Career Hacking: The Ultimate Job Search Course (Now w/ AI!)

It might seem like the best way to start your job search is to go to a job board and start submitting applications right away. However, by first investing in your career development strategy, finding target job descriptions that represent the kind of career move you want to make, writing a well-designed resume, building your professional profile on professional social networks like LinkedIn, and developing the ability to network with people who can accelerate your job search, you can get where you’re going faster. In this short video, we’re going to dive into this concept through an animated video that presents two adjacent job search scenarios.

Meet Davis Jones from Eazl, your instructor for the Career Hacking course. Davis, was a professional recruiter at Robert Half International, a fortune 500 human resources consulting firm, in the Company’s San Francisco office. In this introduction video, you’ll also learn about the layout of this class, the story behind the class, and how to get the most from your learning experience.

As a student in Eazl’s Career Hacking course, you have access to dozens of resume / CV templates, guides, and professionally-written samples, resources that you can use to boost your LinkedIn profile, and many other resources that you can use to be a more effective job seeker. You can access all of them (or just the career resources that you need right now) in this lecture. It might be a good idea for you to go to your web browser, create a bookmark of this lecture URL, and come back to this lecture for quick access to these resources in the future.

Copywriting for the purposes of writing a resume / CV is specialized. Not only that, but having a well-developed resume can make a big difference on your job search. In this introductory lecture, your instructor, Davis Jones, will introduce you to the subject of business writing for resumes and share the layout of this and the following sections of Eazl’s Career Hacking course with you.

One of the most important things to realize when you build your resume is this: you don't want to be everything to everybody. In other words, you don't want to claim to have a very broad range of skills that apply to many different kinds of jobs and organizations. Recruiters want to know that you have skills for the specific position they are looking to fill. This is why it is important to pick your Big Six Skills™ and talk about them, then continuously refer back to them throughout your resume, LinkedIn® Profile, and cover letter. It is essential that you learn to find your Big Six Skills™ as they pertain to your job search.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).

You are an iceberg. People often sell themselves short when they reflect on skills that they have. The reality is that you need to present your life experiences in a way that helps other professionals understand how their organizations can use your skills and experiences to make progress on their business goals.

If you are a young job seeker and don't have much professional experience, that is okay! For any candidate, finding relevant bullet points is about reflecting back on past experiences (from schooling, part time jobs, projects, athletics, volunteer work, hobbies, and other life experiences) and framing them in a way that makes sense for the Big Six Skills™ that you're presenting.

Some organizations--especially large ones--often use algorithms to process resumes. Usually, these algorithms are built into recruiting platforms (like LinkedIn®, Indeed.com®, Dice®, etc.) that employers use and ATSs (applicant tracking systems). This means that it's important for you to learn about job search SEO (search engine optimization).

If your resume doesn't have the right buzzwords, language, or key words in the copy, then it may not even make it in front of a real human being. In order to get past the robots, use our Step By Step Guide to the A.R.P. in order to keyword optimize your resume and LinkedIn® profile.

Business writing can be difficult. Copywriting for something like a resume can be even more difficult. In this lecture, you will learn how to phrase your experiences on your resume so that they make an impact. You will also learn grammatical patterns (for example, using the progressive tense) that will make your resume and the text in other job search materials you create (like your cover letter and LinkedIn summary) feel more energetic and attractive to the people who read them.

Business writing for your job search is about using brands, quantities, and details. When your copywriting strategy includes these components, your resume and the text on your LinkedIn® profile will help you build trust with readers, and that's crucial! Here, you'll learn how to think about each bullet point and use Eazl's supplementary tools to develop high-quality copy for your LinkedIn® profile and resume.

Whether you are or an executive, a programmer, or an entry-level professional, your executive summary is often the first thing that a recruiter or hiring manager will read about you. It is essential that you know how the executive summary of your resume / CV fits into your overall personal brand (Eazl likes to think of this as your “professional brand”) and to your overall job search strategy. In this lecture, you will learn how to use the Eazl resume template and how to write your executive summary.

In this lecture, we will “bust some myths” about resumes and resume writing. By redirecting mental energy that might have been directed towards these topics, you can better-focus your career development efforts and, instead, focus on resume design and on developing your resume writing skills.

In this lecture, you will learn how to avoid some common mistakes that people make when they are first joining the workforce. You will learn how to avoid looking unprofessional and downgrading your candidate profile in the eyes of a recruiter or hiring manager. Let’s make sure that you are managing your professional brand... professionally.

After your instructor, Davis Jones, did his Masters of Business Administration (MBA), he had a difficult time finding a job. You are going to hear the story behind the resume that you are about to create and also learn about the layout of this section, where you will actually “put pen to paper” and write a draft of your resume.

Inside this text lecture, you will find more than 50 professionally written resume / CV samples and be able to choose from multiple Eazl resume templates. Each of the templates provided is custom built for a different job seeker persona. So, if you are a student, make sure to grab the template for students or recent graduates and if you are an experienced professional, make sure to grab that template instead.

You are encouraged to use the Google Docs template, however you can absolutely use Microsoft Word or another word processing software if you'd prefer to.

Inside this resume writing tutorial, you will watch your instructor use target job descriptions as the basis for reverse engineering a real candidate's Big Six Skills™. This is a very important skill for you to have. It will serve you well to be able to look at the kind of job role you are targeting, reverse engineer the skills required for the role, introduce your own, unique skills that are relevant for that role, and mix all of that together to develop six skills around which your job search strategy will be based.

Whether you worked (or had an internship, or did freelance or contract work for) a nonprofit, a publicly traded company, a small business, or a startup, the way that you describe the organization matters. Fundamentally, every organization has stakeholders. Whether they are vendors, participants in a supply chain, clients, or employees, this information, when included on your resume, helps you bring the organization to life. It “makes the invisible visible“ to the reader. In this guided tutorial, you will learn how to bring the organizations from your past to life on your resume.

In this lecture, you’re going to watch your instructor craft copy for a resume / CV. Fundamentally, you break each professional experience listed on your resume (whether the experience is for a project, a contract role, a full-time role, or an internship) into parts. These parts should align with your Big Six Skills™, and each bullet point needs to be compelling and rich with details. You will see how this is done inside.

Under each organization you list in your resume (and, if you have been promoted, more than once) it will be necessary to describe the basic functions that you performed in your job role at that organization. In this lecture, you’ll watch your instructor describe the job that somebody did--at a high level--in a role that they list on their resume.

Under each organization you list in your resume (and, if you have been promoted, more than once) it will be necessary to describe the basic functions that you performed in your job role at that organization. In this lecture, you’ll watch your instructor describe the job that somebody did--at a high level--in a role that they list on their resume.

The education section of your resume / CV is increasingly important. As professionals engage in continual education and re-education engagements throughout their careers, this part of your resume will be used to demonstrate your foundational education experiences and also those learning experiences that qualify you for roles that require more specialized education. You will watch how your instructor uses the format of the Eazl template so that it is easier for you to customize the education section of your resume.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).

In this section, you will see how your instructor uses a job seeker’s experience with an on-campus position (for example, supporting a professor on a research project, working a job associated with an educational institution, etc.) to demonstrate that the candidate has a skill required for a certain job. This lecture is especially important for current students (at both the Bachelor’s and Master’s level) and for people transitioning out of academia and into the private sector.

In this lecture, you’ll see a guided tutorial where your Career Hacking™ instructor develops an executive summary on a candidate’s resume. The resume / CV template provided by Eazl has a detailed description for your executive summary that includes guide words. You will see how it is used so that it is easier for you to use it when you write your own resume.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).

This lecture is especially important for international students and non-native English speakers who are looking to work for organizations that conduct business primarily in English. It is also applicable for you if you are a native English speaker who is applying to an organization that does work in a language that is not your native tongue. You will also learn how to emphasize your knowledge of important software packages that, by highlighting them, might enable you to get preference over other candidates in the eyes of a recruiter or hiring manager.

People who specialize in computer science, commonly called “programmers” or “developers,” have a special opportunity. Because much of the work that you do (if you are reading this, assumedly you are a developer) lives in the digital world, it is much easier to prove your skills then it is for someone whose work cannot be viewed in the digital world. So, in this optional video that lives on the Eazl YouTube channel, you have the opportunity to learn how one technical recruiter suggest you use profiles that are unique to programmers and developers to create a more effective resume.

In recent years, LinkedIn has purchased a number of artificial intelligence / machine learning companies. LinkedIn itself has also been acquired by Microsoft. Clearly, LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly important social network for professionals and a hub for recruiters worldwide. More than that, LinkedIn is becoming rich with algorithmic technologies, artificially-intelligent software programs, and technology solutions tailored to the needs of employers and hiring managers. In this introductory video, your instructor will share the layout of the LinkedIn section of Career Hacking™ and introduce you to some of these foundational concepts.

Visual learners abound in the world. In fact, some social scientists say that humans are best-adapted to using images to learn. In this lecture, you will learn why it is so important that your professional brand speaks using visual assets (like videos, Slideshare or PowerPoint presentations, images, etc.) in addition to assets that are primarily text (like your resume). You are also going to learn strategies for finding these visual assets and how to strategically align them with your Big Six Skills™ on your LinkedIn profile at the conceptual level.

In this lecture, you are going to learn how to enhance the delivery of your personal brand (at Eazl, we like to think of this as your “professional brand“).

These are sources of visual assets that reinforce your professional positioning:

• Assets gathered from a past employer’s website or social profiles (for example, promotional media used or images of an office or campus).

• Assets gathered from the websites or social profiles of the partners, clients, or vendors of a previous employer.

• Photos of you with clients, vendors, or teammates.

• Images of awards you received related to your past work.

Photos of academic achievements (e.g degrees). Most useful for students.

Note: Some students have asked whether or not it's legal to use images found on an employer's website or social media accounts on their LinkedIn® profiles. You'll find a link that answers that question in the resources associated with this lecture.

Now, we want your professional brand (or, some people think of this as a "personal brand") with your target job descriptions... visually! Here's a basic process to follow

• What’s the job title you’re targeting? Examples: “Web Developer”, “Sales Leader”, “Controller”, or “Data Scientist”

• Gather assets related to that job title. Common sources include:

  • Any visual evidence that you’ve performed a similar task in the past. This could include visual evidence from past employers, side projects, or experiences related to student life.

  • Media related to professional or academic leaders in this field.

Hint: Boolean searching can help accelerate your searches in this area. Refer to the course resources on this topic.

Let's think of your professional brand's unique personal edge like this:If you were given three hours to watch TED Talks on some topic related to innovation, society, and the future of work, what would that topic be?
Examples: artificial intelligence, sustainability, artful design, etc.

Now, gather up to two visual assets on this topic (examples: a link to a TED Talk on YouTube, a presentation on SlideShare, an academic paper on the topic, or a GitHub repository that represents the cutting edge of this topic).

There are many misconceptions around professional headshots (some people would recognize these as the profile photos for social networking sites like LinkedIn or GitHub). Unfortunately, many people think that a headshot needs to be centered around physical appearance. That is not what is shown by the research. In this lecture, you will learn how to approach your professional photos on websites like LinkedIn.

Today, almost everyone has a very high-quality camera in their pocket. So, in this lecture, you will learn some tricks for taking your own high-quality professional headshot. After watching this lecture, you might want to work with a friend and upgrade your headshot on professional networking sites like LinkedIn.

When somebody sees your LinkedIn profile (whether they see it in a LinkedIn post, a snippet of your profile URL on a search engine, or on your profile page) your headline will be featured prominently. In this lecture, you will learn how to optimize your headline so that it is doing important work for you.

In this lecture, you will learn how to write a LinkedIn summary that advances your job search. Make sure to download the Guide to LinkedIn Summaries in the resources section of this lecture, as it is one of the most important resources Eazl offers as a part of your Career Hacking™ learning experience.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).

Your LinkedIn profile headline is extremely useful and important. First, it signals whether your LinkedIn profile is relevant to recruiters involved in IT recruiting vs. those involved in non-technical recruiting vs. people interested in hiring freelancers. Second, it is searchable, so, when you intelligently apply technical writing skills to your LinkedIn profile headline, you can improve the searchability of your LinkedIn profile--which is important, because social recruiting is an increasingly-common way of hiring employees.

Personal branding (at Eazl, we like to think of this in terms of “professional branding”) is top-of-mind for many people on the job search. Whether you’re trying to work from home, apply for remote work positions, or find a job in coding, your LinkedIn profile is the channel through which your personal brand is most-frequently delivered to people involved in recruiting. In this lecture, you’re going to learn how to design a few core elements of your LinkedIn profile.

Because you’ve already spent time on resume writing / CV writing for this job search, you can now leverage this work on your LinkedIn profile. In this tutorial, you’re going to see how your instructor helps you use your resume writing skills to attract recruiters engaged in social recruiting on LinkedIn (and enables you to make your LinkedIn profile more searchable) by converting your cv / resume text into copy that you can use on your LinkedIn profile.

Also, remember that visual communication is an effective personal branding (or “professional branding”) method. For example, if you see a candidate with a video about java (the programming language), you’re going to assume that this person is interested in coding. If you’re involved in IT recruiting, that might mean that you’ve found a good candidate. So, in this tutorial, you’re going to learn how visual assets be used to help you with you personal branding / career development (especially via your previous work experience) and, ultimately, help you find a job.

Please note that there's an additional link in associated with this lecture that will show you how to handle a career gap on your LinkedIn® profile.

Professionals who are hiring employees, hiring freelancers, or hiring developers on LinkedIn will almost always look at the education section of your LinkedIn profile. It’s also important to note that the research shows they’re often comparing what they’ve seen on your cv / resume with what they’re seeing on your LinkedIn profile. This is why social recruiting has become such a common way of recruiting. So, in this lecture, you’ll see how to optimize your education section (including how you include a certification or other non-traditional form of education).

Now, we want to round out an important part of your personal brand--the skills listed on your LinkedIn profile. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate your Big Six Skills with your LinkedIn profile, which will increase your appeal to recruiters and hiring managers, and also make your LinkedIn profile more searchable.

Increasingly, online course certificates and licenses are important for candidates. Especially if you're a freelancer, developer, or  someone making a career change, both hiring managers and LinkedIn's own algorithms will consider this part of your profile. This is an important part of the platform, which is why social recruiting has become such a common way of recruiting. So, in this lecture, you’ll see how to optimize your certificates and licenses section.

For many of us, this career change opportunity is about making a change. Getting a promotion. Switching to a new field. Moving to a new place. In order to reduce the risk associated with this change (in the mind of a recruiter, for example), you can use projects to show someone that you're basically "already there." We'll look at that in this lecture.

Your cover letter can be an important tool in your successful job search. However, it’s important that you leverage specific writing skills here, because people who are hiring employees don’t want to read irrelevant / unprofessional details on your cover letter. In this lecture, you’ll get introduced to the cover letter section of the Career Hacking™ course.

Eazl has created more than a dozen cover letter resources for you as a part of the Career Hacking™ program. You can find all of those cover letter resources in this text lecture.

If you’re making a career change, looking for remote work / work from home jobs, or having a specific resume design challenge, you might feel like you’re facing a unique career development challenge. In this lecture, you’re going to learn how to address a unique career development challenge on your cover letter. You should also remember the concepts in this lecture when you have a job interview and you want to confidently address this career development challenge with a hiring manager.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).

Your cover letter requires you to develop and use a specific writing skills. You need to blend technical writing, persuasive writing, and resume writing skills on your cover letter. In this lecture, you’ll also learn how to design your cover letter in a way that you can customize it for the many organizations you’re likely to encounter on your job search.

When you’re on the job search, your soft skills, communication skills, and social skills will come in handy. Learning how to “read your audience” and blend into the culture of an organization is an important skill (in general), a helpful skill to leverage on your cover letter, and one of the interviewing skills you’ll want to develop. In this lecture, you’ll learn how to research the culture of an organization so that you have the foundational concepts required to practice this important soft skill on your job search.

In this guided tutorial, you’ll work with your Career Hacking™ instructor, Davis Jones, to write your cover letter. Hopefully, this will help you develop the unique blend of resume writing, technical writing, and personal branding communication skills you need to leverage when you write your cover letter. After you watch this video, try your own hand at writing your cover letter!

Many candidates only know the job search from the candidate side of things. After all, only a small percentage of professionals make money by recruiting for a living. However, it helps you to know what the “other side” is thinking. For example, if you’re interested in getting a coding job, how does someone who’s hiring developers approach their job? In this lecture, you’re going to learn how a standard recruiting workflow works. You can apply this knowledge to your interviewing skills, particularly, by converting it into actionable social skills /soft skills that you use when communicating with hiring managers and prospective employers.

So you’ve spent all this time on resume writing / cv writing and resume design. Who’s going to read your resume? It’s important that you know who the first touchpoint is in a team engaged in hiring people. In this lecture, you’ll start seeing why the technical writing skills (as they apply to your resume) that you developed earlier in the course really start to matter for your career development.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).

An entire industry exists around hiring people. There are people who specialize in hiring freelancers. People who specialize in hiring developers. People who specialize in hiring accountants. These people are often called “contract recruiters,” “headhunters,” or “staffing agents,” depending on the context--and they can help you find a job. However, when you interview with them, it’s not like a traditional job interview. So, in this lecture, you’ll learn how to work with people involved in this kind of recruiting.

When we think about companies, we tend to think of the big names. Google. Amazon. However, there are often great opportunities with companies that are large, but not massive. In this lecture, you’re going to learn about the role that small and medium-sized businesses (sometimes called SMEs) can play in your career development.

You probably know that many of the best career development opportunities are never publicly available. In this lecture, you’re going to get some data that will prove to you that developing your professional networking skills and leveraging your social skills in the context of a job search can help you crack open hidden career development opportunities.

Here's one "hidden job market hack" sent in by David Williamson, one of your fellow Career Hackers:

"I'm in warehousing, and lots of companies don't post their higher-level positions on job boards, however they do post for things like forklift drivers and other general laborer positions. That can be a great way to find family run or other small/medium sized companies etc that you've never heard of and then reach out directly from there."

If you want to find a job that you love, you might have to change your approach a bit. Often times, the best opportunities become available to people who apply an entrepreneur’s mindset to their job search. Also, many people engaged in a job search today would prefer harder-to-find situations. For example, maybe you want to work from home? Maybe you want to make a career change into something more lucrative? These hard-to-find career development situations will be more accessible to you if you leverage outside-the-box approaches to your quest to find a job. In this lecture, your Career Hacking™ instructor, Davis Jones, will introduce the section on integrating technology and professional networking into your job search.

In these Voices from the Field lectures in your Career Hacking™ course, you'll get perspectives on key career management issues from experts with a variety of backgrounds related to career support. Here are a few short introductions on each of them:

• Daniel Kimble is an executive coach based in Silicon Valley who also hosts the Unshakeable Influence Podcast.

• Spencer Hamilton and Sandra Richez are members of the leadership team at the EDHEC Business School Global MBA program.

• Carlos Miguel Alves Pereira is a career coach and recruiter specializing in Brazil's finance sector.

• Ibrahim Hasan was formerly the head of career services for Remington College, a technical college in Mobile, Alabama.

• Nick Livingston is a rockstar technical recruiter and one of the founders of Honeit Recruiting Software.

Eazl chooses to introduce you to Job Search CRM (CRM stands for “customer relationship management”) as part of your Career Hacking™ learning experience so that your candidate profile can, potentially, appear at the right time to the right person--someone who’s hiring people like you at that moment. You might not realize it, but recruiters (who are constantly hiring employees) might have a need for someone exactly like you… next week. In this lecture, you’ll learn what Job Search CRM is and how you can convert this knowledge into actionable communication skills / technology skills that help you find a job.

When you master the ability to keep in touch with a wide network of relevant professionals, you’re employing social skills that can translate into career development opportunities and, ultimately, more rewarding work. In this lecture, you’re going to go through the process of setting up your CRM system. In addition to using tools like Podio, Davis has built a Google Spreadsheet with some custom code that powers an automated follow up reminder system. You can use this new Career Hacking™ Hub to manage your job search CRM. It's free and easy to use.

It might seem like a distant connection, but your ability to use search engines (not at a basic level, but at an advanced level) is critical to your career development. That’s because, in a world where there are databases with more than a million jobs currently listed, you need to be able to find a job opportunity that suits your specific situation. In this lecture, you’re going to learn what Boolean search operators are and how they will help you find a job.

In this short tutorial, Davis Jones, your Career Hacking™ instructor, will relay a hack that was shared by a Career Hacking™ student and builds on your new Boolean search skills.

Professional networking is seen as a huge challenge for people looking for career development opportunities. So, in this lecture, you’re going to learn about CCMM--a process that we teach Career Hacking™ students to help them develop communication skills, social skills, and soft skills. These skills will be useful to you when you’re looking to find a job and for your general career development.

Note: The guide found in this resources section is a re-posting of the CCMM guide found attached to the Job Search CRM module.

In this lecture, you’re going to work with your Career Hacking™ instructor, Davis Jones, on your professional networking skills. These are important soft skills / social skills for your to develop, and we’re going to focus on using your LinkedIn profile as the basis for applying your new professional networking skills.

Social recruiting is a big thing, right? So why can’t you leverage some of the same technologies to help you with a career change or a job search? You can. In this short tutorial, Davis Jones, your Career Hacking™ instructor, will take you through the process of researching organizations on LinkedIn. You can also use this technique to gather information about an organization prior to a job interview. That way, when you’re in the job interview, you appear to be well-informed about the organization. It’s sort of a roundabout way of appearing more confident and displaying your communication skills.

You can use this AI prompt with ChatGPT or Claude (both generative AI models offer nice free tiers). You can also use this with Meta's Llama and Google's AI models (for example, PaLM and Gemini) through the Eazl AI app (account required).

Eazl typically recommends using ChatGPT's generative AI models as the first choice and, for longer prompts, Claude from Anthropic (available at claude.ai).