Career Coaching Secrets

Cindy Jones: Mastering ATS-Friendly Resumes & AI with a Human Touch

• Davis Nguyen

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Host Rexhen Doda interviews Cindy Jones (CJ), a veteran career transition coach and LinkedIn consultant. CJ shares her personal journey from a layoff at 50, which ignited her passion for helping others, especially over-50 job seekers and women re-entering the workforce.

CJ emphasizes the power of a strong LinkedIn profile (with over 22,000 connections herself) and proactive networking over constantly updating resumes. She advocates for concise, ATS-friendly resumes and the "human touch" when using AI tools. Her business thrives on word-of-mouth referrals and community involvement.

Currently, CJ balances coaching with a full-time role, but aims to transition to full-time coaching within five years, driven by her desire to be the guide she wished she had.

Find Cindy Jones (CJ):


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Cindy Jones:

On the other hand, I'm really not a fan of redoing your resume for every single job posting because that That's what you're spending all your time doing. I would rather have you have a basic resume and that is good to good enough, have an outstanding LinkedIn profile because I think LinkedIn is as important or even more important than your resume. But I want you out the door and I want you networking. I want you talking to people. I want you to go into networking groups. I want you to be volunteering in your community because you never know who's going to connect you to that next job, right?

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, You'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Rejan, and today we're joined by Cindy Jones. Cindy is a career transition coach, a resume and LinkedIn consultant, as well as a professional speaker. And I'm really excited to have her on the show today. Welcome to the show, Cindy. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Cindy Jones:

Well, thank you so much. So I actually go by CJ. There's a lot of Cindy Joneses in the world. In fact, there were six at one of my last companies. So I started I'm going by CJ. I tell people there's a lot of Cindy Joneses, but I hope there's only one CJ that you remember. I have more than 35 years of healthcare marketing experience. I've worked in a variety of companies, both large and small, doing healthcare marketing. I am currently the director of creative services of a company based in the DFW area. I also have a side hustle as a career coach, a professional speaker, and I'm also the chairman of the board of a nonprofit here locally in the DFW area. So my story began with a More than 12 years ago, I got laid off from Aetna. I had been there almost 20 years and I had survived six layoffs or reorgs. I just didn't survive the seventh one. And so as I had to brush off my networking skills, I tell people I didn't have my resume on a floppy disk, but it was pretty close to that. I hadn't had to look for a job in a really long time. I took my outplacement courses and realized how important LinkedIn was. And I had about 383 people on LinkedIn at that time. So I decided I was really going to lean into LinkedIn. and see who I could connect with for that. And I had been working, quite frankly, 60 to 80 hours a week, so I hadn't really had any time to network to look for a new job, so... Some of the best advice I got from that career coach back then, that networking service was don't marry the job, just date them. And so I've been dating jobs for the last 12 years now. I have worked a variety of contract roles, full-time roles. I have been at my corporation, the corporation I'm at right now for three years. And so it has been, but I'm also, you know, what is my next step on my journey? I would love to be a full-time career coach someday, but we're not there quite yet. I need to pay off my mortgage and get some healthcare, right? coverage. So that's my future plan. So I really found so much in my transition. At that time I got laid off, I was almost 50 years old and that was just a very hard time to find a job after 50. I think it's even harder now than it had been. And so I, that is really what I focus my business on. I am, I really love helping people that have come through their career journey like I have, like they're over 50 and they have to find a new job. career brand new college grads because I really feel I have a couple of new college grads that are now in their 20s and they did not get as much from career counseling at their counseling centers in their college that I was as helpful and then but my heart is really with women in transition if a woman has had to go back into the workforce because of a divorce or a death in the family or some other reason one of my favorite stories is I had a friend of a friend who had recommended me and the woman came to me and she hadn't had a resume in 27 years. And on her resume, she put on their mom and she had put all the domestic, you know, engineer things that you can have for being a stay-at-home mom. And we talked it through. And I mean, no mom that I know is actually a stay-at-home mom. They don't stay at home. They do something. So I love reformatting their resume and their story about what they've done. You know, they have volunteered at school or they volunteered at church or they volunteered in their community. And how can we reframe that story so there's more than just what they put on a resume that's been a paid job? So I get most of my clients from local Facebook marketing groups, networking groups. I do a lot of business that is... word of mouth. And I've really become kind of a subject matter expert in my neck of the woods. I had three, like I said, 383 connections back 12 years ago. And today for today, I probably have about 22,000 connections on LinkedIn. That's how I found y'all's organization or y'all found me, I guess. So I love the power of LinkedIn. And I tell people all the time, it's not just when you're looking for a job that you should be on LinkedIn, you should be on LinkedIn every single day, because you don't ever know who you're going to connect with for the next, I I love to love to think that I am a connector. I actually have in my LinkedIn headline. I'm a connector of dots and people and dogs all based on a true story. So but I love making what is that next connection? Because you don't ever know who's going to give you that next job or that next opportunity. If it's a job or if it's a volunteer thing or something like that.

Rexhen Doda:

Do you own a dog?

Cindy Jones:

No, I do not. But I've actually helped other people adopt dogs through connections that I have made. So we're kind of dog free by choice. Yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

Well, I'd love to do that too.

Cindy Jones:

That'll work for a living. Yeah, kind of thing.

Rexhen Doda:

Amazing. So it's been about 15 or... It

Cindy Jones:

was just over 12 years. It was in 2013 that I got laid off.

Rexhen Doda:

So throughout these years, you have always been doing the career coaching part that is like your independent coaching business on the side, right?

Cindy Jones:

Yep. It's always a bit on the side. So yeah, I have some of my... said that the mom that had given me the resume, she had been a registered nurse and she had let her licensing expire. And so I talked her through it. I said, what would it take to get your license back? And it would be a couple of years and a certain amount of money. Well, during COVID and then post-COVID, the governor here in Texas set up a program that if you had ever had your RN or LVN license, you could reinstate that. And it was filling out a form online and paying $50. So she was able to reinstate her license that she had let lapse. And so she's now a school nurse so it was something to get her back into the into the field so but one of my other favorite stories is I have a my brother is a teacher and he has a co-worker that her husband was looking for a job in construction and another construction company had come to him and wanted him to apply well he didn't have a resume so my brother sent me a note on a Thursday afternoon said hey can you do an emergency resume so I started talking to the guy and I said is there any do you have anything do you have anything in a word doc that I can you know make pretty he's like I have never had, he was in his 50s and he'd never had a resume. So I had him write out, hand write out all the different jobs that he'd had in that 30 years. And he wrote it out on a legal paper. And then he scanned it. He scanned it and texted it to me. I retyped it. I put it in a Word doc. I prettied it up. And within a few hours, he had a resume to apply for the job. But he couldn't even apply for the job without a resume. So I really don't ever want a resume to be a barrier for someone getting, you know, getting that job. Into that story was he did get the job. So it was one of those of, you know, here his barrier that he couldn't even apply because it was an online application. But he was old school, right? He had always just taken in an application or been hired, you know, because people knew who he was. So I love those kinds of stories. I mean, I do help people that, you know, they like to pay me lots and lots of money to make their, you know, resume. But I think you can also make it too fancy, right? So I really try to work the middle of making it look good because you have to have good content on it, but I definitely recommend people not necessarily do a resume off of Canva or, you know, some of the other things that are coming through with AI because the, you know, the ATS systems can't read that. So it doesn't do you any good to make those resumes so very pretty if the system can't, if it's never going to get to that recruiter, right? Because it's kicked out because it's got too much format on it.

Rexhen Doda:

So just a quick question, since we're on this topic, if there's, what is like a simple way, say If you're not using Canva, if you're not using any of these resume builders, what's a resume builder that's ADS approved?

Cindy Jones:

So, I mean, you can do things within Word that are pretty simple. There's pretty simple templates. I actually like one that's called Basic Template. And so depending on how– and this is something that I have learned through the years. So when I got laid off 12 years ago, you could have a page on a resume for every 10 years experience you had. So I had a three-page resume at that time. And as– and this is going to– if it doesn't sound correct– As the recruiters have gotten younger and there've been more screening tools, you have to really cut down your resume. So two pages is maximum. So a new college grad could have a one pager, but if you have any kind of experience, more than five to seven years experience, you could have a second page. I'd rather tell a better story and get everything, but you don't have to include every single thing you've ever done. Make sure you have the right information. Make sure you make the most of that real estate because most likely you're only gonna get six to eight seconds before that recruiter is going to put you into the no pile you want to be on the top of the yes pile right so so i there's a there are some online um and i have become a fan of ai i am an ai champion within my company um we are rolling out pilots for a writing program called writer but we also do chat gpt enterprise for our entire company and i'm a champion for that um so there are some things that i really like ai to to help me write like do a summary or put things in a bullet points or that kind of thing. But you also need to have that human touch. You cannot just regurgitate what AI has told you, slap it into a document and then send it on. On the other hand, I'm really not a fan of redoing your resume for every single job posting because that's what you're spending all your time doing. I would rather have you have a basic resume and that is good to good enough, have an outstanding LinkedIn profile because I think LinkedIn is as important or even more important than your resume, but I want you out the door and I want you networking. I want you talking to people. I want you to go into networking groups. I want you to be volunteering in your community because you never know who's going to connect you to that next job, right? So these folks that are sending out hundreds and hundreds of resumes, why are you not getting any traction? But have you gone to a networking group and saying, hey, this is what I'm looking for? I think also it's very important to really have like your, you know, 30 second elevator speech about what you know how to do. People do not have the time to listen to you give your whole life story so but again are you talking to people in your community are you talking to them at church or at a school function or you don't ever know who knows somebody right the reason i have the job i have now was someone that i used to work with at Aetna. She now works at the company I work at, Vizient, and she convinced me about three years ago, actually, she's like, you should come apply. Well, the story with Vizient is in 2013, when I got laid off, I went to Vizient and interviewed as a contractor and didn't get the job. Flash forward to 2019, when I had gotten laid off again from another company and I was interviewing with Vizient. I had two people that had taken my resume. And in fact, actually, I was talking to that recruiter at the time. And she said, I don't even see that you've applied for this job. I'm like, I don't even know what the job is. Because two different people had put my resume in front of that recruiter's desk and she's like will you actually apply for the job while we're here on the on the interview yes i can do that while you're while we're waiting went ahead and did that went through all the interview process and then i came in second and so i went along and i said okay vision two and done not even one and done two and done right never going back Excuse me. So my friend reached out to me in 2022. She's like, CJ, you should try Visian again. I like I have tried. I have been there, been there, done that, did not get the T-shirt because I didn't get the job. And she said, give it another try. And I did. And I got interviewed. And ironically, in my line of in my line of chain of chain of command, I'm not in the military, but my boss's boss is the guy that didn't pick me back in 2019. Ironically. So when I show up in 2022, he's like, why do I know you? I'm like, because we had a lot of interviews back in 2019.

Rexhen Doda:

All right. So, yeah, I wanted to ask you, like, since you're doing this part time, what are some goals that you're working towards, let's say, for the next one to three years? Are you thinking that eventually you could go full time? I

Cindy Jones:

would. Yeah, I would. I would love that. I am. I tell people and this gets a little off, but I am the chairman of the board of a nonprofit called Six Stones in the DFW area. And I tell people, you know, what I do at Vizient fills my bank account. But what I do with Six Stones is as that nonprofit charity fills my heart account. And I'm able to do things. We have a mentorship program that we work with adults. So I teach classes on LinkedIn, resume, networking through that course. But then we also have a program for high school students that are in the... that are in the alternative schools. And so I had a really great experience the last time I taught that class. And it was a small class. We had three girls in there. And this one girl, she's like, I don't even know how to dress for an interview. Because she was a first generation, you know, going, she was actually going to college and she had some interviews she needed to do. And so I talked her through it. I said, you know, I want you to go to Goodwill or Walmart or Target. I want you to get a pair of black pants. I want you to get some kind of colored shirt. I want you to get some kind of top, but it doesn't have to be a suit jacket. I want you to get some closed toed shoes. I want you to put on some makeup, but not too much. And then I want you to get a portfolio and I want you to print off your resume and bring it in. And that was what, 30 seconds of time. But she had never had set never set had someone sit down with her and say, this is what I need to know. So I love doing those personal conversations about that kind of thing. I laugh with my husband, he goes, What would it take to be this full time job? I'm like, if I could get 80,000 clients to pay me $1 each, you know, maybe I can go into full time business. So I am not like I said, I'm not there yet. And I don't do active marketing. It's really a calling for me right now. But I really would love to be a a full-time career coach once that opportunity presents itself based on where I am in my life. And I hope it's probably in the next five years is my hope. But I do love helping people to get to whatever their next chapter is. And I mean, not to be, you know, I'm not blowing smoke, but I really wish I'd had someone like me to be the guide when I was looking 12 years ago. So that's truly why I'm called to do what I'm doing. But yes, if I could have the monetary part of it too, that'd be great. Someday.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. And so what about investments? Have there been any investments so far on the side? What investments have you done so far that you feel like actually they were worth it?

Cindy Jones:

So I belong to LinkedIn Premium. I really feel that was a good investment even when I was not doing this as a side business. I do have an online online AI generation resume program that I use that is, it helps me with the formatting and that kind of thing. And it makes it just so much easier. I still use Word occasionally, but Word is just, you know, you have to, it's more difficult. I have found this other program that I really like, but you have to watch it because AI can, you know, have hallucinations and just make some stuff up. So you've always got to have that human touch within the AI. But I think there's so much more. I mean, I redid my LinkedIn profile. by throwing in a chat GPT. So I, you know, my LinkedIn headline is ChatGPT. My LinkedIn summary is I did the summary based on what I could put in there for ChatGPT. So I think AI, I mean, just I have done right now the basics as a, you know, I really want to, I'd love to have my, the money I make to pay for my LinkedIn premium, my other software, you know, kind of thing. But I have, like I said, I haven't really done any kind of advertising. It's definitely word of mouth. It's free advertising through Facebook groups and next door and that kind of thing. But yeah, I'm really excited to see in the next five years what AI opportunities come about, because I think it's just taking it to this next level. It's going to be, you know, the word, I think having an Excel, I mean, not Excel, sorry, a word resume is still good enough, but it could be that it's not going to be good enough five years from now, right? So I think you really have to keep up with the times with the technology that's going on.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Yeah, I really like that. And I totally also agree that ChatGP can be very helpful and also the premium account within LinkedIn, also very useful. What would you say like right now is a challenge for you or like what is holding you back from going full time, let's say, apart from like monetary, is it like not enough leads to come

Cindy Jones:

by? Yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's, I would really have to hunker down and make it a full-time job, finding the full-time jobs, right? You know, kind of thing. There's something to be self-employed. I mean, you're selling yourself every single day I'm not, again, financially, but I mean, my biggest challenge is health care. And because of what the health care costs are for being on the marketplace, I'm also a licensed insurance agent. So I have some skin in the game about you have to have health insurance, right? You know, you cannot be uninsured. So I think once that is settled with a, you know, health care program that will be because it's age based. I will have more freedom and flexibility to do what I need, what I would love to do. But again, you know, you can also get health care if you work at Starbucks. I'm not there yet. It's not a balance yet. I mean, I still love the full time job I have. I mean, I love what I love, what I do in my full time job as director of creative services is I get up every morning and I say, what can we solve for today? And it could be something simple about, you know, I'm proofing some kind of document. Yesterday I had a 30 minute conversation about the proper use and hex hex codes of a certain color that weren't reproducing well on our website. You know, those different kinds of things. So I love the variety of what I do with my job, but I do love the coaching. I love having the individual conversations with folks and also doing the group, doing the group training through mentoring. I think so many people are just sort of overwhelmed or I talk to a lot of people that are my age and they're like, oh, I haven't, I've got a resume, but I haven't updated it in years. Like if nothing else, you never know when things could change in a meeting, right? And all of a sudden you've got to have an updated resume. And you all tell people that all the time. I said, even if you're not looking, have an updated resume because you don't know, A, things could change, or B, someone could reach out to you. A recruiter could reach out to you and say, hey, I'd love to have a conversation with you about X, Y, Z. Well, you don't want to go, oh, wait, I've got to go get my resume updated. I'm like, I mean, of course, it's the cobbler's children having no shoes, right? I probably updated my resume six months ago, but I probably need to go ahead and do it again because you just, like I said, you just never know, but you don't want to be caught unaware. I don't ever want to be like that guy that couldn't apply for a job because he didn't have a resume. I don't know if that really answered your question. It's a few years from now, but I want to start building. I have a website. I do pay for a website, but again, I get no business from my website. I'm also going, do I need to keep up that website? Is that worth my investment? I also want to prove that I'm actually a valid business. I'm not just doing something out of my garage. For

Rexhen Doda:

my From my perspective, I think you definitely need to make use of LinkedIn. You do have a lot of followers there. I

Cindy Jones:

love LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn nerd. I am on there every single day. And that's one thing I learned from my outplacement service so many years ago. They're like, and I don't know how the algorithm is now, but it's like you really need to be on and liking, commenting or sharing or writing original posts every single day. And that's how the algorithm, that's how the search. But I love talking to somebody. at a coffee shop or whatever, or I do virtual training. I do help people around the country. But just walking through their LinkedIn and saying, have you thought about XYZ? This is how you customize your URL. This is how you do your summary. I have this one former client, and this was during COVID. And He could not take his own photo to save his life. Every time he gave me a photo, it looked like a mugshot. And he was an accountant. And so I took him to Starbucks because it was one of the few things open. And I made him put on a suit coat and a tie. And I said, I will take your picture. And they had kind of a cool background behind him. And so I kind of did it to this him to the side. So I had a little bit of a background and everything. And I sent it to him. He goes, I don't like this. I don't want to be off center and I don't want to have the background. I'm like, fine, we'll just put up you're gonna look like you have a mugshot again, at least, but I took the photo. But I mean, I don't understand why, especially in this day and age with how you can have AI tools help you have a good LinkedIn photo. Do not have a LinkedIn photo that you've cut your husband out or your wife out because it's your wedding picture or your kids are in it or your dog is in it. That is not appropriate. That's your Facebook profile photo. That's not your LinkedIn headline photo. So I get a little adamant about that kind of stuff. Like it's hard enough to find a job don't make it any harder, you know, I mean, by doing something that's not right.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, definitely. And, but I have to say, like, from the coaches that I've interviewed, with the number of followers that you have already, is already in, like, top 15 to top 10%.

Cindy Jones:

Really? Okay.

Rexhen Doda:

So yeah, definitely.

Cindy Jones:

Well, that's good to know.

Rexhen Doda:

An area to analyze and look into, and maybe put some more content.

Cindy Jones:

So how I grew my, I mean, that might be something to talk about, how I grew my LinkedIn, like I at 183 back in 2013 and I started going through my LinkedIn and I'm like if you and I had 10 people in common who was I going to connect with and then I'd send a soft a warm chat kind of thing and then I upped it to 25 and then I upped it to you know 50 to 100 one of my favorite stories again is I ran into a recruiter a networking event in Dallas on a Thursday morning or something like that and I mean it was already a pain to have to drive to this networking event why are we doing it at breakfast the traffic sucks all the things right and he and I had 15 connections in common and he's like how do we not know each other yet and I'm like well because you're in Dallas and I choose to not come here unless I absolutely have to but again you don't know who's going to connect you to whatever your next journey is you know whatever the next chapter is I'm very big about that so but yeah I mean I do have 22,000 connections and I have I've started doing more with follows because LinkedIn tops you off at 30,000 so I'm a little bit more selective of who I connect with now if you I do see I mean, it's your own choice of who you connect with, right? But if you don't have a photo, I'm not going to connect with you. If you don't have a lot of people and you're just brand new, I mean, one of my new clients, she had never even been on LinkedIn. I was her first connection. I'm like, that was fun to be her first connection, right? But I'm like, I always challenge people. I'm like, are you at the 500 mark? Because if you... if you get to 500, that opens up some more doors, you know? So, but yeah, so, I mean, just that whole, just that connection kind of thing of the importance of having that conversation. So, I mean, back to 2013, when I was out looking for job, you know, I would reach out to people that I had worked with that kind of stuff. So when I got laid off in 20, I mean that it was not a joke, but the day I got laid off, it was a very sad day. Of course, I called my husband crying a little bit sad and he goes, what do you want to do? I'm like, I want to drink a margarita on a patio. So we went and drank a margarita on the patio. And then I figured out where I was going to find the next job.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you visit joinpurplecircle.com.