PostPhDirections

← PostPhDirections5 Sept · 9 min

Your Resume Is Hiding Your Best Skills (Here's How to Find Them)with Angela Priest

Your Resume Is Hiding Your Best Skills (Here's How to Find Them)with Angela Priest5 Sept9 min

<p>Does your resume make your work sound smaller than it actually was?</p><p>In this episode of PostPhDirections, I sit down with Angela Priest, co-founder and COO of <a href="https://www.alma.me" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Alma.me</a>. Angela has spent 20+ years on the hiring side of industry, building high-performing teams and designing the hiring processes companies use to fill them, and she has helped dozens of PhDs get hired. She knows how these decisions actually get made and how your application is really read. We talk about something we see constantly in our Job Accelerator Program: PhDs sending us resumes with the most important skills missing. Not because they don&#39;t have them, but because those skills are buried inside protocols and approaches that feel too obvious to mention. Angela walks through the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) as a way to pull that detail back out, and explains why the people reading your resume will never connect the dots for you if you don&#39;t spell them out.</p><p>The best part: you get a twofer. The same work that fixes your bullet points also prepares you for the interview.</p><p>We talk about:</p><ul><li>Why recruiters don&#39;t infer your skills, and what that means for how you write</li><li>What Situation, Task, Action and Result actually look like for research work</li><li>Why your real skills are hidden in your methods and protocols, and how a thematic analysis of job descriptions helps you surface them</li><li>The mistake of treating the publication as your result, when the result is the finding inside the paper</li><li>How to build a bullet point that pairs a measurable (numerical or categorical) with a real impact, in about 192 characters</li><li>Why PhDs who have raised millions in funding or reached millions of people leave those numbers off entirely</li><li>Why colors, icons and graphics don&#39;t differentiate your resume, and what actually does</li></ul><p>If you have ever looked at your own resume and thought &quot;this doesn&#39;t sound like the work I did,&quot; this conversation will show you how to fix that in an afternoon.</p><p>Connect with Angela Priest on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-s-priest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">LinkedIn</a>. </p><p>Learn more about Alma.me and our Job Accelerator Program: www.alma.me If you want support making this transition, you can apply to work with us directly <a href="https://www.alma.me " target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">here</a></p><p>Follow Elena on<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-hoffer-/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer"> LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/drelenahoffer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Instagram</a> or TikTok @eli_the_scientist</p><p><br></p>