The HR Life Podcast

Tony Benjamin (00:09.611)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting, and Stephen Bigdeel Smith, who is so influential that when he showed up to the finale of stranger things at the theater, he was asked if he still had his pink Jeep. Hey, Steve.

Steve-o (00:39.85)
Wow, I was at the finale at the theater and yes we did have a pink G.

Tony Benjamin (00:44.209)
That's right. You went in the pink Jeep. that's cool.

Steve-o (00:48.278)
Of course we did. My daughter loves that thing whenever she can take it out and, and I don't know, show it off or whatever she wants to call it. But yeah.

Tony Benjamin (00:58.011)
For those of you, do you want to spill where the pink Jeep comes from just to remind some people who haven't heard that story before?

Steve-o (01:03.864)
So my daughter always wanted a Jeep and all we could find was a white one. And so for her birthday, we got it wrapped in, it's almost like a pink sparkle. I don't even know how to describe it. It's like a pink sparkle, but it's very pink. so now here's the funny thing. So she works at Dutch Bros. So if you're familiar with Dutch Bros, she works at Dutch Bros in Payson. So if you're in the Payson area and you want to go drop by, stop by and say, hey,

But she talks to the cops all the time. They always come by. So she knows every police officer in Payson, Salem, Spanish Fork. Like she knows all the officers. And so all the officers, One day she was like going to school and the traffic was really bad and one of these cops pulled her over just for fun. She wasn't even in trouble or anything. He just wanted to say, hey, I recognize you because you have a big Jeep.

Tony Benjamin (01:37.179)
Of she does.

Tony Benjamin (01:42.385)
She's trying to be like you, a big deal. Know everybody.

Tony Benjamin (01:52.571)
That's cool. That's good.

Tony Benjamin (01:59.785)
funny. That's funny. My father had a 66 Chevelle supersport. And the speedometer on it went up to 120. Right. And he can tell you numbers of numbers of times that he just buried the speedometer so long, or so bad that it'd take like 30 seconds after he let off the gas before the speedometer started to come down again. Right. And the cops used to pull him over on the freeway and stuff just to look at the car.

Steve-o (02:01.326)
Steve-o (02:21.901)
Man.

Tony Benjamin (02:26.449)
They would tell him all the time. Well, we had a report this car was a car like this was stolen. We want to look at it, then make him open the hood and everything to look under it and everything. So, yeah.

Steve-o (02:27.607)
What?

Steve-o (02:31.342)
stolen.

my gosh, isn't that funny? Some cops are like that. And you know, it's fun, right? They probably get bored sometimes, especially in Salem here. It's not like there's a whole lot going on around here. Maybe somebody will steal your Christmas tree off the street. don't

Tony Benjamin (02:44.081)
There's nothing to do. There's nothing to do. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (02:51.343)
Yeah, well there you go and all well Steve you may have to report them because you still haven't found your Yoda treat stop topper. So

Steve-o (02:57.742)
Yeah, but that's in that's in a peason. That's it. I'm pretty sure that's in the storage unit some

Tony Benjamin (03:05.231)
Still in the storage unit there. OK, well, everybody, everybody, you're dying to hear this. No, this is not an empty Red Sea episode. This is the episode with the very famous and world's greatest resume writer, Amy Adler.

Steve-o (03:06.744)
No, yeah, we just haven't gone by.

Steve-o (03:22.401)
Yeah.

Steve-o (03:28.664)
And that's an official title.

Tony Benjamin (03:29.069)
Amy, welcome to this. That's right. It's an official title. Amy, welcome to this show.

Amy Adler (03:34.741)
Hi, thank you.

Tony Benjamin (03:36.975)
Steve, hurry and hold up that sign before they jump the rope. they're OK. Yep, OK.

Steve-o (03:41.408)
I dropped my sign, I don't know where it's at.

Hey.

Tony Benjamin (03:46.332)
So that's our live studio audience. And if you're not careful, they rush the stage. If they get too excited about who the guest is, they rush the stage. And we had to be careful that time because it's Amy Adler. Amy, welcome to the show.

Steve-o (04:00.29)
Yes, welcome.

Amy Adler (04:00.652)
Truly thank you. Nice to see you.

Tony Benjamin (04:03.121)
Yeah, we're happy you're here. And I'll just say this is a way to, and we'll let Amy generally introduce herself because that's kind of how we do it. anyway, I first met Amy and we'll see here, Amy and I have not prepped this. So we'll see if we remember when we met the same way. So I first met Amy a long time ago. I was looking for work and I was networking with people.

Steve-o (04:23.246)
Now I'm really intrigued.

Tony Benjamin (04:29.561)
And I think we had a mutual friend who had a job search networking group. And I went there and that's where I met her. And I don't remember the exact initial conversation. But I came away from talking with Amy going, Holy crap. I don't know how to write a resume and I better get this figured out really quick. And, and that was probably after I'd paid a few people to help me with it too. So anyways,

There you go. That's Amy Adler.

Steve-o (04:59.874)
Is that how you remember it, Amy?

Amy Adler (05:02.506)
I do, I remember it exactly that way. I don't remember what you were thinking, because I couldn't possibly have known that. I do remember the job club that our mutual contact was holding. And how much I enjoy... what's a job club? wow. Okay, so a job club is...

Tony Benjamin (05:10.821)
Well, you know.

Steve-o (05:20.59)
Job club, what was the job club? Like what was this? Yeah.

Amy Adler (05:29.034)
a formal or informally led group of job seekers, all striving for the same thing, to figure out how get a job faster, to share stories, to share strategies. I remember that job club so vividly because for me it was formative. I was kind of new-ish to resume writing at that point.

Steve-o (05:35.864)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (05:59.137)
So I was trying to find a community really, not necessarily of job seekers, but of other people in the field. But what actually happened is I used so much of what I learned about how to run a job club.

from that experience, you so much of it that in 2020, when of course we were all sitting, know, staring at CNN, trying to figure out what to do with our lives, right, that I proposed to a colleague of mine.

Steve-o (06:22.862)
twiddling our thumbs.

Amy Adler (06:30.378)
that we do something for our friends out there in LinkedIn land. And we ran a five week program for free at that point. We had other versions of that later, but mostly because I had this powerful feeling of I'm so used to doing this every day and I don't know where my people are or how they're doing and everybody's losing their jobs and I feel terrible. I feel helpless and I feel awful. So I called her up one day and said, Hey, I have this crazy idea.

What do think?

And she loved it. She loved the idea. And we emailed everyone we could. We invited everyone we could. And we ran this thing. It was supposed to be four weeks, but people wanted a fifth, so we did another one. And then ultimately, not this past year, but the year prior at the National Resume Writers Association, she and I presented on how to run a job club. And we had a couple of versions of things by that point. So we had a couple of models to share. But the whole scenario kind of had legs.

Steve-o (07:23.15)
Wow.

Amy Adler (07:30.934)
But on a personal side, I met a whole bunch of people from that initial round. And I am always so honored when people remember my name at all. But it's so honored that Tony has stayed in touch. We have stayed in touch. And that it has led us to this very moment. So I'm incredibly grateful.

Steve-o (07:53.026)
So how long ago was this?

Steve-o (07:57.716)
I know Tony doesn't remember.

Tony Benjamin (07:58.01)
It's been a long time.

Amy Adler (07:59.575)
Maybe 2010, 2011?

Tony Benjamin (08:01.926)
Yeah.

Steve-o (08:02.478)
Okay, it still goes back quite a bit.

Tony Benjamin (08:04.707)
Yeah, it was probably right before 9-11. So yeah, somewhere in there.

Amy Adler (08:10.451)
what?

Steve-o (08:12.174)
Right before 9-11? That's like 2001. I told you, Amy, Tony has no idea.

Tony Benjamin (08:12.849)
Was it? Well, you said, oh, no, I'm sorry. 2001. No, no, no. I don't know what you're talking about. No, I'm sorry. Was it was it that maybe it was eight? No, eight, nine, maybe 10, maybe 20, 10, somewhere in there. OK. OK.

Amy Adler (08:16.027)
I

Amy Adler (08:30.87)
That's what I'm thinking. I'm not sure whether it was 2010 or 2011, but I'm guessing it was right around that. So it's been a while.

Steve-o (08:37.08)
somewhere around there.

Tony Benjamin (08:37.615)
I was trying to think of all the bouts of unemployment I've had over the past. to piece it in which bucket does it fall in. So OK, that makes sense. Well, no, and that was formative for me, too. Matter of fact, I remember one of the best pieces of advice that Amy gave me. And she said, have to remember. And maybe I'm quoting this wrong. So you can forgive me if I misquote this or whatever. She said,

She said, you have to remember that your resume is a visual is a visual piece of design work to not just not just a not just a document of information. It's a visual piece as well. And I've always thought to myself ever since. And I can't remember if you said this to me or this is just how I interpreted it. But right. Like the iPhone ruined it all for everybody. Meaning that everything we see now

is visually designed to attract our eye to certain places and drop it at other places or leave it or accentuate certain things. And, and that's influenced the way I write my resume ever since I really pick and choose where I want people their eye to stop on my resume. So see, she's nodding, I got it sort of right. That's good.

Amy Adler (09:51.704)
Yeah.

That for sure. Yeah, I don't know about the iPhone thing, but I definitely, I couldn't agree more honestly. But in terms of how people digest a resume, it's how do get them to pay attention? Hopefully listeners will forgive me, but I will honestly say this is how I think about it. It's the look here dummy approach. What do you want them to see straight up? We want these folks, these recruiters, these hiring teams to understand

the value of what this person is bringing to the table, but we don't want to make them work very hard to get there. So if we can tell them visually, like by hierarchy and design, look here, this is the important stuff, read here, everything else is gravy, then, and if they do that, the candidate has really captured their heart and mind and visual cortex or whatever else there is. Yeah.

Steve-o (10:28.856)
Mmm.

Steve-o (10:44.814)
You know, that's a really good point. Yeah, that's a really good point because, you know, I run an applicant tracking software and we can actually track, you know, when people are looking at resumes and things like that when they open the records. And at one point, it's been a while since I looked at this data, but a couple of years ago, the average recruiter would only look at a resume for about five to eight seconds. And so you had five to eight seconds to kind of capture that attention.

And if you didn't capture it within those first few seconds, then they would just scroll on to the next one. And that's really important. And so if there are certain things that you want to highlight and you want them to see right away, you probably need to make sure the visual is there so that you can capture their attention so they will continue reading. Otherwise, like I said, they'll just go on to the next one. So like I said, that's been a few years. That was probably 2019, I think, last time I looked at some of that data.

but that was the average back then, it was about around eight seconds was the average.

Amy Adler (11:48.289)
So I think that six seconds or whatever number has been sort of tossed around a lot among resume writers. So I'm glad that there's some foundation for it. But what I think it really means for somebody who's developing a resume or for me if I'm writing one, what do I want the audience to do with that six seconds? Where do I want them to spend the most amount of time, know, greatest proportion of those six seconds so that they can get the things that I want them to know?

Steve-o (11:54.306)
Yeah.

Steve-o (12:08.323)
Yeah.

Amy Adler (12:16.5)
early and again not make them search for it not make it hard for them and what's I'm sure you're have something to say about this Steve but the advent of sort of Canva and templates and not to malign Canva, Canva's great but the the templates that are basically just text boxes any old place on the screen double or triple columns or whatever making it beautiful right these are gorgeous well designed just

Steve-o (12:36.632)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (12:45.442)
delightful to look at, but impossible to scan. So I'm a big fan of let's do what we can with the typical 8.5 by 11 or A4, whatever you're to do, size page and keep it simple so that everybody gets what they need out of the document. Job seekers can easily edit it when they need to.

the ATS can digest this in a meaningful way. And again, that's where I think you're gonna have way more to say than I will. And then anyway, the hiring teams. yeah.

Steve-o (13:15.746)
Well, and you're right. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it has to be readable, but it has to be readable in two ways. One, it has to be readable to the recruiter, but two, it has to be readable to the applicant tracking or AI tools that that system uses to kind of read it and pull data from it to rank it and grade it. So there are two facets to that for sure. So, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (13:34.683)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (13:38.738)
Okay, this is a good time to stop because we're about to go backwards in time and get Amy story so she can fill us in more other than just me praising her and saying how cool she is because she is but before we do that we are going to have everybody Steve do the read today. So we've done this once before but it was one of those magical episodes that disappeared into the ether. So Steve take it away and give us our every today.

Steve-o (13:56.408)
Dun-dun-dun-dun.

Steve-o (14:06.142)
Galaxy far, far away. So running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support in everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture. Need payroll help or recruiting power? We do that too, fractionally and flexibly. No overhead, just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together.

Tony Benjamin (14:33.275)
Very good. Way to go, Steve. Yay for Steve.

Steve-o (14:33.294)
I almost made it elongated, but I thought I better not do that. This is supposed to be like a professional read. We love Becca though at Megastar, so thank you, thank you.

Tony Benjamin (14:44.687)
Yeah. Thank you to Becca for sponsoring the podcast. We really, really appreciate that. OK, so Amy, let's let's go back in time. Let's talk about look. I think that obviously meeting me was a highlight in everyone's life that has ever met me. But having said that, let's talk about this. How how did you get into what you do? How did you like what what?

pushed you into right being a professional resume writer, you know, and doing that and helping people that way. Talk to us about that and how you got to where you are today.

Amy Adler (15:19.05)
Okay, so we're talking about, well, I know your initials are TB, so now we're talking about BT before Tony, right?

Tony Benjamin (15:24.537)
Yeah, that could be that I like that. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, it's it's better than the tuberculosis reference I usually get. So that's that's good way to go. It's all good. Good. Yeah, let's go BT before Tony.

Steve-o (15:25.134)
Wow.

Of course he likes that.

Amy Adler (15:36.212)
that didn't cross my mind.

All right. So, but anyway, seriously, thank you for asking. Thank you for inviting the question. My original career was in editorial management. So a hundred years ago, it seems, I worked for an academic publisher and I was all hands on with the text and everything. So that was always in my brain and my background. was kind of my first professional love. And...

Along the way, subsequent to that, I went to business school because I thought I wanted to change my life. And I say that because at some point, that sort of editorial business thing, there was a sort of intersection that I couldn't get away from editorial, even though I thought I wanted to change my life. So I had a couple of jobs prior to writing resumes. And I was...

I was happily engaged. I don't want to say stuck, but happily engaged in the things that made me really happy. So fast forward to, I want to say like 2008 maybe, 2009.

A friend of mine who was a fabulous salesperson, but not a writer said, hey, I heard you came from a background in something with writing and words. I want to interview for this job and I don't have a really good resume. you help me? So I promise you at that stage, I knew nothing except whatever it took to get me to whatever jobs I had. No formal training, no experience. But...

Amy Adler (17:25.658)
I interviewed her over the phone, because that was of course way before Zoom and things like that. Interviewed her, did what I thought made sense, and she got the interview and then ultimately got the job offer. And I thought, oh, that was cool. That was serendipitous, because this is kind of Tony you and I were speaking earlier. No one ever grows, know, when they're a kid, no one ever says, hey, what do want to be when you grow up? And the kid says, I want to be a resume writer. It just doesn't happen.

Tony Benjamin (17:50.144)
Right.

They often say they want to be Steve, but they never say they want to be a resume writer or an HR. That's very true. Very true. That's

Amy Adler (17:59.457)
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so I had this one experience that was kind of surprising and was obviously to me, very clear to me, a unique mix of what I was experienced in doing and what I was trained to do. And so when I was casting about to find some sort of new phase in my professional trajectory, I...

Steve-o (17:59.476)
even stranger things maybe.

Amy Adler (18:28.488)
applied to a company that was nascent at the time and hiring. I think they had one other resume writer maybe or that person was sort of on their way out. don't remember exactly. And I served all their clients. I wrote a lot of resumes that first year and it was really telling to me how much I enjoyed working with people, learning about them, getting

Tony Benjamin (18:55.025)
That's cool.

Amy Adler (18:57.868)
I want to say getting close to them over time. Certainly some people I've gotten close to in a more personal way, but getting close to their story and learning all about them and figuring out what made them special, what made them great. And then using my skills, initially kind of homegrown, I didn't, like I said, didn't really know what I was doing. But then getting the training and earning multiple certifications and.

kind of getting in the community of resume writers, of which there are plenty of resume writers out there. Maybe not where any individual was in Utah, there weren't really very many people, but nationally. And then as I was talking about earlier, kind of developing a professional reputation to the point where I'm now speaking at the conferences and sharing my expertise, which is loads of fun, having that presence at this stage. So.

Just by way of counting, I guess about 16 and a half years now of doing this. So certainly not as experienced as the elder statesman of the industry, but I think I have lots to say to help sort of the newcomers. it's really great to have that, I don't know, notoriety. Is that the way to say it?

Tony Benjamin (20:17.137)
Well, yeah, no, if people are asking you to speak at their national conference, then obviously you're doing well and people officially like that. So we were joking earlier before we got on here about you being the best resume writer in the whole world. And you actually have a plaque that says that. So that's pretty cool.

Amy Adler (20:36.962)
Sort of. So I do. I do have a certificate here on my wall. There's a competition that's held every year called the Tory Competition, the toast of the resume industry and it's sponsored by Career Directors International. And in fact, in 20, what did I say, 2012, I, so by the numbers, I hadn't been writing resumes all that long, but I, and I had entered the competition to no,

claim whatsoever by that point.

but I had a lot of support in the form of the person that I had been working with. But this was on my own, so of course I couldn't submit her stuff and stuff for her company. So I completely had no idea what was about to take place. So I submitted this resume for what is kind of unofficially thought to be the hardest category, which is the executive resume category. There's a bunch. I think there's like seven or eight, maybe nine different categories.

Tony Benjamin (21:16.721)
Right, right.

Amy Adler (21:36.387)
And the person who runs Career Directors International, and I had done plenty of work with her. So for the fact that she called me wasn't so surprising, but she called me up and said, have you seen your email? And I said, what are you talking about? know, like, did I miss something? I working on something? what, you know, I'm volunteering to help her out. And she's like, check your email. And I don't know, within a few minutes, I guess, the, the mass email went out and

Tony Benjamin (21:50.447)
Of course not, I never checked.

All right.

Amy Adler (22:05.426)
it turned out I had placed first in the executive resume writing category. So there was nobody more surprised than I. Yeah. So for like one minute I was, I was number one and I have learned so much from the people who came before and I continue to learn from the winners.

Tony Benjamin (22:14.351)
That's a cool story though, that's awesome. Yeah.

Steve-o (22:15.798)
That is cool.

Amy Adler (22:29.876)
year after year because I've had the privilege of judging in the competition in many, many years since. So not entering, you can't do both. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (22:35.409)
Do you hear how humble she is, Steve? Do you hear how humble she is about that? So like I was the number one best thing at one thing once in my life, and I've ridden that wave a long time. I don't let anyone forget that for a while I was the best college debater in the country, so I don't let anyone forget about that. But there you go. See you hang on to those things. But you, Amy, are very humble. Wow, that was sweet.

Steve-o (22:38.572)
I know, being a judge and everything.

Steve-o (22:53.966)
you

Amy Adler (22:55.199)
Wow.

Steve-o (23:03.762)
That's kind of cool so two things that I kind of took from that. So first and foremost, you are absolutely right. When you sit down and you're writing resumes for people, that can be a very intimate journey because you are digging deep into who they are, what they are, what they're looking for, why they're looking for it. And I think that's so important to to allow them to tell that story so that you can, in essence, put it on paper.

Tony Benjamin (23:05.498)
It is.

Steve-o (23:32.206)
and make it available for recruiters and HR professionals and business owners and all the people out there that are looking for resume. And the second thing is, is I had no idea that there were competitions out there for resume writing, much less conferences. That's crazy to think about, but it makes sense. Cause you know what's funny is in 2009, I had to let a whole bunch of people go. In fact, I wrote a poem on LinkedIn that I posted.

Just over the holiday season as a reminder of this experience with laying people off I had to lay a whole bunch of people off and then laid myself off But when that happened everybody started coming to me for help and so I actually created a website called free resume tips net and I think it's still up because I haven't looked at it in years but but I created the website basically to say look go read the tips first and Then I can help you with resume, but I had no idea how to write a resume I just wanted to help them and give them some tips and pointers

And that's all I could do at the time was just say, hey, go check this out. And then if you have questions, let me know. And so a lot of them just got what they needed from that. But yeah, knowing that there are people out there that have actually professionally made this their profession, that's pretty awesome. Much less that there's competitions and things like that. That's pretty cool.

Amy Adler (24:48.512)
Yeah, that one is not the only competition now. There other ones, all very respected, but it's loads of fun. It's terrifying to enter. Being a judge is hard.

Steve-o (25:02.104)
So what do you judge on? I'm just really curious. Like when you sit down, I assume there's a rubric of some sort that you go through. So when you're judging resumes, what are some of the things that you're actually looking at to determine if this is a good writer?

Amy Adler (25:16.194)
Well, that's the thing is I'd say probably 98 % of the time they're all good writers. People don't enter this lightly, right? This takes some preparation. I think I look for consistency. So, well, I mean, I talk about this all day. don't know necessarily where we're heading, but the idea is that...

Steve-o (25:21.91)
Of course.

Tony Benjamin (25:40.217)
It is now so.

Amy Adler (25:40.611)
Here we are. It has to be consistent. text has to be, the textual presentation has to be consistent and adhere to the best practices of resume writing. literally do all the bullets start with a verb because that is a best practice.

Steve-o (26:00.622)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (26:01.11)
Does the visual presentation make sense for the particular individual? Because sometimes strong design helps the candidate if they don't expect to be uploading their resume exclusively and they're going to be handing it around. One that comes to mind from a couple of years ago was, if I'm getting this right, I want to say it was for a chef and it was designed like a menu and it was beautiful. A little bit distracting, but still absolutely gorgeous. So in that case, it probably helped.

But a typical executive, even now, some design elements really do help and they guide the reader to understand where that data comes from or how it's supposed to be interpreted or whether it's important or not.

But there's even now categories for, I forget what their classic, I think is the category, or the style. So there's heavily designed or whatever they call that. And then the classic version, which is basically straight text. So can you communicate what you want to communicate without breaking out the InDesign or the Illustrator or whatever? Can you do this?

just with the tools that you are allotted, basically speaking, on Word and not using too much in the way of tables and text boxes and so on that can also be considered maybe design elements of a sort. But can you do this on the strength of your capability and your understanding of the job seeker's needs and the capability that that person has? And of course, you have to give a little bit of a synopsis of what the story was, the background, so that the

team of judges. So of course I'm not the only one. There's plenty of people and I am by far not the final say on anything. But that they can understand.

Steve-o (27:43.19)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (27:47.153)
Did you hear that all you listeners don't don't send her the big bribes it's not you send the big bribes to someone else

Amy Adler (27:54.019)
That would be the resume writer. So it's resume writers judging resume writers. And somebody recently sort of pointed that out to me and laughed that it's not job seekers who are judging this thing, but it doesn't take away from the fact that resume writers should be evaluating one another.

Tony Benjamin (27:56.465)
All right.

Amy Adler (28:10.658)
and the fact that the final arbiter in any sort of resume strategy of any type, any kind of plan, any kind of approach has to be, is this person getting interviews from the work that is being done for them? So we do this because it's fun, it's good to see all the new stuff and see what people are doing, but it's a little bit like navel gazing. I'm not going to argue that point. When the bigger issue is

Tony Benjamin (28:37.069)
Yeah.

Amy Adler (28:40.612)
our job seekers doing well. And that's something that only the resume writer is going to know, or the job seeker themselves is gonna know. But woe to the resume writer who just throws out whatever and doesn't have a pit, you know, feeling of a pit in their stomach when somebody isn't getting what they need. And whether that's because the economy is the way it is, whether there's layoffs, whether there are other mitigating circumstances.

Steve-o (28:49.934)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (29:10.402)
you could theoretically sweep any competition and still not do well. I don't think that's the case by your job seekers. I don't think that's ever the case, but that has to be what really matters in the end. And that's not humility, Tony. I know you're gonna bring that up, but that's not the point. It's what are we hired to do? We're here to be, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (29:32.412)
Right. That's that's the real measuring stick of what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Not not that you each other you look at each other and astounded at your technical ability, but it does it does it work? That's good. Okay, so let's let's do this. Let's we want to ask the question that we normally ask everybody. And I know this is going to open up a whole bunch of avenues. And this is going to be awesome. So okay, from your perspective, and let me don't hold back. You don't back you can say anything you want here.

Steve-o (29:52.462)
.

Tony Benjamin (30:01.585)
It's just you and I and 50,000 listeners. So, and Steve. but anyways, um, I, you know, I, yeah. Okay. Because he only listens to the podcast like twice. I listened to it like eight times before it's all done anyways, but what is the state of HR? Like what is, what is the current state of HR from your perspective?

Steve-o (30:06.828)
And me. He always forgets me, but it's okay.

you

Amy Adler (30:26.626)
So I appreciate the question because it's a tough one for me to answer. I am not inside HR. So I can't speak to what happens inside companies or inside the industry. I can only speak to it from the perspective of what a resume writer might see or a recruiter theoretically might see or what a job seeker might see. I think...

everyone on in any of those groups all those groups feels like they have one goal in mind

which is how do we get the right people in the right roles in the right companies? So the companies do well, the recruiter, third party, let's say third party or maybe internal, whatever, they get paid. The job seeker gets a job they feel like they can do, they're fulfilled at, they can grow into. And the resume writer, I mean, we wanna make sure that the job seeker has the tools that they need and the knowledge that they need to get to those places and then gracefully step back because we're not supposed to really be visible in that way. But everybody wins.

And if everybody is really aiming toward that same goal, in some alternate universe, I think I'd like all the friction among all those, I guess now four groups, if you want to put it that way. I'd love to see all that friction go away. I would love to see everybody say, we all want the same thing. So let's all help one another and stop tearing one another down and stop saying,

You know, you were born on a Monday, therefore you can't do the things that a person born on a Tuesday can do. That's just not true. And the skills for each of these probably overlap to some degree, except maybe the job seeker part, that's obviously a little bit different. But if we can get recruiters and HR and resume writers to stop the infighting, and I'm just going to say it, it's out there and it's mitigated. I mean, it's complicated by the fact that there are scam artists pretending to be all these people, job seekers too.

Steve-o (32:26.542)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (32:28.069)
I get lots of people who pretend to be me. That happens all the time. Except Steve. Except Steve. He's a bigger deal than me, so he doesn't want to be me. Everybody else,

Amy Adler (32:28.394)
Because we all want to be you. That's really the reason.

Steve-o (32:38.51)
Nobody pretends to be me. Luckily I don't have that issue.

Amy Adler (32:41.474)
You

Amy Adler (32:46.246)
No one's ever suggested they wanted to be me either. might really work hard to dissuade them. But no, but seriously, that's been in like the last, I don't know, two-ish, three years or something that the scam element has gotten so pervasive that it's made it worse for the people who are trying to do the right thing and made it harder for...

Tony Benjamin (32:49.392)
Whatever.

Amy Adler (33:08.82)
for the people who are all trying to do the right thing to feel good about the other people who are trying to do the right thing. if I, man. Okay, so, gosh, where do I begin?

Tony Benjamin (33:15.183)
So what are some of the scams that are out there then?

Amy Adler (33:23.274)
recruiters who have domain names in their emails that are something like the actual company or just Gmail and they say you can't apply for our job until you pay my guy on Fiverr for your resume and they might be the same person or they might be some other, you know, complicit, somebody complicit in a scam. That's not a real thing. There are plenty of resume writers who I won't even say that they're trying to be resume writers.

And God bless the people who are new in the industry and trying to learn we were all there once, but I think there's something more nefarious going on. The people trying to trick unsuspecting job seekers into hiring them when the skills just aren't standard and they're not even really trying. yeah, well, well, and then the

Steve-o (34:13.74)
No, they're just using AI to write it for you and then just pass it off as if they did this beautiful job for you.

Amy Adler (34:22.154)
I guess we'll probably have a lot to talk about with respect to AI, yeah, selling, selling AI content without being upfront about selling AI content is, don't know if I'd call that a scam. I would say that's a profound misstep and potentially a lie. But that could be done with the best of intentions, just without the skill or the know-how or the credibility to do it from, you know, your head, from your knowledge, from your experience.

Steve-o (34:29.902)
you.

Amy Adler (34:51.518)
So.

Tony Benjamin (34:51.814)
Yeah, no. there's, and there's lots of companies who are trying to build databases of resumes that and contact information so they can sell information to right, or create lists or whatever, like as a small business owner, I get 10 emails a week of people offering to sell me lists of contacts, right?

Steve-o (35:11.918)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (35:12.24)
And a lot, and a lot of them are, let me, you know, and they don't know what I do, obviously, but they're trying to sell me. They're like, we can sell all these different types of individuals, you know, and these people are looking for work. And every time I get something like that, I think to myself, you just suckered in, you know, 300 people with a job ad and now that's your list. yeah, it just, all that sort of stuff just strikes me crazy. And,

and the whole deal Steve gets into this about the about the ghost ads and stuff like that. That's that's crappy. then on top of that, you have companies who don't respect the people who apply and they ghost them and they never reply. And then they blame it on the ATS or whatever. please. Only one go.

Steve-o (35:41.097)
yeah.

Steve-o (35:54.158)
Well, let me say one more thing there, Tony, real quick, because I had a call with only one comment. So I had a call with a potential client today. So they're not a client, but she has a lot of respect for what I do. every once in while, she'll reach out because she knows that I know what's going on in the market. And one of her frustrations were this increase of foreign applicants.

which some are coming from AI bots, but we actually sat down and we looked at the resumes for some of these foreign applicants. And at least the majority of the ones that we looked at together, they were legit. They were actual applicants. And it goes back to our conversation we had on the podcast with the Dubai sisters, the HR sisters, because in the international world,

Internationally, companies just expect to get thousands of resumes for an open position. That's very common. In the States, that usually looks like a scam. But what's happening is AI is now allowing that international scene to be more prevalent at the national level. And so some of those resumes that are coming in are actually legit resumes, but see international people, oftentimes they think that, okay, you're...

you know, you're probably going to sponsor us because they get sponsored everywhere else. Every other country that they go to, that's just a natural part of the process. Whereas in the US, sponsorship and things like that is much less common. And so that's another thing is we are now starting to see an influx of some of these resumes thinking that, this is just a scam. And some of them are, but some of them aren't. They're just simply the international scene actually getting into the market more here in the US.

hoping that there might be more opportunities for sponsorship and they're actually legit candidates. So it becomes really hard. What we have to avoid is being biased based on the name. That's a very common practice right now is whatever their name is, we just automatically have a bias towards the name and say, that must be a scam. You have to be careful of that kind of stuff. And it's unfortunate that we have to pay more attention to it. One of the best ways to get around it are just add screening questions and things like that.

Steve-o (38:05.518)
process but yeah it's getting so tricky out there so tricky

Amy Adler (38:10.912)
I think if you couple that with the services that are out there that will gladly take your money to apply willy-nilly to anything and tailor your resume with AI to do so, even if the facts of your experience somehow get muddied.

Steve-o (38:21.688)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (38:31.85)
I can see why somebody might be concerned that a particular influx of resumes would feel scammy when it's not. So I think it's incumbent on, well, all of the parties to step away as much as possible from the perpetrators of these kinds of, I don't know, money-making schemes. I don't know what else to call it.

Steve-o (38:40.962)
Yep.

Steve-o (38:58.978)
Yeah, that's really what it is.

Amy Adler (38:58.982)
and rely heavily on the humans who are part of this equation.

Tony Benjamin (39:05.638)
I like the idea of calling them perps. That's a good, they're the perps. They're the perps. They're perpetrating it all on us. So, okay, now that's good. There's tons of those that sort of scam out there. And I think you're right. think that job seekers get pulled in a lot more directions. I'm curious, Amy, because you mostly focus on more senior level people, right? You're more executive.

Steve-o (39:11.298)
They are the pervs.

Amy Adler (39:31.338)
Mostly, although I've written for students as young as high school.

Tony Benjamin (39:34.552)
Okay. So are, do you, do you think that gets thinner at that more executive or senior rank, meaning there's fewer scams or do you think there's more because it's more intense?

Steve-o (39:35.185)
wow.

Steve-o (39:46.765)
Interesting,

Amy Adler (39:47.349)
is a question. Yeah, I don't know if that's true or not. I feel like I hear it more from, at least on LinkedIn anyway, from early to mid-career folks. I think the difference, if I had to hazard a guess,

Senior level people are probably more accustomed to hiring anybody for whatever the thing is. They hire lots of people in their companies and people who don't have that kind of managerial or hiring expertise probably don't know what to look for. And if you add the layer of this sort of madcap panic of if I don't get a job,

I'm going to be homeless. Everybody has heard a story or two or nine like that, that I think that adds an extra layer of pressure. They're looking for an answer. They don't have a lot of resources and they don't have a lot of time and they don't have the knowledge. So I'm going to take, I'm going to...

Steve-o (40:41.187)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (40:46.22)
put a parenthetical here for people who are listening. If you're a job seeker, check out the major professional societies for resume writers. There are four big ones. I can mention them if that's legit. There's the National Resume Writers Association, Career Directors International, Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches, and Career Thought Leaders. They all are powerfully...

Steve-o (40:56.194)
Yes, it's a name.

Tony Benjamin (40:56.307)
yeah, go ahead.

Amy Adler (41:11.528)
knowledgeable organizations with strong leadership and they know what they're doing, the directories on there are overwhelmingly likely to be solid talent that people can resource or source out and hire or look at their websites or whatever it is. But at least by going through those.

you'll have at least a start. I'm a member of three of those four. They're not asking me to mention them. NRWA is a nonprofit. The other ones are owned organizations, but they all have real credibility in the community. So.

Tony Benjamin (41:48.227)
cool. I like that. I like that. Yeah, I think we just got the BS meter right there. How many of the organizations are you enrolled with? Right? So least we have to have one. Yeah.

Steve-o (41:49.262)
That's really good to know. Yeah, that's great to know.

Amy Adler (41:59.437)
Well, I have to be open. Well, I have to be open, right? And transparent about that. But getting training through actually all three of the ones that I'm a member of has been invaluable to my career, to my progression, to my knowledge. And I'm happy to say that.

because there should be training out there. We all know that the industry is unregulated, which I think is another layer of adding sort of confusion and stress to these folks who are looking for legit professionals. They know that the industry is unregulated. It's not like we have to go to the state and get a sort of license or whatever, we have to get a business license, but the certifications matter. The certifications for these industries matter, or societies matter because

It's not a pay-for-play. I mean, they cost money to do it, but you have to go through the training, you have to go through the evaluation, a trial by a jury of your peers, right? And they can tell you you didn't do a good job, and they can say you have to go back and do it again. And I can tell you when I went for my first certification, probably right around 2000... I don't know. Whatever it was, 10 maybe? I was terrified!

I'd been to graduate school twice. I was terrified. I don't know.

Tony Benjamin (43:24.792)
That's good though.

Steve-o (43:25.294)
I had no idea there were certifications and things like that. That's actually really intriguing to me because it...

Amy Adler (43:31.386)
yeah, I've got a whole alphabet soup after my name.

Tony Benjamin (43:36.338)
That's good. I wish I had

Tony Benjamin (43:41.029)
Anyways, I that that that's good to know. Now I want to ask you, Amy, what is the what? Okay, so before, okay, I was going to ask a question, but now I'm going to backtrack a little bit. So let's take a minute and let's dump on ATS is for a second. Okay. Can we just like rip those apart for a minute and talk about how how awesome and or terrible they are. So maybe maybe the right thing to do is maybe let's talk about perception of

Because it's, and Steve and I have talked about this on previous episodes, there is a perception out there that applicant tracking systems are out there to hose people and not give them a fair shake and that there's something kind of nefarious going on with that.

Steve-o (44:25.358)
there's bias going on, that there's automated filtering that gives you no shot or opportunity, like all those types of things. I'm just curious what the.

Tony Benjamin (44:33.874)
You know, it kind of reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld, right? Where Elaine gets something on her doctor's file. And then every doctor she goes to gets the same file and they go, Oh, she's difficult to deal with. then they don't want to help her. But I think that's what people envision, right? So Amy, from your perspective and your clients, what is what do applicant track? Like, what's the status of an applicant tracking system?

Amy Adler (44:58.644)
It's like the enemy. It's, you know, Steve, please forgive me for saying all these things. Yeah. But the idea that on the, on the low end of frustration is I've just uploaded my resume. Why do I have to type everything in again?

Steve-o (45:04.578)
No, no, I, this needs to be heard, right? So,

Tony Benjamin (45:07.548)
Yeah, Steve's not scared.

Amy Adler (45:17.986)
because that feels duplicative and there's probably some technical reason why that's necessary. even just today, I was talking with somebody who was like out of the job market for, I don't know, good 10 years or something and now is applying for roles. And they were like, why do I have to do this? And I was like, I really don't know, but just copy and paste away. So that's more like an administrative burden than it is, I don't know, obstructive. But I think there's this perception on the...

far end of this, there's this perception that the ATS is something to get through, which doesn't make sense because my understanding is it's a big filing cabinet with lots of capabilities, like a database. So you want to get in it and not past it. It's not like you're trying to hit the ball over third base and into the stands. want to keep it, I don't know, some sports metaphor, I'm not getting here. But anyway, the... Yeah.

Steve-o (45:59.886)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (46:14.18)
I that's awesome. I like it as that's right. Hey, as somebody who went through a heart attack every five minutes last night watching the Steelers barely beat the Ravens. I'm all in for these sports analogies. You keep going. It's you're doing great.

Steve-o (46:15.49)
You want to keep it in play?

Amy Adler (46:17.302)
Yeah, right.

Steve-o (46:26.734)
I was thinking about you yesterday on

Amy Adler (46:27.618)
Well, I think you've now exhausted my whole... What?

Tony Benjamin (46:31.698)
Where we?

Steve-o (46:32.866)
I was just, I was praying for Tony last night. Cause I noticed the game on TV. I don't watch football, but I noticed and I saw Pittsburgh Steelers and I thought to myself, I need to kneel down and say a little prayer for Tony that he'll make it through the.

Tony Benjamin (46:35.858)
Ha

Tony Benjamin (46:45.682)
his heart doesn't freaking explode. mean, if I had had a defibrillator somewhere in the house, I would have brought it out and got it ready because that ended on the last play of the freaking game. Anyways, go ahead, Amy. I'm sorry I interrupted. Not that I'm bitter about all that.

Amy Adler (46:56.96)
No, yeah. No, well, please fill in all the things I don't know about sports. But the idea is that it's not the ATS is something that you want to get into. again, I think the fear mongers, fear monger, monger first out there, scammers or whatever you want to call them are.

Steve-o (46:59.182)
you

Tony Benjamin (47:03.442)
You

Amy Adler (47:16.018)
making it worse by using language that's inflammatory, is designed to make people scared and to sort of fire off in all directions or hire them for their potentially substandard services. I never subscribe to the let's make everybody afraid so they have to buy it from you. Like it's, I'd rather talk people through what they need to know and have them make an informed decision and it always worked better for me.

So, I don't know, this sort of like...

adversarial relationship I think that job seekers have with what they perceive as this inscrutable, all-powerful, AI-driven, mechanistic, I don't know, whatever punitive system that is the ATS. think we need to dispel those myths and help job seekers do the things they need to do that's going to move them forward in the process, not make them terrified of it.

Steve-o (48:17.198)
Well, and some of those fears are real because, you know, there right now there are about 850 applicant tracking systems that exist in the market, believe it or not. And the reality is, is 40 % of them are not up to date in technology. So when you talk about resume parsing and profile parsing where it, you know, takes all the information and inserts it all in there so that they don't have to fill it out, that's a, that is a problem for some of those. And I would say most employers today, if that's the kind of system you're using, you're using the wrong kind of system.

because you have to make it absolutely, which means you need to contact me and I'll help you. But the reality here is that you have to make sure that your tracking system is not creating that fear. And you're absolutely right, the scam artists out there and the bad actors, they want you to feel that fear because it feeds into, hey, I can help you when really what I'm doing is I'm just taking from you.

Tony Benjamin (48:47.282)
You're making a bad strategic decision, that's right. I'm thirsty.

Steve-o (49:13.966)
But that's how they do this. They use these emotional tactics to make you think that, oh, that's why I'm not getting anywhere. So then they can get away with what they want to get away with with you. And it's unfortunate. It really is. And so as a co-founder of a napkin tracking system, all the things you described is exactly why we built the system to avoid those types of things, to not create the fear, to make it simplistic, to allow for better filtering and not only to help the HR person, but to give the candidate

a much better opportunity to get the interview. That's the whole purpose of a true system. so systems out there that don't do that, which they do exist, that's where the problem is. And so there's reason why what you're talking about is real because there are systems out there that unfortunately, they function that way. So, yeah.

Amy Adler (50:04.47)
But I think also there's an outsized emphasis on the fear of ATS on the part of job seekers because it's an easy scapegoat and I'm gonna put it out there. by the time some, yeah, it's somebody else's fault. It's a technology I don't understand. It's AI, it's bias, it's all these things when the job seeker themselves and I don't mean every single person, but I think.

Steve-o (50:09.902)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (50:14.736)
Yes, yes.

Steve-o (50:16.929)
Interesting.

Steve-o (50:22.862)
Yeah.

Amy Adler (50:32.546)
a lot, substantive proportion, have not done the hard work of knowing who they are, what they stand for, what they want, and making their resume look like that thing. It's painful to watch. And of course, because I'm a resume writer, so if I go out there and say things like that, all the...

Steve-o (50:45.742)
That's a great point.

Amy Adler (50:57.1)
friction from these other parties and job seekers too, who by the way think resume writing should be free. I don't exactly know why, but they're saying, you know, I've done all these things. Well, they're not working for free either. And I'm not trying to take advantage of anybody. I'm genuinely trying to help people. But the idea that there is...

Tony Benjamin (51:07.024)
You and doctors both, you and doctors both should be free. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, exactly.

Amy Adler (51:25.078)
this inability to focus on where the problem might be.

which might be goal setting, which might be finding the right companies and the right, whatever the parameters of those kinds of target companies are, the way people talk about themselves in their resumes, the things they choose to talk about that are fully under their control, it's hard to take that responsibility. I mean, we all have that problem somewhere in our lives. Like, this wasn't me. If only those cookies didn't taste so good, I wouldn't have eaten them, me all winter.

Steve-o (51:54.126)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (52:02.259)
That's a good. Hey, yeah, no, I was gonna say, by the way, all of my neighbors who are listening to you, it's all your fault. They gained three pounds over the last two weeks. Yeah, exactly. Right. Thank you. The chocolate covered cinnamon bears is what it is. Holy crap. Yeah, go ahead.

Amy Adler (52:02.658)
break.

Steve-o (52:12.996)
that fudge.

Amy Adler (52:13.238)
Right. It's the fudge. It's the fudge. But it's not always the technology's fault. Right? There are some...

Tony Benjamin (52:25.617)
Yes.

Steve-o (52:25.72)
Yeah.

Amy Adler (52:26.178)
technologies as you were saying that that don't function properly and don't do what they're supposed to do but to lay the blame 100 % at the feet of something they don't understand. I promise you I don't understand it in the way that I should. There's a million things about it that I wish I knew.

And I think about these things a lot and if job seekers don't have my insight and they certainly don't have yours, they're gonna be afraid. They're gonna think that there's this monolithic thing that's coming down for them and materially harming them, kicking them out.

when in fact the answer might really be something else. It might be something that they can control. It's hard. It's upsetting and there's a whole psychology to it that I wish I could take away because I care about these people. I care that they do well and I care that they don't self-sabotage.

Tony Benjamin (53:15.379)
I think, okay, I think this is really cool insight into the current market and the job market and people looking for work. And that is, if you think about everything that we've said today, so what we've said are there are scammers out there on every point of this axis, right? So if there's fake job ads and you apply it, never hear back. And it's just because people are gathering information.

you apply to a legitimate company, and they just ghost you because their hiring managers don't really know what they're doing. And they they're scared. I don't know what it is. Some managers are just afraid to tell somebody No, even if it's a click of a button and email goes out. They just they don't want to do it. And then you have say, you know,

crappy resume writers or people assisting people to look for jobs in a myriad of different ways. And there are scam points there as well, right? And they're out promising everything. And you get all that together. And then you have to get through the applicant tracking system. Well, I understand why there's some frustration out there. That makes perfect sense to me. And we can all think that Steve's not really out to take over the world, but he is.

Steve-o (54:30.606)
Absolutely. Everybody should use AppLig and Tracking.

Tony Benjamin (54:31.763)
But it, but it, I, that's right. So, but the point is, is that I can see where that perception would come from and why it would be easy to blame the system. And I remember those early days when I was looking for work and I was looking to transition because I had in my head that I wanted to do operations. And I was finding that without a business degree or something, some sort of education that pushed me in that direction, that operations weren't going to be possible for me.

And so I was trying to figure out, I have these skills, things that I'm really naturally good at. How can I get into those and write some of those for communications and public relations and those sorts of things. And I couldn't break into them. And I was applying for jobs and here's what I was thinking in my head. I have all these skills. just, I, you know, but I haven't necessarily done a minute in a job before. And so I would apply and I know that everybody who saw my resume was looking at it and going,

What does he do in applying for this? Right. He, was sales for market research or, or whatever. And so they're not seeing it. And I wouldn't turn it was like, they're so mean. They won't give me a chance. Why won't they give me a chance? Right. And, and I can, I've been in that place where I'm looking for somebody else to blame. And it just seems really easy to do. And here's the applicant tracking system and, and other somebody else.

It doesn't have feelings. It's a it's not emotional. It doesn't have to conspire to hose you. It just hoses you right and I can totally see why why all that comes through. I think Amy you've really helped me piece that together in my head and why people are to view it that way and I appreciate that anything that either of you want to add on to that because I'm about to hit us with another doozy question if not but go ahead.

Steve-o (56:18.67)
I'm just excited for the doozy question.

Tony Benjamin (56:22.541)
Yes, shoot.

Amy Adler (56:22.932)
Can I say one thing?

that for people. Yeah. So for people who are experiencing that kind of dissonance that you were like, I know I can do this. I'm changing industries. I know I could do this. I'm not getting a chance. There's two pieces. One is companies are very risk averse, right? And they don't want to, they don't want to take a chance. Yeah. Especially right now. So how do you make your, how do you de-risk the process for yourself? It's take all that stuff out of your head that you know, you know how to do and put it on the page and give it to them. Don't make them guess, make them understand.

Steve-o (56:24.588)
Yes, please.

Tony Benjamin (56:40.74)
Uh-huh.

Steve-o (56:41.71)
Especially right now.

Amy Adler (56:54.346)
and make it as low risk for them as possible. It's not a perfect system, it doesn't work 100 % of the time. What you're asking for is really, really hard for anybody, especially for somebody who is trying to make that kind of career switch with kind of no warning to the market, if you will. But it's not impossible, and there are things that people can do that they have control over.

They should tell the story. They should get it out of their head and not make someone else guess. That's the first step.

Steve-o (57:25.49)
Which is exactly why being able to sit down and have a real conversation with a professional like yourself is so important. Because again, oftentimes the applicant doesn't know how to tell their own story. But when they work with a professional like yourself that can help them tell that story, I think there's power there and they should be willing to pay for that. I know a lot of applicants want it all to be free, but it's just like...

It's just like companies, when we first started iApplicants way back in the day, when we first started our app contracting system, we literally had to give it away for free just to get people to try it. And because that was the only way, because everybody wants everything for free. That's just the way people are. They want it for free. And that's a horrible business model, but it at least got our foot in the door. It got us to a point where we could actually be successful. But yeah, it's really hard because everybody today wants stuff for free. They don't want to have to pay for it.

not understanding how much grit and heartache that you've gone through to become the professional that you are. And I think that's so important for people to understand that you have done a lot to get to where you are right now, which makes you that much more valuable. So anyway.

Amy Adler (58:24.364)
Yes, exactly.

Amy Adler (58:38.028)
But even if I could set aside that, and for you too, know technology doesn't come out of thin air, know? Even if somebody wanted to judge me based, or resume writers, whatever, based on today moving forward, it's a lot of work to write a resume. It is a lot of work. It doesn't come out of nothing. And I think people don't understand.

Steve-o (58:55.299)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (59:01.794)
much time somebody is willing to commit to making sure their story is primo and digestible and delightful and exciting and interesting and appropriate. And there's some resume writers that write faster than others. I'm not denigrating speed and certainly I think the more expertise somebody has the faster they can go. But sometimes it takes a couple of days to get this right and

The willingness to put that time in is, and the ability to put the time in without retreading or just rearranging the words or whatever. know, sitting down at the computer and adding value every time, that's what we strive for. And I think if job seekers understood that, they wouldn't be so willing to say, I don't have their best interests at heart. Because it couldn't be less true and it's why we offered some free stuff.

and why I'm always willing to get on the phone with anybody who wants to call and talk to them about their strategy and the way they're doing things. They don't have to buy from me, that's okay.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:10.995)
You know, you were talking about this and it reminded me because you know that I've helped people do resumes and stuff and and all that and I used to I used to do a class on how to network for a job and that sort of stuff. And I always give basic my basic understanding and then I say if you want real help call Amy. I bet I refer you probably 15 times a year at least at least that much. But it's but the point is is the hardest the number one question that I ask people to start with that I don't get that

Amy Adler (01:00:31.635)
You're gracious.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:40.943)
I get people that look at me funny, especially from say mid 20 to mid 30s, right? Or maybe late 30s is I asked, what do want to be when you grow up? And I'm shocked at the number of people who don't know. They're like, what do you mean? I said, well, what do you want out of this process? I want a job. Okay, that's not what I asked. I didn't ask about a job. I like, I didn't I'm not even asking what kind of a job you want. I want what do want to be? What do want to

develop into what do want to grow into? And I'm shocked at how many people can't answer that for me. They've never thought about it in those terms. And then I say, because whatever that is, that's what we want to put on your resume. That's that's the heart and core of that, right? And, and to get that through to people. And, okay, I'm about to say something slightly controversial. But all of the political problems we have in our country, it's our fault.

Look, there's lots of bad actors, again, this whole thing and terrible politicians and people that do horrible and evil things in the political world. All that's true. But if we, American people, would just make up our mind about what we wanted to do, it would go a lot smoother. Like if you wanted us to be the total right-wing country or whatever, great. Let's all make that decision. Or if we wanted to go completely left, then great.

But the reason we're so divided in the country isn't because politicians make us divided, although they make it worse. Don't get me wrong there. They make it worse. But the fact of the matter is, that we as a people can't decide what we want our future to be. As a nation, we can't figure it out right now. And so of course, there's going to be lots of disagreements and all that. And there's no reason. And if we can't do that as a national body politic.

How can we, you as an individual at least, need to be able to say what you want to be and who you are and in what direction you want to go. And then you have to reflect that and give that to people. And I think that's harder. There we go. See, I went off on a tangent and everyone's dying to not participate in the political conversation. Stop. Okay, so here we go.

Steve-o (01:02:44.639)
I'm holding up the sign to move on to the doozy of a question.

Amy Adler (01:02:49.826)
Yeah, I'm waiting for the do's you have a question.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:56.315)
Any major political party can sponsor this podcast. Anyways, so, okay, here's the doozy question I got. What is the status of the, of the resume right now? What? Cause I think Amy, in the time I have known you, I've seen resumes evolve and do different things and there's different trends. Everybody always says to me, how do you write a good resume? And I say,

Well, that depends on when you're writing it, doesn't it? Because just like anything else, there's trends that come and go. There's some of those things that are there and archetypal that are always in resume. But there are things there that really come and go like, how do I list my skills? Where do I list my skills? Do I use a objective at the top? Because what 15 years ago, that was the deal, right? And then it was summaries. And it's not even summaries anymore. You get what I'm saying that there are trends in those sorts of things, right?

And so, but what is it? But is the resume still the central point? Is it still the, does it still hold the central role or are we moving away from that? Like what is the status of the resume right now?

Steve-o (01:04:03.522)
Yeah, it doesn't sell at the same value that it did, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, 15, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:07.411)
10 years ago.

Amy Adler (01:04:13.12)
loaded question, right? Yeah, totally. So I don't think the resume is going to go away. think there's I used to, pardon me.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:14.456)
I said doozy, I warned everybody.

Steve-o (01:04:14.818)
He said it was the doozies, so there we go.

Steve-o (01:04:23.757)
Dean.

I'm just, I'm agreeing with you.

Amy Adler (01:04:28.296)
Yeah, yeah, I don't think it's gonna go away. And as for specific trends, again, the Canva and the whatever templates look beautiful. Keep it simple, keep it easy. Colors, great, it works for helping your audience. If it works, try it again. If it helps your audience understand the information better, then use it. Otherwise, don't.

But to your point, it's not the only point of entry for the relationship between a recruiter or hiring manager and a candidate. LinkedIn is not going anywhere. It's taken over as the world's largest Rolodex. to not have a LinkedIn presence of note,

of substance is to be invisible and people are going to check your LinkedIn profile. They're going to meet you potentially via your LinkedIn profile and then they're going to check you out. If you don't have something there that is worth reading that reflects the same narrative as your resume, you're going to cause some sort of dissonance in the connection that you don't want to break. You want to foster that.

And to, again, to have an empty LinkedIn profile or to use the defaults or to use the AI tools that will write some sort of pablum, it doesn't help because it doesn't provide the meat on the bone that...

somebody would expect to see. And it's all within your control. It's 100 % within your control. You can decide to make an account. You can decide to put nothing in the account. You can fill it up. Use all 2,600 characters in the About section, all whatever, 220 in the headline and 2,000 in each of the job postings. I think you now get up to 100 skills. We used to be just 50. mean, I'm all full of LinkedIn facts because I've memorized all this stuff.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:29.587)
That's good, that's good.

Steve-o (01:06:30.488)
Yeah.

Amy Adler (01:06:32.566)
The use of, as far as LinkedIn is concerned, making sure that the headline is something you've crafted yourself and not the default. I wrote a blog post about this recently that the worst, I hope I'm getting this right, the worst word in your profile is at. The worst word you can use in your profile because it's job title at company.

in the headline. That's just what shows up. So at is officially, according to me anyway, the worst word you can use in your profile, not any of the other ones. There's there's no great magical list of keywords in the sky. Sorry to disappoint you all. I don't know. It doesn't come as the default, like the default headline. So. The symbol formerly known as that we've really.

Steve-o (01:07:08.354)
What about the at symbol? mean, is that okay?

Steve-o (01:07:14.072)
Sorry.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:16.915)
This symbol formerly known as at, right?

Steve-o (01:07:21.71)
Right. And if I use two at the same time, it becomes at that, which is one of Tony's favorite things.

Amy Adler (01:07:28.886)
We're totally dating ourselves here. You realize this, right?

Tony Benjamin (01:07:31.207)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's okay. Steve was kicking me about my Star Wars reference, which I poke him with all the time. No, that's sorry. I don't mean to derail you, but that's that's a really cool point, right? So I use the word thaumaturge in my HR headline. I it's HR consultant and thaumaturge. Exactly.

Steve-o (01:07:31.706)
All right.

Amy Adler (01:07:36.322)
Fair enough.

Amy Adler (01:07:50.294)
What is that?

Tony Benjamin (01:07:54.908)
And the reason I do it is because when I meet people, I'm a stunt because I want something to jump out, stick in their head. You'd be surprised when I meet people who've seen me on LinkedIn first. One of the first things they ask me is what does thaumaturge mean? Right. That's that's what they ask. And the answer to that is it's a wizard or someone who performs miracles. And and I think and to me.

Steve-o (01:08:19.597)
Wow.

Amy Adler (01:08:21.206)
That's the man right here.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:22.769)
Well, see, I ran across that in a marketing. were doing some marketing ideas, you know, and, the word came up and I loved it and it just, it's stuck in there. But the good part for me is everyone asks me what it means. People want to know what it means. I love it for that purpose.

Steve-o (01:08:23.022)
This is what Tony wants to be.

Amy Adler (01:08:39.18)
So I think what you have done is extremely cool, has set a brand that is absolutely inimitable, right? No one is gonna be able to take that.

the counterpoint, if you will, is that you get 220 characters, including spaces in your headline space. That plus your job titles and your skills are gonna be, my understanding from the LinkedIn recruiter app situation, the most searchable. So it's opportunity cost. For the person who uses one unusual word or phrase or whatever.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:52.147)
Please.

Amy Adler (01:09:13.544)
that's fine, but for the people who use something incomprehensible and kind of silly in their headlines, they're missing an opportunity, right? So it has to have, for you, HR, has to have consulting, has, or whatever, I don't know exactly what your has, yours has, and I'm not coming down on you in any sense, obviously, I know there was thermo, whatever in it, yeah, something, but if somebody has just genuine, right.

Steve-o (01:09:19.95)
Such a good point. Yeah. Such a good point.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:33.234)
I'm a turd.

Steve-o (01:09:36.878)
Thermal energy. That's how you say it. Thermal energy.

Amy Adler (01:09:42.956)
But for somebody who doesn't use anything searchable in there, that I'm just, you know, precautionary, you know, whatever.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:44.883)
See? Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (01:09:48.961)
That's a great point.

Well, and I love the fact that you say a resume is not going away. I do a lot of presentations across the country. have a, in fact, one of my presentations I do for a lot of high school kids and college kids is my Beyond the Resume series. And what I like about that, and I always tell people and I kind of blow their minds. In fact, Amy, I wonder if you know this. Do you know when the first resume, the first written resume that we are aware of came out? What year and who?

Amy Adler (01:09:56.399)
right.

Amy Adler (01:10:19.289)
uh, I want to say it was, it was a Da Vinci, right? Yeah.

Steve-o (01:10:22.254)
It was Da Vinci, Leonardo Da Vinci. was in 1482. he was, so in 1482, he was 30 years old and he wrote a letter with a list of his capabilities and sent it off to the Duke of Milan. And eventually the Duke of Milan would hire him for other things like some of his painting, because he's so known as a Renaissance painter. But see what Da Vinci was really good at at the time was weapons of mass destruction. At least what were weapons of mass destruction back then, as well as weapons to protect.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:27.953)
Wow.

Steve-o (01:10:50.668)
And the Duke of Milan was worried of being taken over at siege, right? That's what they did back then. And he wanted to protect his people, but he also wanted to take over a few things too. And so that's what his resume actually presented. And so in essence, resumes have been around since 1482 that we're aware of, if not before that. So the concept of a resume, I don't think will ever go away. It has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And so yes, there'll be things that change. And as Tony mentioned, things have modified over time, even the applicant tracking system and resume parsing and profile parsing, but the concepts of a resume and the ability for us to tell our story, like Leonardo da Vinci did to the Duke of Milan, I think that is always gonna be here and we have to recognize that. And so we have to be able to tell that story, which I think is, it's just cool. It's kind of a fun story way back when.

I always talk about that. I ask people all the time in my presentation, what was the first resume that we know of at least written? And 1482 is the answer. So now you know.

Amy Adler (01:11:55.842)
I'm surprised I pulled that fact out of my brain, to be totally honest.

Steve-o (01:12:00.046)
I'm not because if you're in the resume world, you're bound to run into this at least once period. I mean, you're bound to run into it. So, but yeah, he is kind of a cool letter. There's a lot of pages online. You can go and see the actual letter because he starts out with most illustrious Lord. I was talking about that. Most illustrious Lord is how he can you imagine if I wrote a resume today, a cover letter and I started it with most illustrious Lord. It might get me somewhere.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:21.517)
Wait, you're

Amy Adler (01:12:27.244)
Well, I'm going to say, think, but people would never use that language today, but it's a really good example of know your audience. If he had started that letter with you, know, whoever you are, right? Like, you know, right. If he had started that way, know, Duke of Milan would have summarily rejected, you know, anything past that. So the resume is kind of this, this like,

Steve-o (01:12:36.332)
Yeah, exactly.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:36.733)
Right,

Steve-o (01:12:41.57)
Hey, Duke.

Amy Adler (01:12:56.992)
ridge in communication. So for somebody who, let's say if I'm applying to work for you, let's say I send you my resume, you don't know me yet, this piece of paper has to do a ton of work. making it do what it can do really well and not assigning it a responsibility or a capability or a power that it just doesn't have. I think that's the whole thing and that's where...

Steve-o (01:13:14.99)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (01:13:24.438)
People have to take responsibility for what they say and figure out how to get it into a format that appeals to its recipient.

Steve-o (01:13:34.478)
Yeah, absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:36.211)
Very cool. Very cool. Amy, just really quick off the of your head, what are some of the trends right now in good resume writing?

Amy Adler (01:13:45.101)
So I think tighter, cleaner, faster. Not the one page rule, I don't think that applies. I don't know very many people who can do that effectively or even need to think about keeping it to one page. But keeping the stories robust and tight. is it? Mark Twain, right, I think is who it's attributed to, but it could be really any number of people. I think that's mostly who is...

blamed for the quote, I didn't have time. Here's a long letter because I didn't have time to write you a short one. Right. It's really, really hard to write tight. It is really hard. And to keep one bullet point, maybe three lines max, and to still tell a complete story is really hard. But when it's done well, it is so impactful and it's beautiful and it's gorgeous and easy.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:24.444)
You

Steve-o (01:14:30.766)
funny.

Amy Adler (01:14:44.77)
for the person to digest. It doesn't necessarily need a ton of context. It needs something. And there has to be some white space. I'm just thinking about recent trends that I've seen. So writing tight is always a good thing to do, but keeping that white space so the page is a little bit lighter to read. From the top of the page, put your name and your contact info. I mean, that's not a trend. That's just necessary. And don't put it in the header.

because it'll get lost. mean, maybe Steve will tell us more, frame the whole document with a good title and summary statement. You don't have to call it a summary, but frame what comes after that with, this is what I want you to know about me. Call it a billboard section. Call it whatever you want, a sign. And if they only have that six seconds or whatever it was, that's where they're going to focus and their eyes going to be drawn to it. What else can I say?

Tony Benjamin (01:15:39.166)
No, that's interesting. That's really cool thing you say about that. In my summary that I do at the top of my resume, I put it in a box. And I do that because it's visually heavy and it makes them stop. They can't run off the top of the page because their eye bumps into this really heavy thing. They at least pause briefly to see the really heavy thing. Yeah. And I think people

Don't understand that. I'm just curious, Amy, my experience is that people read resumes from bottom to top. Do you have that same experience?

Amy Adler (01:16:14.262)
That is a really good question. A recruiter, I wish I could place who it was, but I'm giving you credit out there, whoever you are, said that they read the name, the location, because sometimes location matters in the recruitment process, the headline, maybe some of the summary, and then they go all the way to the bottom to education, and then they read upward.

I think that sets a little bit of a standard for bias if people are going to judge somebody on whether they went to university, if they went to university, what university they went to, because it probably doesn't matter at a certain point. And I've worked with plenty of senior level players who have not gone to college or not finished, had no need to, but are some of the most spectacular humans you ever want to meet.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:56.54)
Right, right.

Amy Adler (01:17:02.12)
What it really all of that means is that somewhere in the middle is this massive sort of data around someone's experience that might get lost. It's not a document to your point that someone is going to read as like they would, you know, crawl into bed at night and read a novel. They're not going to do it that way. So giving them the hierarchy that they need to see to make that readable, that whole document readable is key. So the headline is a certain size, right? The name is a certain size. The regular typeface is a certain size. There's bolding.

there's color, there's rules lines, horizontal lines, that help guide the person through the document and each layer down is one more layer that they can choose to read or not choose to read and I think that's really important for somebody to understand about how people digest these things. So that doesn't answer the question as to whether they start from the back or not but it explains how people navigate the hierarchy of the document.

Steve-o (01:17:52.75)
you

Tony Benjamin (01:17:58.382)
Right, You're gonna have to, Steve, you're gonna say something.

Steve-o (01:17:58.574)
Yeah, so what we've noticed in our trends, because we looked at trends like this before, it really depends on the position. For example, if the position doesn't really require education, there's no desire for that recruiter to jump down to the education and start there. And so they might jump into the middle. so what we have found is depending on what the recruiter or the HR person is specifically looking for might

determine where they choose to look first. And in fact, this is one of the cool things about AI that I think is happening. AI can actually watch the person read a document and watch how they scan it and actually determine where points are seen the most. some of these things that are technologies that are coming out are actually going to be able to give us more insight into those things in the future.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:32.529)
Interesting.

Steve-o (01:18:55.522)
So those things are coming, because I've already seen some models that have been designed to actually watch how a recruiter scans the document within the ATS itself, because it uses the camera on the computer to watch them as they scan it. It's pretty fascinating to watch how some of this is, we're going to have a lot more information in the future. It'll be kind cool.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:16.755)
That's really cool. The way it was explained to me. Yeah, yeah. Well, depends on whose cameras on right. But it's how is explained to me is when people read from the bottom up is they're they're looking at where you started and they're looking at your career progress. And does it prepare you for the current job you're you're applying for is how is explained to me. And back in the day, I used to play around. Yeah, watch the history, right. And and I used to play around with order.

Steve-o (01:19:18.232)
Kinda scary too, but...

Steve-o (01:19:24.194)
Right?

Steve-o (01:19:38.574)
Yeah, and watch the history.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:45.372)
I used to play around. didn't always put my recent my most recent job on the top. I would often put it at the bottom and and just for the just and I experiment I experimented with with most relevant at top and least relevant at the bottom. I went through a phase where I tried everything. And but anyways I now let me just say this on this podcast I've mentioned several things about resumes. If anything I have ever said.

disagrees with anything Amy has said, you should take Amy's advice. But there's let me say this. I'm pretty good at writing freaking resumes. I'm pretty good at it. And I would say that there's only one person in the world that I would say that about and that's Amy, because she's that good. I really this is see now I'm just piling it on here. But this is this is really the truth is really the truth. I think I'm pretty good at resumes. I've seen 10s of at least 10s of 1000s of them over the

Steve-o (01:20:18.894)
You

Tony Benjamin (01:20:41.971)
course of my career in HR and everything that I've done. with that said, I think I know what I like and what I don't like. And I think I know what is effective and isn't effective. Now the computer world change is changing that all over the place. And that's the that's Steve's end of the business. But with that said, the only person that I've ever met that I always defer to their opinion of is Amy is you.

in resume writing. And if you like if we get off this podcast, you're like, take that freaking word Thaumaturge off your off your thing, I will do it because that's you're the only person I respect that much to do it. I think resumes quite resume writing is quite an art. And what I do is give generalities and kind of show people what is effective. You are an artist and how you make that thing work. And I think there's a real value in that for people, especially

the farther up that ladder you go because it becomes more more particular. I've been around people where they tell me, you should put out as many possible resumes as you possibly can. Do 100 a week if you can. And my answer is like, what are you talking about? There's no freaking way that I can customize more than 10 to 15 a week and do a good job at it and write them for the position I'm applying for. It's just ridiculous.

part of that is again, thanks to Amy and her advice that she gave me on how to do that. But there you go. So is that is that enough? Have I piled it on enough? You get with that?

Amy Adler (01:22:13.31)
little but I'm grateful I appreciate what you say I respect you so much thank you

Tony Benjamin (01:22:19.379)
Well, thanks. But it's the truth. Look, there's a lot of crappy resumes that we all see. Everything from the Indeed resume all the way up to the one that somebody has found this awesome template in Word or someplace else. And I think that's the way to go. And I don't bow to any of that stuff at all. And maybe that's just arrogance on my part. But anyways, after all that, Amy, think you're up there in the top.

There was a bunch of other things we were going to talk about. We were going to talk about AI, resume writing and all that. We've already kept you longer than we meant to. Let me ask you this. What do you want to promote to us? What do you want to tell us about before we get out of here?

Steve-o (01:23:01.102)
Yeah, you could be selfish here.

Amy Adler (01:23:03.266)
can be selfish well um I well first of all I'm incredibly grateful to have participated in this conversation I feel like we could talk another hour five hours ten hours on this because there's so much meat on this bone I'm so grateful to to have shared in this so thank you again for having me here in the

Tony Benjamin (01:23:06.109)
Please.

Amy Adler (01:23:26.954)
On the other side of things, if people want to talk to me, I, it's like I said before, I'm happy to do it. I'm grateful for the chance to meet people. I think people are so incredibly interesting. They have such great stories to tell. And I would extend the offer to anybody who was listening or if you want to recommend this to somebody you know, it's because I want to. So feel free to pick a time on my calendar. It's fivestrengths.com slash the HR life.

So that's f-i-v-e-s-t-r-e-n-g-t-h-s.com slash the HR life and that'll go right to my calendar. You can also find me on LinkedIn, feel free to connect with me and if you wanna check out my website, by all means do so. And again, it's just because I like to meet people and hear their stories and learn about them and to offer up what I can. So please do that.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:18.269)
Fantastic. There you go. And that fantastic is brought to you by Rachel Child. Sorry. Say she teases me that I say that word too much. She's right. She's right. I do. I do. She's a former guest on the show. Yeah, that's her drinking game. That's right. Anyways, Amy, thank you very much. really appreciate it. Say again your website again. What is it?

Steve-o (01:24:27.566)
her favorite word. She would be taking a drink of coke right now.

Steve-o (01:24:36.664)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Adler (01:24:41.708)
So it's fivestrengths.com. That's the number five, but the word for it, five, strengths, S-T-R-E-N-G-T-H-S.com. And that's because I think people are good at at least five things. So let's talk about them.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:54.717)
Fantastic. That's that's really good. And what we'll do then is we'll we'll put the links that you mentioned in the show notes. So everybody can click on those and get to see them. And and they can reach out and contact you and and and share with you and see if you can help them and and get a lot more a lot more expertise out of the resume or a lot more opportunity out of the resume. So Amy, thank you for being on with us.

Steve-o (01:24:54.83)
Nice.

Steve-o (01:25:23.938)
Yay!

Tony Benjamin (01:25:24.017)
See the crowd goes wild. All right. Get the bouncers over here. Don't let them get past the velvet rope. watch that part of the crowd over there. Yep. Amy, we've even had guests crowd surf on this live crowd. yeah, that's yeah, exactly. That's that's exactly. All right. Well, Amy, thank you. It's been great. And Steve, you've been as awesome as ever. Like, I'm just really impressed. You've been great today, too.

Amy Adler (01:25:38.2)
my goodness. What a night.

Steve-o (01:25:38.347)
the

Steve-o (01:25:41.89)
Right.

Steve-o (01:25:50.658)
What?

Tony Benjamin (01:25:53.684)
Not quite thaumaturge level, but really close. I'm getting a big head. You need to pop that again and bring it down. And I want to say you did a great job of reading the read today. I'm really impressed. Way to go.

Steve-o (01:25:54.83)
I haven't made fun of you enough,

Steve-o (01:26:00.728)
now right?

Steve-o (01:26:05.914)
can I read the pucks for autism?

Tony Benjamin (01:26:08.559)
Yes, do you have it?

Steve-o (01:26:10.158)
Cause I have, well I have several of them here, but I think it's option two is the one you've been using. So I do have it. I can read it.

Tony Benjamin (01:26:15.249)
Well, I modified it slightly. So let me let me do this here and I'll send it to you really quick. And then let's have you let's have you quickly. Yeah. If you want to do the pucks for autism. So, Amy, at the end of every one of our shows, we do a shout out and a read for a charity as well. And the other one that we've sponsored is shown is the Thrive Life Project. And this one is pucks for autism. So take it away, Steve.

Steve-o (01:26:30.444)
Yeah, I wanted you pay.

Steve-o (01:26:36.482)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:26:43.692)
Yeah, so here we go. Yeah. So Pucks for Autism proves that when communities rally, families win. Their hockey tournaments raise local funds that support autism programming, inclusion and connection for kids and adults everywhere. Join the team that plays with purpose. Visit pucksforautism.com. That's pucksforautism.com and get involved today.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:07.257)
Awesome. It's what a wonderful charity. Yes.

Steve-o (01:27:08.034)
And we love Claire. Claire was one of our previous guests and she's a huge hockey fan and is heavily involved in Pucks for Autism and what she said resonated with us on the show. And so we just, want to give shout out to her organization that she supports. So there we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:26.183)
the wonderful things that they do. And if you meet anybody from Utah Mammoth, you can say, Hey, when are you going to do that pucks for autism event? And that's right. Now, if everybody, Amy, Amy, if everybody sees you on the street, we don't want them to like mob you or anything like that. But they can reach out to you digitally and they can talk to you there. So and thank you again for being on the show with us.

Steve-o (01:27:32.278)
Yeah, ask them, ask the mammoth about it or your local hockey clubs.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:53.875)
I'm actually really afraid to have you look at my LinkedIn profile or anything now. See, this has just totally made me self-conscious. But, I know what else I ought say that around.

Steve-o (01:28:02.286)
You'll get over yourself, Tony.

Amy Adler (01:28:05.346)
Well, it's an educational opportunity because you gave me... you spoke a word that I'd literally never heard in my entire existence and I gotta figure out what it is and how to spell it and whatever.

Tony Benjamin (01:28:15.891)
Thaumaturge, right? Okay. Well, there you go. It's part of my elevator pitch, by the way, my one sentence elevator pitch. And by and I keep this in my head, because I know one of these days I'm going to be in an elevator with Art Rooney, the second, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And when I am that man's getting my elevator pitch come hell or high water, because I am. I'm so one thing that would make me give up my company without even the second thought is if I could go work for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

By the way, Mr. Rooney, you and the organization can sponsor this podcast any time you would like to. I even give you a discount. There you go. That's my my my my my one sentence elevator pitch is I'm a strange HR person. And that's my first initial part of it. Yes, it is. Yeah. All right. And again, thanks, Amy. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for being here. And we'll.

Steve-o (01:29:02.424)
Ain't that the truth?

Tony Benjamin (01:29:12.177)
we'll head out the same way that we came in. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app, comments or questions for us, email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com. And we'll talk again soon.