TheLadders Blog

I first discovered TheLadders through my participation with StreetWise Partners, a nonprofit organization that helps low-income individuals overcome employment barriers and obtain better jobs. When I began my career, I was working 40-hour work weeks in a customer service position that didn’t utilize my skills or compensate me properly. I then took a position in accounting, which, due to circumstances beyond my control, led me to doubt my capabilities in the workforce.

After that experience, I turned to StreetWise Partners, a bit scarred and needing to rebuild my natural confidence. With hard work and commitment, I made it through the program with aspirations of finding a job that would suit me and support my intentions of continuing my college education. My resume was already adequate but definitely needed an update to combat this ailing job market.

At the Career Boot Camp, hosted by StreetWise Partners and TheLadders in June 2012, I was lucky enough to win a resume rewrite, which I used immediately. To my extreme delight, my rewritten resume was a perfect representation of my career history and potential. Beaming with confidence and acceptance of change, I left my customer service position and decided to hit the ground running for my bright future. Within two weeks of leaving that position, I was able to acquire a temp-to-perm office coordinator role with Success Academy Charter Schools.

This was made possible by my burning drive for accomplishment, a great phone interview, an amazing resume and a glowing cover letter (that I can also thank TheLadders for). Just two weeks into my new job, I was offered a permanent position. TheLadders gave a woman with so much promise an extra boost in the game of life.

- Octavia Thompson

You hear a lot these days about how a powerful resume can make all the difference in the job search. The web is full of tips on writing, rewriting, polishing, and re-polishing your resume. There’s certainly value in learning what goes where, how keywords work, what to say and, especially, what not to say. While there’s something to be said for the DIY approach, it’s also worth considering how a professional approaches a complex and challenging resume. We often talk about how a resume should tell your story, but this is the story of the resume itself.

Meet Aaron.

Aaron came to us as a VP of product development with an Ivy League degree and some seriously varied experience. In addition to his VP role, he’s successfully launched his own magazine and held a director-level position at a digital agency. As if this budding career wasn’t varied enough, he told us that his next challenge would be landing an executive-level marketing position. Aaron had never held a marketing title, but he was convinced of his ability to land the job.  Upon review of his resume, it became clear that the skills were there, but the resume itself was a muddled hodge-podge of tasks and achievements without any trajectory or context.

Certified Professional Resume Writer Michael Cirigliano with TheLadders said that the biggest challenge was prioritizing the focus of Aaron’s resume. He had great experience in many different areas, but not all of it was applicable to the positions he was interested in.

During the initial call with Aaron, Michael spent about 30 minutes digging through the existing resume and placing all of his accomplishments in their proper functional context. The next step was to turn the Aaron’s accomplishments into a narrative. Deconstructing all of his experience in e-commerce, marketing, and business development provided a more complete picture of him as a professional.

Within 48 hours, Aaron had a new resume that told the story of his career path, highlighting key attributes that would make him an attractive candidate for an executive-level marketing position.

About six weeks had passed before Michael received the following email from Aaron.

Hi Michael,

Not sure if your remember me, but you helped craft my resume a few weeks back.  I wanted to let you know that the first company that received the revised resume has hired me as their Chief Marketing Officer — an ideal position that I’m very excited to begin.  I’m certain that the extraordinary version of the resume significantly helped this process, and I wanted to personally thank you for your help.

If there’s anything I can do recommend your work, please let me know and I’ll be happy to assist.

While the typical executive-level job search takes several months, lightning sometimes strikes. We wish Aaron the best of luck in his new position, and are so happy to have been a part of his success story.

Do you have a resume success story? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at resumesuccess@theladders.com. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more resume wins in the weeks to come.

Ryan Galloway is the Content Development Manager for the TheLadders’ Career Services Team. He helps writers develop innovative strategies that make members’ job search documents more effective. When he’s not working, he’s out buying way too many books. But he doesn’t have a problem. Really.

Wow! We have come a long way. This week, TheLadders surpassed five million members. That’s five million people that we are helping with their job search. We work to help these members find their next calling in life however we can, whether it’s through our job matching expertise, our personalized products and services or our world class career advice.

We’ve been working for nine years to learn the science of the job search and share that insight with our members. More importantly, we’re happy that we can deliver results for our customers. In 2010 alone, a Harris Interactive study* showed that over 500,000 $100K+ professionals credited TheLadders with helping them find a new job. Most recently, we launched our Signature program, which offers members personalized help navigating their job search and a guaranteed job offer within six months or their money back. That’s how strongly we believe in the program.

We certainly have come a long way as a company and have a lot to be proud of. When I started at TheLadders in 2004, we had just reached 9,000 members. Since then, not only have we grown our member base to 5 million, we’ve expanded to all professional level jobs and have grown our jobs onsite by 3x just in the last 6 months alone. We’ve attracted over 17,000 new recruiters to our site to connect with job seekers and launched countless products and features for users to take advantage of during their job search.

I’m proud to be part of a company committed to finding the right person for the right job – and helping so many members move their careers forward. Great job, team!

Leslie Semegran is Vice President of Marketing and Engagement and has been with TheLadders since 2004, in various capacities across Marketing and Sales. When she’s not endlessly searching for ways to engage and help members, she’s at home running around after her nine-month-old daughter.