Have you ever sat down to write a resumé, attempting to impress the socks off that employer because you know you can, but your pen won’t move on the paper?  Or do you write for hours and end up getting buried in an avalanche of drafts that are not good enough to send?

Look… you wouldn’t be applying for that job if you didn’t see yourself doing it in the first place.  Whether it is a survival job or your dream job, you’re choosing it, and you can do it.  Now it’s just about jumping that hurdle of expressing your fabulous self so they wonder how they ever functioned without you!

A lot of people forget that resumé writing is a conversation. You are talking to a human being.  And you need to sound like a human being.  So why not do just that?

This article talks about how you’ve always had the best strategy for expressing yourself.   And you might even bond with the kiddo over it.   Let's say, for the sake of context, the child is around eight to ten years old.   Even a five-year-old would have a refreshing perspective. 

Give the kiddo a popsicle and tell them about what you do for a living

Well, I mean we need to make them a willing captive audience first, hence the fudgesicle, or organic mandarin popsicle without yellow dye598, or whatever food falls from the sun.  Borrow your siblings’ kid at a family gathering if you don’t have any.  Play with them while they play outside during a family bar-be-que then well before the sliders come off the grill ready to be devoured as everyone and their auntie is getting twelve different versions of potato salad, ask the kid for a favour, and say that it won’t take long.  

You won’t need long.   Kids are ruthlessly straightforward.   And you will learn more from this spitfire exchange than many other conversations you have in your life.  

Get ready to be humbled.  But also get ready to love yourself a little more.  That happens too.

If you think you need to practice before having a conversation with a kid, you might.  It depends on what you’re talking about.  Please let your quizzical captive know that they are not in trouble.  That you just need their help with something that nobody else can help them with.  Ask them if you could tell them about your job or your career.  Tell them in two sentences what it is about.  Tell them how you help people.  And then ask them if they think it’s cool.

And if your sister laughs at you when she overhears her child’s divisive evaluation, at least you know how it sounds when you speak.  You can tell your sister to do the same exercise with the kiddo too.  And then it will be your turn to give non-verbal feedback.

Why a kid, though?

The talking-to-a-kid strategy came about by chance when one of my clients, a well-qualified STEM fielder, could not form a sentence when I asked him the die-hard interview question, “So, tell me about yourself.”

“Explain it to me as if I’m a ten-year-old,” I said.  The client smiled.  And the rest of that session went from being rocky to smooth.   And he was beaming when I wrote his words of expression down on paper and told him that this is exactly what he does.  Because it was.

Kids are simple.  You will need to explain things in simple ways to them.

I ask jobseekers to explain to me what they do for a living as if I’m a ten-year-old not because I think that hiring managers are ten-year-olds, but because if you cannot explain it to a kid, you cannot explain it to anybody.  And the bonus is, if you can talk to a kiddo about what you do, you can talk to anybody.

What this method does is cause you to sidestep the temptation of talking about what you do while sounding like a hyperactive buzzword generator.  Or if you end up staring at me blankly waiting for me to put words into your mouth, then that’s the first problem we need to solve.  And it’s a problem that's surprisingly easier to solve than it sounds.

Explain your jobs to your kids.  Do it.   You’d be surprised about the parts that come out of you that you’re proud of, and you may even figure out how you fuel your continuous drive.  Employers will respond to that.

It is a conversation

I’ve read resumés that sounded like a bunch of… words, yet told me nothing about the person.  It did not entice me to get to know the person to see if they are that missing piece an employer would need for their team.  This person didn’t sound… human, but like a robot who spat out just want they thought I wanted to hear.

But how do you put personality and passion in a resumé when the real estate on the page goes to accomplishments and skills and all of that?  You can put some of those emotional selling points in your cover letter.  But you can make your resumé come alive as well.

Often when I use the talking-to-a-kid strategy with my clients, they usually come back telling me they did well on the interview, and that they continue to express themselves confidently on the job.  And it was all them.  It all started with a conversation anyway.  And here are some of them.  The content is changed to protect confidentiality.  But the context endures.

Sample one: Transcript using the talking-to-a-kid strategy, the electrical engineer.

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Me: “Tell me about your previous job as if I’m a ten-year-old.  I want to hear something impressive.”

Jobseeker1: “I designed a backup plan for the electrical power for half of my home country.”

Me: “Why… is that not on your resumé!?”  We need to stick it up there in neon lights.  I mean under highlights or something…”

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Sample three: Transcript using the talking-to-a-kid strategy, the car salesperson.

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Jobseeker2: “I was the salesperson that families were the happiest with because they liked their cars so much that they hardly returned them and even when they did, it was till years after.  And they brought friends to me to get cars too.”

Me: “I’d say you… ‘provided the best customer satisfaction with families, had the fewest car returns, and many clients referred friends to me.’”

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Sample three: Transcript using the talking-to-a-kid strategy, the corridor maintenance manager.

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Jobseeker3: “I planted trees to prevent mudslides from covering people up on a freeway.”

Me: “Fascinating!  I mean, thank goodness! T ell me more.”

Jobseeker3: “It was an alternative design for soil reinforcement I suggested along a steep freeway corridor.  I got arborists to investigate, made a proposal for implanted trees and it was approved.  It ended up costing them 25% less than the engineering method which saved them around $1.2 million.”

Me: “Yeh, that wasn’t on the resumé you gave me.”

Jobseeker3: “I had it as… ‘Designed corridor soil reinforcement, and created alternatives to designs that saved the company money.”

Me: “So you… ‘saved the organization $1.2 million, 25% less than the original design by facilitating an alternative cross-functional solution, using implanted trees for soil reinforcement instead of the engineering method to prevent mudslides causing deaths along a freeway corridor’… I mean preventing deaths is more important than the money, so we shall rearrange that – but that’s impressive!”

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Sample four: Transcript using the talking-to-a-kid strategy, the global lawyer.

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Jobseeker4: “I get people from different countries who don’t like each other to shake hands.”

Me: “How so?  Put that on your cover letter – or your bio… just as you said it.”

Jobseeker4: “I am an international lawyer.  We draft global trade agreements, and it creates… friendships.  And these affiliations can turn out to be beneficial in many ways for the countries."

Me: “I didn’t even know that option existed. When did you realize you wanted a job like that?”

Jobseeker4: “I don’t know… I used to diffuse fights on the kindergarten playground by sharing my Skittles.”

Me: “… If you don’t put those exact words in your bio, don’t talk to me.”

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As you can see, their first lines are the kickers.  And I translated them into corporate-speak, only when the translation was needed.

How this translates to hiring

The strategy is great for building your resumé’s profile or highlights of qualifications, and experience where you write your accomplishment statements under your jobs.

The talking-to-a-kid strategy shines in getting you to connect with the you that you’re writing about. And helps you connect better with the employer and the teams you will work with.

It can be very difficult to write your resumé because it is always difficult to look in the mirror.  But when you have a simple conversation with someone, like a kid, you might just appreciate that mirror a little bit more, facing the bad and embracing the good.

Kids have a refreshing and polarizing effect on us.  They’re brutally honest and love joy.  If they think you’re cool, you shout that from the rooftops.   If they think you sound boring… you got your work cut out for you in expressing yourself.  And if the kid thinks you’re lying, embellishing just to impress them, chances are the employer will think so too.

Whether or not a kid thinks your career is cool has little to do with your job and more to do with the passion you present.  So, present it. 

Sometimes it is better to simplify things first, rather than whittling them down from over-complicated blurbs of words and buzzwords.  And one of the best ways is to sit down and explain what you do for a living to a kid.  It brings you back to a resumé, and an interview, being a conversation between human beings, a conversation that you like to have a little or a lot more just because a kid that one time thought you were cool.

Notes

This article contains no text pictures to ensure that every word can be read aloud by a text-to-speech application. And was tested using Google Chrome’s “Read Aloud” add-on.

Bio

Tiffany Persaud is a freelance writer and resumé writer who has helped dozens of people find jobs they like during the pandemic and coming out of it.

Resources

Try the talking-to-a-kid strategy on for size and book me to help with translation to corporate-speak.   Want to land more interviews with your resumé?  Book me for more information.  Rates apply.

References

Benz, Conrad.: "190+ Strong Action Verbs to List on Your Resume".  ResumeGenius.com.  < https://resumegenius.com/blog/resume-help/action-verbs >  Accessed on March 1, 2023.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: “Find A Better Job”.  2016.  Accessed on Nov 22, 2022.