279: Proven Resume and Cover Letter Tips for 2025 with Stephen Greet

Get ready to revolutionize your job application strategy with cutting-edge insights from Stephen Greet, CEO of BeamJobs. In this episode, we dive deep into crafting resumes and cover letters that will catch the eye of advanced AI-driven applicant tracking systems and resonate with hiring managers in 2025.

Stephen shares his unique entrepreneurial journey—from selling duct tape wallets to leading a company redefining the hiring process. Learn why the old "spray-and-pray" job application tactic is out and how a focused, personalized approach can significantly boost your success rate.

Highlights include:

• Why Networking is Your Secret Weapon: Discover how leveraging your network can lead to those coveted warm referrals.
• Tailoring Your Application for Success: Practical advice on customizing your resume and cover letter for each job to highlight your skills and stand out from the crowd.
• The Shift from Quantity to Quality: Understand the importance of targeted, well-crafted applications over mass submissions.
• Navigating the 2025 Job Market: Get expert predictions on emerging trends and challenges job seekers face.
• The Power of Personal Touch: Learn how humor and personality can make your application memorable.

Whether you’re a job seeker or a hiring manager, this episode is packed with actionable tips to help you navigate the evolving job market and enhance your application strategy.

Key Takeaways:

• Master the art of networking for long-term career growth.
• Develop tailored, impactful resumes and cover letters.
• Build meaningful relationships before you need them.
• Stay ahead of the game with insider insights into the future of job hunting.

Tune in to gain the tools and confidence you need to land your next big opportunity in 2025!

Connect with Stephen Greet
LinkedIn | Beamjobs Website

Chapters

• 0:00 Job Search Strategy and Networking Tips
• 3:43 Revolutionizing the Hiring Process
• 9:12 Strategic Networking for Job Seekers
• 16:19 Customized Resumes and Cover Letters

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

Looking for a new job is never fun. In fact, if you've been looking for a new job even within the last year, you know how difficult it can be to navigate when applying for jobs online or networking for that right position. As AI gets more advanced and sophisticated and applicant tracking systems get more selective, you must be equipped with the right tools and information to help you navigate them with greater confidence and ease. And that's where my guest comes in. Today you will meet Stephen Greet, the CEO of BeamJobs. Stephen's here to share his best tips for writing a resume and cover letter in 2025 that will absolutely get you noticed. Plus, he's going to share one powerful networking tip that will change the way you connect with people as you network to find that job you love. So let's get started.

John Neral: 1:10

Hello, my friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast and I'm your host, John Neral. I help mid-career professionals like you find a job they love, or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula. I'm excited to share this recent conversation I had with Steven Greet as the CEO of Beam Jobs. His company recognizes that looking for a new job and growing your career is the least fun game in the world, but they also recognize. It is a game with unwritten rules that, when followed, will give you the most success. You're probably wondering what those rules are, and he and I are going to talk about them. His company, beam Jobs, has helped over 2 million people build their resumes and grow their careers Because, as they know, getting that new job is a numbers game and there is a way to navigate that system.

John Neral: 2:08

So we've got a lot to cover in this episode. You may want to take some notes or go back and listen to this episode again, but it is my pleasure to introduce you to Stephen Greit. Hey, stephen, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Stephen Greet: 2:25

Hey, John, super excited to be here.

John Neral: 2:26

So, Steven, you and I have had a chance to talk a couple times before we started recording today, and what really fascinates me in part about your story is your mid-career moment happened probably a little earlier than what we would define as mid-career which led you to kind of start your business. Can you share with us what that moment was?

Stephen Greet: 2:48

Yeah, absolutely. My mid-career moment, I would say, happened in day one post-college. I had my first job at Geico which is the dream of every little boy and girl everywhere is to work for that national insurance carrier. So I got down there day one of the job and it was just sort of that that corporate office you can envision it sat down there and had this moment of existential dread that I would be in that seat for I had to do it for 40 more years.

Stephen Greet: 3:15

I'd always been a bit entrepreneurial and it was sort of in that that first day I decided eventually I knew I wanted to start a business. So then my sort of mid-career moment became how do I position myself to get the skills I need? So that I didn't have a timeline but that at some point I could launch my own business. So it switched from just being really trying to be really good at the job to trying to be really good at the job but also try to lever up skills for this thing I knew I wanted to do in the near to long term.

John Neral: 3:43

What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Stephen Greet: 3:47

So back in the second grade I used to make duct tape wallets for any students that would want them for $5. I would make a big thing of duct tape and I'd be able to spin out these wallets and I was made over $40. Don't want to brag, but yeah, pretty big deal.

John Neral: 4:03

Nice Were they Velcroed. Remember those back in the day.

Stephen Greet: 4:06

We kept the costs down, just duct tape. If you wanted the premium we could talk, but we were talking just duct tape, just nuts and bolts to try to get those sales.

John Neral: 4:17

I love it. I love that. That's so great. So tell us how you ended up starting your company.

Stephen Greet: 4:26

Yeah, totally so. After Geico, I worked at an ed tech company called Chegg and there I was responsible for hiring a couple people and I'm sure, like every single person in the audience today, they know the nightmare that is looking for a job. It's not fun on the other side either. For companies right Hiring, you put up a role and, specifically for more entry-level roles, you're inundated with hundreds and hundreds of candidates. That makes it really difficult to find diamonds in the rough and then on the candidate side, you're just sort of left in the void and not getting a lot of responses.

Stephen Greet: 4:58

We wanted to solve that problem.

Stephen Greet: 5:00

So in 2018, I quit my job, my twin brother quit his job and we teamed up with this very poorly defined goal of trying to help fix hiring.

Stephen Greet: 5:10

So for the first two years of the business, my background was in data analysis. My brother was a software engineer, so we just operated as this recruiting agency that helped tech companies hire data professionals and software professionals just to learn the ropes hire data professionals and software professionals, just to learn the ropes and what we realized shortly thereafter, in about 2022 or 2020, is that we had so many really qualified people come to our site, apply for the roles, but the resume was never going to get them through the door. So then we set out in 2020 to really try to solve that problem. How can we take people who are otherwise really qualified and really good at their job but not necessarily as effective at writing a resume? How can we sort of take that and use software to make a bad resume a good resume so we can really help people put that best foot forward? When you're not necessarily an expert resume writer right, that's not your job, that's just sort of something you have to the hoop you have to jump through to try to get that job and level up your career.

John Neral: 6:03

When you say you and your brother's goal is to help fix hiring, yeah, here we are, at the start of 2025. Where does hiring need to be fixed right now, in this year?

Stephen Greet: 6:18

So where to begin right? So we always try to take the approach of candidate first. So that's really the problem we want to solve. The number of stories that we've heard it's not the best job market right now. The number of stories we've heard of people who are going four or five, six months, hundreds and hundreds of applications and not getting anything back. That to me is the core issue, right, because it goes both ways. On one side the candidate has to apply to hundreds of jobs. On the employer side, that means that they have to review, for every job opening, hundreds of applicants so the candidate's cover letter reach out to your network for potential warm intros. So it's really trying to take this volume-based approach that inundates both sides and makes the process less effective, to try to do a much more curated approach specifically for candidates in the long term to solve that problem. We're nowhere close, but that's sort of the first foray we want to make that problem.

John Neral: 7:25

We're nowhere close, but that's sort of the first foray we want to make so in our work. So we travel some similar paths in that regard. Right, in terms of helping people find jobs that they're going to love, I always hear whether it be from clients that I initially start working with or people who are messaging me on LinkedIn or reaching out, and they'll exactly come with that volume-based approach. I sent out 100 resumes. I heard back from one or two, and the more I dig in, the more it becomes this kind of spray and pray type approach. Right, we just take that resume and send it out there. Why does that no longer work?

Stephen Greet: 8:07

The reality is, if you're from the second, a job opens. I can talk about our experience hiring. We were hiring a marketing role Within 24 hours. We were inundated with over 100 applicants Within 24 hours. So, unless you are able to apply within the first five or 10 minutes of a job going live, that volume-based approach is just going to be. You're just going to be another resume in the pile where the hiring manager is, with intent, looking to reject you. They're not looking for your qualifications, they're looking for a reason to say no. So the volume-based approach again unless you're applying in the first five, 10 minutes and one of those first 10, 20, 30, 50 resumes that are getting reviewed, your resume is going to be reviewed for fractions of a minute, right Seconds at most, that you're not going to get the consideration, frankly, that you deserve.

John Neral: 9:01

And so let's just take I'm trying to remember what was the arbitrary avatar I had for the person that I would just kind of reference right, so we'll start off 2025 with Sheila. Okay, so Sheila's got this resume. She's really talented. Let's say she's a project manager. She's looking for that new job, she's currently employed, but she wants to get out of her current organization and she's not going to be one of those first submissions within the first few minutes. So her biggest worry is how do I get noticed? Absolutely, how do you and your team at Beam Jobs then help someone like Sheila get noticed when she can't submit the resume in the first five minutes?

Stephen Greet: 9:49

Yeah, first and foremost it's taking advantage of your network, and I think when people hear that, they think, oh, my five closest people in my network can they give me an intro to the company that I'm interested in applying to?

Stephen Greet: 10:00

The answer is almost always no. What you really have to rely on are those second, those third, those fourth degree connections. Do I know someone who knows someone, who knows someone who works at this company who can give me a warm referral? It is going through depth, right, and we can help you uncover some of those connections. That might not be that visible, but the reality is you have to go very deep, because a warm intro you will get the consideration you deserve, right? That is the guarantee. Maybe guarantee is a strong word, but you're much more likely to get deeper consideration through that warm referral. And even if it's a very tangential connection, do anything you can to get that warm intro, because then you're not just one of the resumes in the pile, you're one of the 10 resumes from a referral that you will get the consideration You're one of the 10 resumes from a referral that you will get the consideration.

John Neral: 10:53

So, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's leveraging those second and third level connections within your network that they're going to be able to go to, say, someone who is the hiring manager, recruiter, HR representative and say, hey, Greit is going to be applying for this position. Can you make sure you pull his resume and take a look at it for consideration for the job? Do I have that right?

Stephen Greet: 11:13

Absolutely right. And let's walk through Sheila. Right. Sheila has a former colleague who has a former colleague who's currently at the company she's applying to. Right, it doesn't. People are willing to help, especially in this job market. Everyone empathizes with looking for a job. If they've looked for a job, people are shockingly willing to help and it makes them feel good. It makes you feel good, right, people want to help and it can be scary to do that ask, but I promise after five, six, seven of those messages you will no longer think about it. And it's not a used car salesman pitch right, you can provide value to that person down the road and people genuinely want to help.

John Neral: 11:52

All right. So we know that networking is important, but then we get back to this point of everybody needs a resume. Everybody needs that branding document that they can give to someone they can submit when they're applying online. And we know, now more than ever in 2025, with all of the AI technology that's out there that there's essentially an electronic screen comparing your resume to that job posting. What advice do you have for the listeners, stephen, in terms of helping them either get a better match or a closer match with their wording in the resume to the job posting, that, if they are doing the resume themselves, that it's going to give them a better chance of getting noticed?

Stephen Greet: 12:42

Yeah, it's a good question and I think people in my industry have done a massive disservice to people looking for a job in that they try to talk about how complicated it is and how it's sort of this dark art. It's really not that difficult, right? What you should be doing is read the job post. As you read the job post, do any projects you've ever worked on come to mind, right, and it does not have to be a one-to-one match to the job post. Do any projects you've ever worked on come to mind, right, and it does not have to be a one-to-one match to the job description. Just read the job description. Does anything you worked on come to mind? Make sure that's included on your resume, right?

Stephen Greet: 13:14

I think there's a tendency for people to go with quantity over quality. A recruiter would much rather a one-page tight resume with bullet points that are relevant to the job they're looking for than that lifeguarding position you held 18 years ago where you were demonstrating responsibility, right, like that is the tendency of people, because they want to include everything, but it's much more important for quality and specificity to the job you're applying to in your resume bullet points and then your skills section. Again, as you read that job post do. Any skills that you have, really tangible skills, including responsibility, on a resume is not useful. It doesn't actually add value to the resume. But if there's a requiring Excel and you know Excel include it it's really about that specificity to the job and quality over quantity.

John Neral: 14:04

You advocate for a foundational resume Absolutely Right. Can you tell us what that is and why a mid-career professional absolutely needs one?

Stephen Greet: 14:17

Absolutely so. It should be based on the different kind of personas or roles you're looking for, right? Let's say Sheila is a HR professional right, and she wants a new role. What are the different kinds of functions she's served in her HR career and what kind of jobs is she looking for? Right? Did she operate mostly as a recruiter? Mostly as a benefits analyst? Right, for each of those different personas you want to make it seem like that was your entire career, right, even if you did a lot of things. If I'm applying for a recruiter role, I want that hiring manager to look at my resume and know instantly that I am an expert recruiter. They're not going to be interested in the other thing. So, for each of those personas that you have, or each of those archetypal roles that you're applying to have a foundational resume as if that was the only thing you've ever done in your career, right? A hiring manager is generally not looking for a jack of all trades. They're looking for specificity and you want your base resume to convince them of that specificity.

John Neral: 15:18

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Stephen Greet: 16:38

It is a great question. So I think that's a key point that you raised, john, is that you want to find that role that you're applying for first. It's a massive advantage to create your resume towards something specific, as opposed to trying to ideate this imaginary role in your mind. Find that role you're applying for and, in our example of Sheila, as an HR person, if that role is a jack of all trades, touch on all of the different tenets they want, right. If they're looking for a recruiter and a benefits analyst, make those the focus of that foundational resume. But if they're looking for a recruiter, again you don't want to talk about your benefits analysis experience. You want to talk about your recruiting experience to make it as specific to that role as possible. So, again, a hiring manager, in those seconds they might be looking at your resume, has no doubt in their mind that you're an expert at the thing they're hiring for.

John Neral: 17:24

Great, I love how you phrase that. Okay, so now we get the resume where we want it. Right, we have the resume, it's ready to go. And now we get to that cover letter question. Okay, so we've seen over the last few years that some companies are requiring them, some are not, some make them optional. But when a candidate needs to submit a cover letter, from your experience, what makes a cover letter stand out and get an applicant noticed?

Stephen Greet: 18:00

This is the hack here is that 90 plus percent of cover letters are not read. They will not get you the job, they will only lose you the job. Ok, so most of the time the cover letter is not read. But let's say a hiring manager does a pass of 100 applicants and they say, oh, let's shortlist these five. I really like these five. They're not reading all 100 cover letters, but they might be reading the cover letters of those five who got shortlisted right. So that's where your cover letter is geared towards and really the thing that matters is that opening paragraph. If you do a, dear sir, madam, I am highly interested in the role at your company that it's generic and the hiring manager is going to see right through that. Catch their attention in those first couple sentences. Make it highly specific to that role and that company. Be a little funny, Be engaging.

John Neral: 18:56

You are writing for a human and you want to grab their attention and hold on to it. All right, so we get rid of the generic. Here's the position I'm applying for, okay, and you're advising people to find a way to immediately hook them and stand out. Right, so there's a particular interest, data point or whatever, and I can hear my listener, steven, going I'm just going to have chat, gpt, write it, yep, all right. What's the reaction to that?

Stephen Greet: 19:33

The reality is that is not a bad place to start. You've read chat GPT messages. I've read chat GPT messages. I think most of us can read them and sense them from a mile away. So if you need some help with ideation, I think that's okay. But the voice should be your own right, because a recruiter can see through it, other people can see through it. The voice has to be your own. But I think, as a whole, for your cover letter, chatgpt is a great place to start, a great place to help you customize your cover letter based on your resume and your job. That's a tool that we have at BeamJobs. Right, you upload your resume, paste your job description. We can give you that first pass. Right, that generic ChatGPT first pass, but everyone could see through that. You have to add your own little flavor on top of that. That ChatGPT just misses. Otherwise you fall into that sort of generic eyes glass over category that you desperately don't want to be in desperately don't want to be in?

John Neral: 20:30

What would you tell someone who is hesitant or reluctant to put that big hook in at the front part of their cover letter or to come up with something funny and really grab their attention, because they're afraid that they're going to be perceived as being unprofessional or a joke or not being taken seriously? How would you help them get past that?

Stephen Greet: 20:50

So, first and foremost, you have to read the room right. If I'm applying for a role, let's say the Department of Defense, maybe miss the humor but talk about the emotional significance of the role you're applying to, right. But if you're applying to a tech company, that is, it's the hook, right. The data is unambiguous. The more you curate that, the more you can stand out, the more humor you can inject, the more likely you are to get an interview. And it does take reps right. I understand there's this hesitance to try to be a human being in the job application process because you're so afraid of failure. But consider the alternative right, You're going to get axed if you do the generic approach. Why not be a little funny with it, have a little fun with it, have a little humor, Go for it.

John Neral: 21:32

Well, what I like about your comment about reading the room in that regard is so often mid-career professionals will say, oh well, once I get to the interview I can let my personality out, but that can't happen until they get past the resume and the cover letter.

Stephen Greet: 21:47

Absolutely. And, john, put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager. You've read 10, 20 of these generic cover letters and then, finally, this little glimmer of light, this little humor that puts a smile on your face, right, what are you going to do as the hiring manager? You also are a human who wants to be entertained and doesn't want to read the generic cover letters. Just put yourself in their shoes and think of the little light that you'll inflict on their life that increases. The happier you make the hiring manager, the more likely you are to get interviewed. Just the hardcore facts.

John Neral: 22:16

Oh, absolutely. I always tell my clients you've got to find a way to get them interested in you rather than finding you interesting, but you've also got to find a way to be memorable.

Stephen Greet: 22:27

Absolutely, and the dear sir madam, I'm interested in XYZ. Rolex company is not quite it.

John Neral: 22:32

Yeah. So what's the best opening line to a cover letter you've seen in the last few months? Or you can share.

Stephen Greet: 22:41

This is a tough one. So this one was applying to one of the mattress companies, right, and they talked about how they weren't able to sleep because they couldn't stop thinking about this company, right, and then introduced their mattress and they had a beautiful night's sleep, right. So it's just, it's just going for it, right. It's like, don't, even if it's not funny, right, something that's personable, that can just inject some humor and light into the process is just generally highly recommended.

John Neral: 23:11

So, steven, before we start wrapping up here, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. I want you to look into your crystal ball. We're looking ahead in 2025, what do you see the job market and the hiring landscape particularly looking like this year, given everything we've seen so far in the 20s, what do you think the job market is going to particularly look like here in 2025?

Stephen Greet: 23:39

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. My guess is just as bad as anyone else's. I don't think it's going toer of bad news and my guess is just as good as, or just as bad as, anyone else is. I don't think it's going to get much better in the short term. I think we're still going to be playing the volume game. I think it's going to be a long time until there's meaningful pushback or resolution to this problem.

Stephen Greet: 23:57

We're in the early days of AI and AI has only exasperated this problem tenfold, right, and we're not quite at the point where there's going to be remedy. So I think it's going to be the same game that we've been playing, but I think that creates a ton of opportunity for someone who's a bit entrepreneurial and can take the bull by the horns right. If you are the person going to networking events and trying for those connections, you are in the minority and it gives you a major edge in your job search if you're willing to put yourself out there, right. Just look at it that way. It's frustrating. This is the landscape, but in this landscape there is massive opportunity because a lot of people aren't willing to do the in-person you know, boots on the ground, interactions that are necessary to really get yourself in front of the hiring manager.

John Neral: 24:41

I agree with you on that and I think we're in for a little bit of a slog in terms of companies continuing to take longer to hire talent, companies being more selective in terms of hiring talent.

John Neral: 24:53

But the other piece I want to call out here is we have to understand what the game is right. And if the market is telling us this is what the game is, a job candidate's desire to do something different, against the rules of the game, may not work to your advantage, right, I did. I did an episode in december about how to navigate the 30-minute interview, and one of the things I talk about is you don't get 31 minutes, yeah, just because you think you're going to go in and wow them with your personality and your jokes and they're going to love you. That doesn't get you an extra minute or five or 10 minutes because you're wonderful. That's not the game. So you have to kind of understand the parameters in which you're playing, and so much of our conversation today really focuses on know what you need to do but then execute on doing it specifically mid -career didn't internalize their success in the job search as a reflection of themselves.

Stephen Greet: 26:07

Because it is a game, right, it's a game that's completely independent of your self-worth and your ability to do the job. You have to play the game to be able to do the job. So I love that vernacular because I use it all the time.

John Neral: 26:17

That's good to know, all right. So, steven, we talked about a lot of stuff. If you had to share one piece of advice to help people build their mid-career GPS, what would you tell them?

Stephen Greet: 26:27

Put yourself out there right. Don't wait to network until you need a job. Start building those connections. A random coffee chat that you then maintain the relationship every second or third month can pay dividends throughout the years, right? So for me I think networking was a very confusing concept and then I just started doing it. It's just relationship building. Start building those relationships before you might need them and genuinely build the relationship without necessarily looking for some value immediately, because I promise you in the long term those relationships will compound and it'll make your next job search even easier.

John Neral: 27:02

Wonderful, all right. So, steven, I love all of that and I've so enjoyed our conversation today. If people want to connect you, find more about you and your company, I'm going to turn the mic over to you. My friend, tell us all the great places where people can find and connect with you.

Stephen Greet: 27:16

Check us out at BeamJobs B-E-A-M-J-O-B-S dot com. That's our website. We'll help you with your job search, help you with the resume, help you with your cover letter, and then feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. It's just Stephen Griet, s-t-e-p-h-e-n-g-r-e-e-t. I love to chat with you. Yeah, if you reach out anytime, I'm relatively active on there. But yeah, I would love to connect with anyone that's navigating a career search research or happy to help any way I can, and I really appreciate it, john.

John Neral: 27:43

Yeah, absolutely so, Stephen. Again, thanks so much for the conversation. It was great having you as a guest. I look forward to having you back at some time too. Yeah, I would love that.

Stephen Greet: 27:52

Thanks a lot, John.

John Neral: 27:53

All right, thanks. So, everybody, as you're thinking about my conversation with Stephen today, here's what I want you to take away with. You know you need a resume, you probably will need a cover letter for that job, and there certainly are tactical and strategic ways for you to get that resume more optimized get through the applicant tracking system. But if there's one big point that Stephen drove home today that I want to reiterate, it's this you got to network. Find a way to network that is most comfortable for you. Yeah, you're going to get a little uncomfortable putting yourself out there and asking, but lean into what Stephen said about leveraging your network and their second and third level connections. And I want to offer you this in closing Whenever you're networking or you're doing an informational interview, make sure you ask that person who else should I be speaking to? And then would you be willing to make me an introduction? And I guarantee you that's a big component to building your mid-career GPS. So until next time my friends, remember this you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day.

John Neral: 29:12

Thank you for listening to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform and, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrellcom for more information about how I can help you build your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnerrellcom for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Nerrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters. Thank, you.