Hi Realists! 👋

Welcome to Cup of Ambition, Volume 7!

In this edition, you’ll get the scoop on:

‼️‼️ 9-to-5 Dilemma: I don’t love work, what’s wrong with me?

🪞  You are your best hype person.

❤️‍🔥 What is an ATS compatible resume?

🌞 Summer Vibes.

9-to-5 Dilemma

“I’ve been working in my current profession for a while, but I’ve never ‘fallen in love’ with what I do. I look around and it feels like other people like their job, some people even love work?

I’ve never felt that connection to my job. It doesn’t mean that I am miserable every day, but I’m never that excited about it or fulfilled by doing work related things. Have I missed out on something by just sticking with what I know, even if I really don’t like it? Am I supposed to find meaning and purpose in my work?”

Am I broken?”

-Work is Mediocre At Best.

_____________________________________________________

Dear Work is Mediocre,

You’ve stumbled on the the choice of two paths* that we all face in our career:

Path 1: Use work to fulfill my purpose.

Path 2: Use work to fund my purpose.

(Technically, there are three paths. The third path… the unicorn path, is finding work that funds and fulfills your purpose, but for many people, that’s a privilege, opportunity, or job we may never have. Often those jobs that fuel purpose don’t pay well, are unstable, burn you out, or make you resent what you thought you loved to do).

You might have learned growing up that people should love work. They should care deeply about it, talk about it all the time, get their pride from it, and respect it.

Maybe you watched a parent or grandparent find their identity in their work and they carried that identity with them through their lives. Work solidified their place in the world and provided validation when a job was done well. They were an “ad man” since 1964 and referred to themselves as an “ad man” until their final days because it was a great pride in their lives.

I don’t know if people loved their jobs back in the days of more “precedented times” or if they just loved the security. Jobs back then came with pensions, benefits, regular pay increases, and sometimes promotions. The world now is more chaotic, unstable, fast paced, and companies continue to lack empathy and awareness that people are human, regardless of their job title.

At some point we all have to decide where and how we’ll find connection with our purpose. For some, that purpose has been clear for a long time— their personal mission to helping others, to a cause, or to a profession has been their focus. Whether that’s through medicine, community causes, mental health, creativity, art, or other channels that light them on fire.

People who feel this passion are drawn to work because it gives them space to fulfill their purpose, and sometimes they’re willing to engage in that work even when it’s hard or doesn’t pay well because the reward is fulfilling their deeper mission. This is Path 1: using work to fulfill your purpose.

But that’s not the only path. Path 2 is equally valid, and it’s about using work to fund your purpose. Maybe your job isn’t where you find meaning or excitement, but it’s what enables you to pursue what truly matters to you outside of work. It gives you the financial stability to explore hobbies, passions, relationships, or causes that bring you joy. For some, this path means work is a means to an end—a way to support a lifestyle, family, or personal goals that are more aligned with their passions.

There’s nothing broken about you if you haven’t found that deep connection with your job. In fact, you’re in the majority. Most people view work as a way to make a living rather than as the primary source of their identity or fulfillment. The key is understanding which path you’re on and making peace with it.

If you’re on Path 2 and comfortable with it, then there’s no need to feel like you’re missing out. However, if you find yourself yearning for something more, it might be time to explore small shifts—like seeking new projects, learning new skills, or even finding a different role that aligns more with your interests. This doesn’t necessarily mean a complete career overhaul; sometimes, even minor changes can bring a renewed sense of purpose and satisfaction.

Many Path 2 people seek to fulfill their purpose through volunteering, donating to causes they care about, writing, content editing, making art on weekends, gardening, parenting, being a great friend or partner, or other ways that align with who they are, what they believe, and how they can best share their gifts and mission with the world. They find love and fulfillment there, not at work.

Ultimately, the goal isn’t to force yourself to love your job but to ensure that your life, as a whole, feels fulfilling. Whether you find that fulfillment in your work or outside of it, what matters most is that it works for you.

You Are Your Own Best Hype Person.

At some point in your career, you’re going to have to build a persuasive case on why you’re the better option to hire, promote, pay more, invest in, retain, etc. You may leave this to your manager and assume that they know what you do and how good you are. They’ll advocate for you, right?

Even if you have the most supportive and engaged manager and internal advocates in the world, they still won’t know most of what you do and all the valuable contributions you make — unless you tell them and sell them.

Just because you do the work doesn’t mean people will know about or recognize the impact of what you did. Someone has to tell them why what you do matters, and the best person to do that is… you.

Self-advocacy and hyping yourself up isn’t about pride. It’s not about puffing yourself up, being egotistical, bigheaded, or making yourself look better than you actually are.

You cant still be humble and hype yourself up. Your humility keeps you from self-advocating and hyping yourself 24/7.

The goal is to identify and sell the unique value that you contribute. It’s about saying, “Here are all my accomplishments; here is what I’ve been up to; here are the ways that I’ve been growing and will continue to grow.” You demonstrate to others why you’re worth it and you show up with the receipts to back every claim you make.

In other words, sell them on the value and impact you’ve generated by doing what you do best.

Keeping a Wins + Impact Doc prepares you to advocate for yourself.

A Wins + Impact Doc is a running list of all your accomplishments and successes. It’s a place where you keep track of your growth, and regularly jot down the things you’re proud of doing.

Your Wins + Impact Doc is not a resume or a formal self assessment — but it is game changing for those too.

The primary audience of your doc is always yourself — it’s for you to know what you’re doing and why it matters, so that you can present yourself well and resell the stories to other audiences. It also helps you remember the cumulation of all the things you do daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly that matter.

What goes in a Wins + Impact Doc?

All of the major and minor steps you take in your work that move you ahead, teach you something, generate an impact, achieve a goal, or build a new skill.

• Projects you’ve led or contributed to. 

• Feedback from mentorship and coaching.

• Client, manager, or peer shout-outs and recognition.

• New tools, systems, methodologies, or processes you’ve learned.

• Leadership opportunities you’ve engaged in.

• Areas where you filled in or stretched to cover a gap.

• Blog posts and talks relevant to your work.

• Your involvement in recruiting and interviewing. 

• Valuable contributions you’ve made.

• Significant moments of growth.

• Outcomes, KPI's, goal attainment.

How do you keep a Wins + Impact Doc?

Ultimately, the doc is only useful if it works for you, so follow whatever process and format suits you best.

If you want a FREE copy of the Wins + Impact Tracker I share with clients, send me a note and I’ll drop a copy to you.

That said, a few things to consider:

• Update your doc regularly. You aren’t going to remember details in a month or in a few years when you want to update your resume. Figure out a cadence that works well for you; I use a weekly calendar reminder to update my Wins doc.

• Your doc should be easy to edit. There should be a low barrier to adding information on the fly, or you’ll never keep your doc updated. Don’t worry too much about formatting or making things look nice! Your doc is not the final product. You’ll use it to craft other things like resumes or self-review forms, and that’s what you’ll spend time on perfecting.

• Use whatever format works best for you. Your doc might just be a running list of bullet points, or it could be split up by goals or projects. Your doc could be a spreadsheet, a markdown file, or a presentation filled with gifs. Pick whatever will make it easiest for you to keep it up to date!

• Make sure it’s your personal file, not a work file. Remember to follow any company privacy practices and policies. You don’t have to include names or confidential information to keep track. Notes as simple as “received finding free audit for largest audit of the year— never been done in the history of the company.”

The Real Story on “ATS-Compatible” Resumes.

Don’t get sucked into the bait-and-click world of “ATS Compatibility” and “Keyword ATS friendly templates” rabbit hole. Most of what comes through in a Google search or a LinkedIn feed about resumes centers around the myths and inaccuracies of an applicant tracking system.

I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this...

Resume writers or companies who are making you fearful of your resume not being "ATS compatible" are just trying to sell you.

I had a client this week that purchased resume support from one of the big resume mills and it cost them about $750. As part of their sales process the mill promises free feedback on your resume from an expert resume writer and a “personalized resume”.

The feedback they shared included this statement: APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEMS CANNOT READ PDF AND MAY STRUGGLE WITH WORD DOCS. Their recommendation? Send it as a .txt file.

❓ ❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓

Please don't send your resume as a .txt file. When the recruiter and hiring manager see the raw, messy, unformatted .txt file you submitted, they're going to quickly move past your resume and wonder if you wrote it in dos (that’s disc operating system for those who are blessed to be younger than me!).

There's a 5 second test to tell if your resume will be parsed appropriately into an ATS:

1. Open your resume in a .pdf format.

2. Use the ctrl + all (ctrl + a) to select all the text in your document.

3. If you do this, and all of the text selects, including text in a header, footer, or other internal formatting... it is ATS compatible and will parse.

Parsing is nothing more than the system copying and pasting sections into the appropriate space within the software. Remember, an applicant tracking system is a contact management system at its core. It’s seeking to input high volumes of information into the right places in the system so recruiters and hiring teams can sort through, disposition candidates, and keep records.

Most applicant tracking systems, including Taleo (the most commonly used ATS in the US), have no issue with .doc, .docx, or .pdf file formats.

When you upload your resume to Taleo, it will likely go through an optical character recognition (OCR) software that converts your PDF or Word document. This is where graphics and heavy formatting make it really hard for the applicant tracking system to find what it needs, so it could parse oddly into the system, but it will not reject you because of that.

Most systems will ask you to double check the parsing to make sure they got it right before you submit your application. Every major ATS displays your resume to the recruiter, which is what recruiters look at. When I was in Talent & Recruiting, I always preferred to tab through resumes— scrolling through the candidate profiles with text boxes was too time consuming. I can’t imagine any Recruiter preferring to tab through text boxes instead of resumes.

Bottomline: Your time and resources are best spent optimizing the content of your resume, not narrowing in on file compatibility, paying for “keyword scanners,” or promises of “beating the bots.”

Summer Priorities 🌞

More farmer’s markets on a perfect 75 degree & sunny day, please!

Dahlias and peaches are in season and a local bakery is serving up the most amazing triple berry croissant you’ve ever had. I don’t want to hear any fall talk right now, I can’t imagine what I’m going to do when I can’t get my weekly produce, eggs, and baked goods at the Montgomery Farmer’s Market, just outside of Cincinnati, OH!

Dollyism.

Don’t Be a Stranger!

Like my content? Tired of always talking about how much you hate your job anytime you hang out with friends or family? Think more people need to hear what I say?

3 Ways to Grow Our Networks:

1) Connect with me on LinkedIn!

2) Like, share, and engage with my content.

3) Refer anyone who tells you they hate their job to me! Refer a new client, spin the prize wheel, and we both win!

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