You'll come up with their website and it lists all the certified resume writers from that organization. They're the oldest certifying organization around and I'm part of them state by state, so you can say, Oh, I'm in New York. I'm going to go to the PARWCC site and I'm going to find a bunch of resume writers and I can contact them, get evaluations and price quotes from all of them, and then pick the one that seems to match up with me the best. So that's a great resource for anyone looking to get their resume done. In terms of resources for business, I'm going to say Twitter and it sounds funny, but Twitter and LinkedIn are two great places to learn about the economic environment today and the employment environment today. You can go on and you can link up with Forbes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, all of these different sources of information and each day you can get a little news feed on your phone or your tablet, whatever it might be, and you can create little lists there so you can have only the information that pertains to you. So if you're not interested in finance but you're interested in technology, you link up only with those companies, those sources of news and boom! Every day you can keep up with all these different trends and know what's going on in your industry much faster than reading a newspaper, watching the news or talking to people at work.

Tony:

Thank you for sharing all that, Greg. I hope this helps a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners and executives in our audience. Thank you for all the references. Thank you for the insights. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Really love it, Greg.

Greg:

Great. I'm glad to be on here and getting this information out. It's a great resource in itself.

Tony:

Hey, success squad. Thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took his vision to reality. I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned so much. The insights are so valuable, so how did you like it? Million dollar resume with Greg Faherty. Greg is the quintessential resume writer and he just loves what he does, and he loves helping other people get the job they want. What a perfect match. Helping others do better and succeed is one of the greatest feelings out there and those of you who have this level of purpose know what I mean. It goes beyond money. It really does. Imagine a resume that lands you a job that earns you hundreds of thousands or even millions. That's quite a high quality, high value resume. If you need an exceptional resume to get the job you want, then listen to this interview once again and pay attention to all the details. Greg gives a great answer to the key question of why do we need someone else to write our resume? If you are putting yourself out there to get a key job, I see that it's well worth it to get someone to do a quality and professional resume. I really see the difference here and I hope you do too. It has nothing to do with being able to write. It has everything to do with professionalism that can get you that job interview when there are many people applying. It's worth the investment in yourself, don't you think? I didn't know that most hiring personnel skimmed a resume from 30 seconds to a minute. Did you know that? You may have put hours, even days in your resume and then to only have someone look at it for 30 to 60 seconds. Wow! That burst the bubble. There are sophisticated systems in place that read your resume before real people do, and that means the difference between getting the job or no. I have my own experience with that. The world continues to change on us and there's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? I'd love to know how you use this information to help you out. Reach out to me. Now, grab hold of your vision. Decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with a decision and you can get my vision map to help you along the process. The free eBook is at Tony D-U-R-S-O.com. I created my empire in just a few years. That's all it took. I had the vision map AS my guide. I wrote it up for you, so now you can do it too. And once again, check out all my shows on Spotify, all designed to help you get to the next level in your business or career. Let's help you move on your journey to success, and if you have Apple podcasts, look up my name Tony D-U-R-S-O and subscribe to my show. A kind review there will get you tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks guys. And remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds and join me on the next episode of the Tony deer show. We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 5:00 PM Eastern time, 2:00 PM Pacific time on the Voice America Influencers channel.