Building Your Professional Brand in Public Health

ASHLEY NANTHAVONGSA-MOSLEY:
We will also be recording the session.

Welcome everyone. My name is Ashley Natavonksa, Mosley, senior analyst, workforce here at ASTHO, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Thanks so much for joining us today. This webinar is hosted by ASTHO, and we're excited to have Heather Krasna here with us in today's session. We'll dive into…she will dive into personal branding. How to define and develop your own personal brand to stand out in the public health field, dabble in some interview or resume items. This webinar is going to help equip you with tools and strategies to confidently present yourself, your personal brand to potential employers.

Heather Krasna is a public health workforce subject matter expert that we love to lean on, and she is also the associate dean at Columbia School of Public Health and a career counselor, also the author of A Hundred Careers in Public Health and a tremendous help when we created PublicHealthCareers.org. So we're super excited to have her here today and share her expertise in public health, career, development and help you all provide some amazing advice. So, Heather is going to go over her agenda and housekeeping items and I will see you all back when Q and A comes towards the end of this webinar. So I'll kick it over to you, Heather.

HEATHER KRASNA:
Thanks so much, Ashley. It's lovely to be here, and thanks for inviting me to do this presentation. I am really, really happy to be here, and I have a lot of content to talk about, and some opportunities for some interaction. And just as a housekeeping thing, please feel free to just put any questions you have in the chat, and I'll keep an eye on that, so that I can address those as they come up. You also can hold them till the end, but I'm happy to take any questions, comments, etc., as we go through this presentation today, and there will be a few times where I might ask you some questions, and so there will be a chance to interact and engage with each other. And again, thanks everybody for being here today.

So, the topic today is building your professional brand in public health. And I think this is a very timely kind of topic, because, as everybody knows, public health is going through a lot right now. I feel like I could have said that every year for the last, I guess six years, five years, but especially now, there's a lot of change. And if you are entering this job market in this very uncertain time, with so many changes, it can be really helpful to think about how you want to present yourself. What's important to you? How do you, kind of, craft a message that's going to be compelling and help you stand out in this job market?

So, without further ado, I'm going to talk about our agenda. I'm going to first start out with talking about “what is personal brand and why does it matter?” Then we'll talk about how to identify your favorite strengths and skills. And how to identify your target audience, meaning, you know, who is it that you're trying to connect with? What organizations do you really admire? Are there specific individuals you want to try to connect with? We'll talk about your written materials, the most famous of which is your resume, as well as LinkedIn. I'll go into detail about that, and also online presence.

And then some of the verbal marketing of yourself, which is commonly called the “elevator pitch,” basically because it's what you would say if you are lucky enough to be in the elevator with someone you really admire, or someone in your favorite organization. And so you only have, like 30 seconds or so to make a statement to somebody.

So, what is personal, brand? I just want to make sure that you're seeing the slides transition. I think it's…I think we're good. I just want to make sure. But if not, let me know. So, what is personal brand?

Well, what is a brand? Here are just a few examples of brands, and I don't want to get too commercial or capitalist, or anything, but you can see that some of these brands are so famous that even if you just see the color of the brand, for instance, you will immediately remember what brand it is. I can think of this when I go to like the bank. Chase Bank has a very specific shade of blue, and if you're looking for the ATM machine or something, you'll look for that color, and that's how you find the ATM.

So here are just a few famous brands, and I would just say, Let's pick one, you know, out of the blue. Let's pick Disney as an example. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear Disney? Anybody can put something in the chat. It brings up an image, at least for me. There's probably a bunch of images. But if anyone wants to just share like, what's something that pops up for you as when you think of Disney.

I see some folks in the chat. Ears. That's great, exactly. I was thinking of Mickey Mouse. So you know, some people might think of some of the princesses, some of the famous Disney princesses. So it immediately gives you an image, right? So, these are famous brands. What about public health brands?

We don't think of public health as a brand, or a person as having a personal brand. And again, I don't want to be super capitalist here and say…but we want to think of ourselves as like, what's the image you want someone to have when they think of you? We want it to be a positive image. So, when we think about public health, within public health, public health is a wonderful field. It's very broad. It's very, very diverse, you know. We could think the first thing is okay. Eat your vegetables right? We want to have healthy food, you know. Drink clean water. These are things that we, you know, breathing good, clean air, you know. Maybe we think of a scientist. We think of somebody who's in a lab, you know, sequencing the COVID, you know, virus, or whatever. You know, these are all things that might pop to your mind when you think of a lot of people. By the way, if you were to say “public health” they might think of hand washing or wearing a mask during COVID. But a lot of people just have no idea, and they don't come up with an image. But if you're in the field, these are just some ideas, you have like worker, safety is a part of public health. Research can be part of public health.

So what about for yourself? For the personal brand? So what we think of a personal brand is, is basically: what is that value proposition? What are you giving? So we're only thinking about how you benefit the other person, and that other person is hopefully an employer who has a job that you'd really like to apply to, or even an internship, it could be. If you're going on for further education, you know, what is it that you are going to bring to that school that you might attend next?

So you know we're thinking of that same image. What is an image that you want to have to come to somebody's mind? Not Mickey Mouse, right? But what is some image that you want to evoke, and it can be some verbal or even nonverbal feelings that people have when they think about you.

So you know, when you think about Mickey Mouse, right? The image comes up. But there's a lot of other feelings that show up around that image, about being a kid or having fun or going to an amusement park. You know, being with family. These are kind of like the Disney sort of feelings that people sometimes have. So if you want to have a good personal brand you want to sort of think about, “what is the feeling I want people to have when they see my name, or when they see me walking down the street,” or something like that. So you know, if I run into somebody, what is the image I want to evoke for them?

And so it's basically all of the associations, feelings, beliefs, expectations that people may have about you. And you know, if you're at the beginning of your career. This gives you lots of opportunity to sculpt this personal brand. So what makes a great personal brand?

One thing is, it has to be true to you. You don't want to go through life trying to be somebody that you're not. So, you know, hopefully, when someone thinks of you as helpful, hopefully, that's something you want to aspire to be. You want to help others. That's part of your personal brand, is being a helper.

Does it? Does it make sense, you know? Maybe you, maybe you have different qualities, and you have to think about, “do they go together?” Does your message make sense as a package, you know? Maybe you are an enthusiastic, passionate, mission-driven helper. Right? That's a very different brand from innovative, analytic, analytical, entrepreneurial data analyst. Those are two very different sounding people. Could you be a really passionate, mission-driven, data analyst? Totally. That's a different flavor. So, you want to think about, “does this all make sense?”

Now let me just say that in real life people do not have linear career pathways. It's very rare that I see somebody where they did step one, step, two, step three, and they all fit in a row and made sense. And especially now, now in this sort of unpredictable job market, you may not be able to do exactly your dream job right away. You may have to be flexible and try something that is not necessarily on-brand for your personal brand in the short term, but over the longer term, you can keep your eye on that vision of making a difference for public health and aim to get there. And it may be today, it may be tomorrow, maybe in a little while, but you know, think about how you can structure what you have been doing, your activities, even volunteering, so that it fits into, like, your longer term goals, so it makes sense. Is it compelling? Does it make people remember you and make you a little different? Now, everybody is unique, right? So, thinking about what are some things that might make you a little different, or you've had a different experience from, from maybe typical.

So how do we come up with all these ingredients? First thing is to start thinking about choosing a public health career. And again, this may be short term or long term, and you may not get all three of these ingredients right away. But I like to think of every career as having three ingredients. So start thinking about what are some things that are part of these three ingredients.

So one of the first of these three ingredients that makes up a career for many people is the mission, the topic, the subject matter, something you're passionate about, passionate about for a lot of people. This is like, “the reason I chose to enter public health is because I care about babies. I care about having clean water. I care about there being fairness and equity and people having access to what they need to stay healthy.” So I'm going to guess that some folks here today are very mission driven, so I would love to have, again, for folks in the room just to write in the chat: what is a mission area or a subject, or a population, or a public health challenge or opportunity that you're passionate about. Is it…it could be something that's on the screen here. Cancer prevention, access to healthcare, serving a specific community, a certain neighborhood, mental health, trauma and addiction, very compelling, absolutely, and in huge need right now. Health system-strengthening. That's a very awesome. It's a much more, I guess, it's a bigger picture. These two things are connected, by the way.

But yes, full bellies. That's a very clear image, isn't it? I love that image, making sure people are able to access healthy food. They're not in a food desert. They're not going hungry. Amazing, you know. So this could be a big picture topic like the health system-strengthening, health policy, things like that. Or it can be a very clear, specific mission area. And you know what? By the way, there are people who are not totally mission driven, even in public health.

There are two other really important ingredients. So if you can't choose a specific mission, this is totally okay, you don't have to only have one. You can just say, “you know what, I want to make the world healthier. I don't really care exactly how.”

But then there's the second ingredient, the skills or job function. What are you actually doing all day long? What are some of the skills or tasks that you enjoy? What are some skills or tasks that you really don't enjoy? This is also just as helpful to find out. Is there a task that you would really love to not have to do ever again? I have a long list of those tasks. To be honest, there's tasks that I know I can't do. I could never be a nurse as an example, because I could do public health. I can write books about public health, but I am a little squeamish, and I could never work in a hospital. I couldn't, you know. I won't faint if I see blood, but I just can't be a direct healthcare provider, right? That's just not what I can do. I'd rather not have to do a lot of accounting and budgeting and bookkeeping if anyone else could take care of that for me, I would be so happy, I would delegate that if I possibly can. I can do it. I'm not good at it, I find it really annoying. But guess what? I'm very passionate about education and teaching and coaching, and coming up with creative ideas and writing. I could do those things all day and be totally happy.

So, what are some things that you...okay…somebody puts in the chat, “progress notes kind of suck.” I get that. Yep. So again, I might be good at the progress notes. Actually, I just couldn't put any sutures in. I would just mess that up, totally. So think about a skill or a task that you like to do, and I’d love somebody to, again, you know, volunteer to write in the chat. What is something you love to do something that you, you maybe have done in AmeriCorps service, or in a part-time job, or volunteering?

Listening to folks and writing their stories and reading them back. Wow! Okay, such a valuable skill. There's a lot of great talkers. There's not enough listeners. That's one of these proverbs, that's why we have two ears and only one mouth. We should be listening twice as much as we're talking. I need to take this advice myself.

Anybody else want to share a skill that you love to use? Training people and doing outreach. We've got some great extroverts in this group! This is very nice. There's plenty of opportunities for introverts, extroverts. Things that you love to do, whether that's by yourself or in a community. So, these are so great, these are awesome, helping people increase their self-efficacy. That's great. We have a couple of people who are excellent listeners here. Writing documents, terrific.

Some people, I know would cry all day if they had to write documents. Other people can do that and be really happy and keep on doing that. So, you know, everybody is a little bit different. So, start to write, write down some notes. You're not going to be tested on this or anything. But just start to think about, what are these skills that you really, really like? Turning stories into numbers. Very cool, excellent.

Now, there's one more ingredient which is a really helpful one, and sorry as a career coach, I always get annoyed when people do career assessments that leave this part out, because then, you know, besides, being passionate about a mission and being able to use your favorite skills, there's also the reality that we have to pay bills. We need to have salary. It's great if we have some sort of benefits. It's nice if we have work/life balance. We don't have to work three different jobs. It's nice if we feel included and loved or appreciated in the organization where we work, that we don't feel somehow left out or marginalized by our colleagues at work. Some folks have a geographic location, you need to be in a specific area. Your family is there. You cannot relocate around the world. So again, if anybody wants to share one of these things that's important to you. You know, you don't have to. This can get a little bit more personal. Sometimes these things are basically like the parameters, like you cannot take a job unless it pays a specific, basic, a minimal amount that you need to live. Or it's in a certain geographic location.

I also work with tons of folks who have different disabilities. And there's some jobs where you can do the job with no problem, with just some minor accommodations. And then there's other jobs that are just like they sound awesome, but with the disability it's, it's going to be really hard to do. And so thinking about, “what can you do? What are you good at? What are some like boundaries?”

Work/life balance and family? Yeah, that's a that's a common one, right? Having some time for yourself. Absolutely. So, of course we want to get the dream job that has all three. We may not get that right away. I like to say, if you can get two out of three, then you're in good shape. And it can take a while to get all three things, and so you know…but starting to write this out for yourself is really, really important to think about.

You know, what do you like to do? What are the tasks you're good at, or that you would want to do? What are some mission areas you like? And then what about the realities, the paying bills part. Someone put in the chat, “being able to be home when my son gets off the bus.” Right? That's, that's hugely important. Remote work. And if you live in a remote area, or maybe you know you, you having a long commute can be really difficult, flexible.

You know, flexibility is actually worth…some of these things actually have a cash value. So everyone thinks about the salary. How much am I getting actually paid? But in the big picture. Sometimes things like being able to work remotely or have a flexible schedule, those have a value that's more than money. Or it's a value that you'd have to get paid a whole lot more before you'd want to substitute that particular value.

So, start to make a list, and we have a pretty good list going already of what's important to you. So again, this will take you…you're not going to finish this today. This is to get you started. It's like a launching point.

So, we want to, then, once we've done that assessment thinking about ourselves, we want to then think about, “now, who's my target audience?” And that is, we need to do a little bit of research to figure this out. So, one thing that I suggest as, this is like a homework assignment, and I know that this is getting recorded, and then I think that the slides will be shared later on, hopefully, or at least the recording, so you don't have to write this all down, but I like to use, just as a starting point, some really generic job boards. So indeed.com is a very generic job board. They claim to take job postings from everywhere on the internet. That's not totally true, but it's a good place to start out and just start to search for specific skills.

So some people put in writing, some people mentioned community engagement, you had listening, or listener, and just start to search around in these job boards and see what organizations show up if you put different words and combinations in there. And so, as an example, if you want the exact phrase like, you want two words that go next to each other in a specific order. You would want to use quotation marks right like I put here. So, you know, for, like public health, you want to put those in quotes, and that will get you jobs that have this exact phrase, “public health.” And then you can add all these other words, you know. Here's another example where it's a phrase. So you want, you know, two words together. But you can also try other words or phrases, or whatever, and just experiment, and see what are some of the companies that have jobs like this? You might even try just taking out the geographic parameters and just see like, are there jobs with, you know, listener and public health, or even just health or healthcare, try a bunch of different experiments and then pick out five job postings and start to read them.

Now I'm old. Of Gen X. Vintage. And so, I still like to actually read them. And, like, go over job descriptions with a highlighter. You can totally use AI for this now, too, though, and it's pretty good. So you could take, let's say, go to a whatever your favorite AI, Chat GPT, or whatever, and take five job descriptions that are sort of related somewhat similar to each other, maybe similar job titles. And then you go write a prompt, you say to your, your AI: please tell me the most common words and phrases of the jobs pasted below. And then you paste like the five job descriptions, and it'll give you a very nice report of what are the words that show up all the time.

You can also then say, what are some organizations that are in the St. Louis, Missouri, area that might have jobs like this, and it'll show you a list of companies. So, there's lots of other ways you can do this. You don't have to use Chat GPT, but this will just get you started, and you might discover there's a gap like maybe your resume has most of the words from the job description, but it's missing one word that is a clue. You know, what if all these jobs look awesome but they all require you to know how to use Microsoft Excel? Guess what, you have to go…do you got to go learn Excel?

I see a question in the chat.

Yes, Chat GPT is amazing. It cannot do everything, but it does a lot of good things. So yes, a good extra tool. So then, you know, if you go through those job descriptions, you start to think, okay, I need to, you know, figure out what skills are needed. And like, I was saying, if you notice that all those jobs all require a certain credential or software, or something like that, then you will start to say, “you know what, I need to go and get that skill.”

There's a lot of other resources here that you can use to research different careers. I love the PublicHealthCareers.org as an option for this, too. There's a lot of other websites that have really great information. There's, you know, there's networking talking to people that are at your favorite organization. LinkedIn, is also great, and I'll talk about that in a second.

And so you're like targeting what you need to include. Now, this is a lot. And we don't have to go through all of this. But basically, you also can start to think about again, what are your favorite skills?

And this is helpful. If you're going to do, you know, prepare yourself for job interviews. This is going back to reflect on one of those three circles in the job. Description of the, this is like the job function. What are you good at? And this will also help you craft that personal brand. And so you want to start thinking about stories. I know somebody put in the chat about being good at telling stories. So you get to tell your own story right now. And so you want to think about achievements, maybe.

What was the situation thinking of, for example, this example on the screen here is that you're managing a health education program in public schools. You want to throw in details. How many people were in those schools? And then you think of the challenge or the opportunity, you're not being negative here, you're just talking about, there was an opportunity to do something better. “They were collecting all the program surveys on paper, and I discovered that maybe there was a better way to do that. That would be less time-consuming. We didn't have to reenter everything.” So what did you do? First, you have the challenge or the problem. Then you talk about, what did you do? What's some research that you did? What did you do first, second, third, and fourth? And then you always need a happy ending, so the result, how did your solution solve that problem?

So what was the problem? “We're collecting stuff on paper. It's taking too long.” What was your solution? “I came up with a web-based survey platform like SurveyMonkey, for example, and then our response rate doubled and the data was more accurate, and we could get our reports out within one week instead of three weeks.” Right? So this is an example of an achievement story, and thinking about this will help you with crafting that personal brand.

Thank you, Ashley, for posting this PublicHealthCareers.org in the chat.

This is some funny stuff about Chat GPT, it is pretty good, actually.

Alright. So does anybody have any questions for now, because next I'm going to talk about the written part of personal brand, and the number one thing is resumes. Before we get into that, does any anyone want to write any questions or comments in the chat? I'll pause for a second.

Alright. I bet we'll have questions about resumes, so start thinking of your resume questions.

So, what is the purpose of a resume? There's no right or wrong answer here. But I actually would love to get your thoughts, if anyone wants to write in the chat. What…what is the reason you need a resume? What's the…what do you do with it? So I'll take a second. And just, it has one job. What is the job of the resume? Feel free to write something in the chat.

Super. Okay. These are great examples, and they're both correct. I see in the chat, “highlight experience to show you're capable for the job.” Absolutely. “Let folks know what you've done with your life.” Absolutely. “Resume helps you get past HR, which is the step you need to go through before you get to the hiring manager.” All of these answers are correct.

The answer that I have here is “for you to get a call from someone to get a job interview.” That, at the end of the day, all of those answers that you all put are exactly correct, and the short way of summarizing is that you want someone to take action, which is, you want the person who received that resume to pick up the phone and call you. So make sure that you have your voicemail set up properly on your cell phone, or your Google voice, or whatever, so that you can get your messages. Make sure that you check your email. And even the spam folder, when you're actively job seeking, because the most important email will find a way to go into your spam folder every time. It's very annoying. So make sure you're checking that. Make sure you're using a professional email address on your resume. And because the goal is to get contacted, right?

And all of the other pieces are conveying that you have the skills for the role, you don't have to list every single job that you've ever had, and it doesn't have to look totally over the top unless you're going for graphic design job.

So because of what we just said right, the whole purpose is for somebody to get in touch with you, to schedule an interview. Then what? Based on that? What is the most important piece of information on your whole resume. And this is a silly question. Anybody want to guess the answer? The most important section in your resume? Remember, you want someone to schedule you for an interview. So what do they need to be able to do?

Exactly. Exact…actually, first answer is true. They need to get in touch with you. So. This may sound silly, but believe it or not, I have read way too many resumes I have…I'm not personally a Chat GPT, but I feel like one sometimes, because I have read enough resumes where I can tell when one bullet point is one font size different from the next bullet point, and every time I catch that I'm like, “I need a vacation.” I've read too many darn resumes! I've read a lot of resumes, but believe it or not, I have seen a lot of resumes where people did not put a phone number or an email address. You don't want to be mysterious here. You want people to be able to contact you and schedule an interview. So the most important.

You don't need to put your address these days. People don't usually put their mailing address, their home address. You can put city and state, especially if you want to stay in a certain location, or you're looking for a job in a certain city, but otherwise it's just your name and your how to contact you. So that might sound silly. But it is the most important thing.

And believe it or not, the most sad thing I think I've ever seen is when somebody like, had a typo in their phone number or their email. It makes me so sad, that's happened a handful of times. And I'm like, “this is the only the most important thing to get correct, is spell your email address correctly.” I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is actually the most important.

So, let's talk about resume content. I mentioned keywords when we were talking about looking at job descriptions, and again, Chat GPT is pretty good at this. You can do this yourself, reading through the job descriptions. You're looking to make sure that your resume has the most important words from the job description. Why is that? Why do you need the correct words from the job description?

Anybody want to guess? Why that is so, so important? And we're not talking about generic general words, you know, like communication or leadership. We're talking about very specific words that are either basically proper noun, name of a computer software or programming language, names of like acronyms, stuff like that. Jargon. That is specific. So for example, I would say “Medicaid” is a very good keyword for healthcare or public health resumes. That's an example of very specific keyword.

So, somebody, by the way, had a question, “would you recommend keeping a phone number on the resume if it results in spam or random calls?” This is why I like Google Voice. To be honest, I'm sure there's other platforms or services these days that are equally good. If you don't want to give out your personal cell phone number on your resume, you can set up a free Google Voice. At least, I think it's free. And there may be other alternatives. So, if somebody knows another alternative feel free to write it in the chat. But basically, it's a way of not giving out your personal cell number.

But you still basically will get phone calls that come into that number, and you can see if they're spam, and you could just delete them, or whatever, as long as you make sure to check it, because again, you don't want to lose any contact. So, if you want to choose a different number instead of your personal cell phone number. You can do that, if you, if you want to.

Okay, so we talked about keywords. The reason keywords are so important is because when you apply…I'm curious, if people remember having done this, when you apply for a job a lot of times, you're filling out a form on a website. And if you look at the web address, the URL, you might begin to notice that there are certain URLs that are really common, such as Taleo, Isims, Jobvite. There's a whole bunch of them. These are called applicant tracking system software, ATS. Most companies these days use an ATS. Not all of them. And actually, I'm thinking of Ashley on the call, because when we built that PublicHealthCareers.org website, we ran into a challenge that a lot of the small, and even some of the state health departments, and a lot of smaller, like rural local health departments, they don't actually use an applicant tracking system. Which is to your benefit, because that means, if you look hard enough, you're going to be able to stand out in a different way than you might just applying online. So that's actually a tip: if you are open to it, consider your local health department as a place to consider, or your state health department, of course, to apply for jobs.

But for most companies you're going to submit your resume through an ATS, an applicant tracking system, and the ATS allows the recruiter to search for keywords, and if your resume doesn't have that keyword, they're not necessarily going to read your resume. So here's a classic example. I need to hire somebody, and that person needs to be fluent in Spanish. Bilingual. Right? You may put on your resume everything you've ever done, all the jobs you've ever had. You might even say something like that, you, let's say, you lived in Spain for a year, you did study abroad in Mexico, or something like, whatever. Unless you actually put the word “Spanish,” I will not necessarily know that you are fluent in. I might not know what level you speak that language, also. So if I'm screening a resume and I'm busy, and I got a lot of applications, and there's an essential requirement or skill set for that job, you have to have that word on your resume.

Now, there's a difference between required and preferred. If I'm looking for someone to fill a position, and it's nice if they speak Spanish, but it's not essential, you know, then it's not like you should put Spanish on your resume if you don't speak it, because guess what? You will go for a job interview one day, and they will decide to interview you in Spanish, and if you don't know it, it will be really embarrassing. So, make sure you're honest and correct about everything you put on there. But make sure you also list your top skills and make sure that as much as possible that they match with stuff on the job description.

You could also have people look at your resume, just scan it and see what they see visually when they look at it. That's the 15 second test.

And then in the United States, by the way, I should have said this at the beginning, the advice I'm giving right now is very much for the United States. And if you're applying for jobs in other countries, just make sure you research what's appropriate in those other countries. Jobs in the United States, we have a lot of rules that employers are not supposed to discriminate, based on a whole bunch of different things, including age, over the age of 40. They're not allowed to discriminate, based on religion, race, ethnicity, your country of origin and things like that. So, we don't include that type of information, usually, in a resume in the United States. So, just so you know. Now, there's some other things like, if you're very involved with your place of worship, let's say you're volunteering with a church or a temple, or whatever, that might be great experience, and you can choose if you want to put that on the resume. But that's a whole other discussion.

Resume design. It's easier to read when there's bullet points you can see, instead of just a whole paragraph, it's easier to scan.

You don't want to overuse too many fonts. Be consistent. Try to make sure everything's the same size. Make sure everything is indented the same amount. Try not to go overboard on different fonts. Please do not use Comic Sans. Comic Sans is a font that if you're…okay, if you're going for a job as a clown, you could use Comic Sans, but it's very triggering to resume readers, so don't use that on your resume. For most people, classic fonts, you can use Arial or Verdana or Tahoma. Those are some sans serif fonts. I'm getting a little nerdy right now. There's also, of course, Times New Roman. And there's a bunch of other ones. Some basic classic fonts. Don't go overboard with like, really off the wall fonts.

Now, we have a huge thing. I always get this question when I teach workshops about resumes, “how long is my resume supposed to be?” And I usually say the answer, “it depends.” Usually, if you've got, you know, many years of experience you can have a two-page resume. If you're applying in very specific job markets, you can have a longer resume. So sometimes government agencies really don't mind having a longer resume, and they actually prefer more detail. This is true especially of the federal government, which is not really hiring a lot right now, but it can also be true for local government. So, as an example, New York City, where I'm located, has one of the biggest government health departments in the world, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. And they like to see more details, rather than fewer details. So they're okay if your resume is two, or even longer, two or three pages, even. And they want very specific details, like the month and year that you started and ended every single job that you've had. They want you to explain in detail what you did at each job. So, there's differences based on the industry, but generally forgetting about government for a second. Usually, one page is fine.

Don't stress too much about it. But how you design it is important. So, this is a picture that someone made of like eye movement tracking. And you can see that there's kind of like an F-shaped pattern for most people reading. And so that means if you have something really important to show on the resume, you want it to be higher, closer to the top and further to the left, because we're reading left to right.

And so within that idea, that's how you might structure things. But then I'm going to talk about…this is just an example of a resume. You know, you may not need to put, these days, the actual mailing address, but you definitely put your phone number in, your email. Now, if you're currently in school or you're a recent graduate, you would probably put your education at the top. If you have more relevant experience, you can put your education towards the end.

But you can see that there's, you know, there's basically these section titles like, you've got education, experience. This is a section for maybe school leadership. You can have volunteer experience. And then you have skills. These are called the section headings. And within each of these sections the content is going to go in the reverse chronological order. So that means that whatever is the most recent is going towards the beginning, and you're going backwards. You're going backwards in time as you go down the page. So this is the general structure that we have of the resume, just as an example. It doesn't need to look exactly like this. This is just to give you a framework you've got. The company names are all in, you know, bold and all caps. The job titles are all in bold and italics. It really doesn't matter exactly how you decide to format it. As long as you're really consistent all through this resume.

So let's break it down. We got our contact information. You got your name, I like to make the name a little bigger. This is the part of the very top. You can put your email, your phone number. I like to put a LinkedIn address. Of course you need to spend time on that, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Make sure, again, that your email is correct. Make sure you have a voicemail greeting that's appropriate.

Then we have our education section, for most folks. If you are a college student, you would put, you know, instead of listing the year, you would say like, “expected 2026,” or “expected May 2026,” so you would say, “expected” instead of the date you graduated. You can put an associate's degree, of course, you can put bachelor's, master's, whatever if you have complete. High school and are not yet in college or not, you know, doing that. So, you can list education and just put like the high school diploma, as well. If you have any honors, you can list those.

Sometimes I like to put in a little extra information like if you worked your way through school, or something that can be interesting. People do decide sometimes to put their GPA, if you got a high GPA.

The experience section to me is most exciting and interesting. And you can split up your experience into different sections. So, if you have different kinds of experience, you can have two different sections. For example, let's say I've got, you know, my most exciting, relevant experience was my Public Health AmeriCorps service. But I also worked in retail, and I worked at a clothing store, and I folded clothes, and I did customer service, and that's really good work experience. And it's really important. But I really want to highlight my AmeriCorps first. So, I could have public health experience and list my experience at AmeriCorps, and then I can have another section that would go below that, “other relevant experience” or “additional experience.”

And this is nice if you've got great work experience. But you want to highlight the most relevant stuff first, and within each of those sections everything still goes in that reverse chronological order, and you can see again each of these bullet points. I'm going to break that down in a second. They start with a verb: lead, provided, recruited, designed. And I'll break this down in more detail in a second.

Okay, so this is how I create bullet points, and you can do this a few different ways. But you can use this as a little roadmap to write a bullet point. So, you've got, you can put an adverb once in a while. You don't need to do that every time. So, we want to know how good of a job did you do? So I want to make sure I'm using keywords, so like, “access” might be a keyword or whatever. But I also want to show results and numbers to prove that I did a good job.

So, let's say this one, tutoring. I could just say, “tutored 20 students.” Okay, how do I know if I was a good tutor? Well, if anybody that I tutored came back to me and said, you know, “Victoria, thank you so much for being my tutor because of you, I finally passed my calculus test. I was going to fail calculus, and you helped me, and now I can pass.” You have measurably improved their test scores. Right? You know, or received excellent feedback from.

So if you're doing AmeriCorps service, you could think about, “how much community outreach did I do,” right? “Did I reach out to 5 new stakeholder organizations?” And then what was the purpose? Right?” Okay, “I reached out to those 5 new organizations and I increased participation in our health education programs by 50%.” So you want to measure those outcomes as much as possible and remember to try to have those keywords.

So we can start with these kinds of verbs. You know each of your bullet points and you know a few other examples, you know, “saving money,” “improving accuracy.” So you know, if you haven't kept really good notes about what you've done in each job or volunteer experience that you've had, it's okay. You don't want to make, you know, don't make numbers up, but you can make a decent estimate, like a guesstimate, and you'll probably come pretty close if you think like, “you know, I probably talked to five patients a day. So that's, you know, five times five. That's 25 patients a week. And you know, four weeks and change per month. So let's say, over 100 patients a month.” Right? You just do a ballpark estimate and you know, think about how you, how can you measure? You got a good result. Another section, which is usually towards the end of the resume, is where you could put skills and certifications. And this is also where you want to put all those wonderful buzzwords keywords. If you use Microsoft Office, Excel is in really high demand. A lot of times people forget what they've actually done. I mean, I can't tell you how many people are like, “I don't think I should put Instagram on my resume,” and I'm like, “well, guess what, maybe you're better at that than everybody else that's hiring for this job. Maybe you're actually great at it.” Put it on your resume. You never know. Maybe this is relevant. You know those email systems that you might use, maybe data systems that you've used. If you've used any health records systems, speaking different languages. Lots of people have HIPAA certification. They don't even realize that they might want to put that. You know, maybe did first aid training. These are all things you can think about: languages, technologies, and things like that.

So that's the resume. I'm going to guess. There's some questions. I got a couple good questions on the resume. Someone had a great question earlier, which was, “should I be tailoring this to different audiences? Does your brand remain exactly the same, or can you spin it for different applications?” Definitely on the resume, you can spin it for all different kinds of audiences, and you tailor it to whatever the right audience is. The online presence is a little more structured because you only get like one LinkedIn profile, for example. But absolutely, you can tailor your resume.

What questions do people have about resumes before we talk about online? Feel free to like, as they come to you, you can put them in the chat.

Okay. So, you don't have to do this now, but this is a good exercise to do like once a week, you know, once a month or something, I would say. Google, your name. Some people have a really common name. Some people have a very unique name. And so, you know, if you've got a really common name, you have one challenge, which is: how do you make sure that people are seeing information about you, and not somebody else that has your same name? You might have the opposite problem if you have a unique name, that every single result is definitely about you.

So you know, take a little time to Google yourself and find out what comes up, and then you can take some control over this. So you know, if you're…if there's been some, if there's something problematic, maybe you wrote something, you know, back in high school or something, and you regret writing that, you know, if you have a way to remove it. Great! You can't always delete problematic content. Sometimes it sort of stays there, unfortunately. But what you can do is replace it with positive content, and the easiest way to do that is LinkedIn.

So I'm not bragging here, but this is my, an example of my LinkedIn. And I'm going to walk through some of the ingredients of a LinkedIn profile. Let me ask. I mean, actually, at this point, I am going to, I'm going to talk about what is included in the LinkedIn profile. And then, if anybody here wants to have a live LinkedIn review, if you're, and I will be nice to you, but if you want to put your LinkedIn URL, the, you know web address, in the chat, I will go take a look at your LinkedIn profile and give you some tips.

So, this is the different ingredients of LinkedIn. The first piece is the headshot. You do not need to spend money to get a fancy headshot with a professional photographer. It's nice if you can. You really don't need to. The key things here, and the most important, are that you're making eye contact with the camera, and you're smiling. And you look sort of the way you would want to look for a job interview for the career you're interested in. Right? So if you want to work in an office you might want to wear, like, a suit jacket or whatever you like. Dress up for the profession you are aspiring to.

Now the background image. There's a lot of choices about this. I have this image of me talking to a group of students. And I like this image because I'm like in my zone, right? I'm like happily talking to students. I've used other images in the past. You can make a word cloud, or whatever different kind of images. But it's really, if you care about food, somebody put full bellies as their as their mission, so put a picture of somebody eating healthy food, or like a picture of fruits and vegetables, or something. That's your brand. You want to be like the healthy nutrition person, put a picture of healthy food. So, it's very quick, nonverbal way of grabbing people's attention. And most people leave this whole background thing blank, and so you have the opportunity to put a cool image there. It has to be a certain size. It's very horizontal.

Then you've got your name, and like I mentioned, if you have a really common name, you might want to distinguish your name by putting your middle name in there, or something else to make it so, like, if you're…I had a boss named Jason Smith one time, so like he would have needed to put something so people know which one it is.

And then this piece here is the headline, and it's really important. And you can obsess a lot about it. But it's basically the first five words, plus your headshot, will be the sort of preview that people see about you on LinkedIn. So, you know, you can think about what words you want to have on here. And you can be fancy and put like little stars or whatever. But this is sort of the most important stuff. The headshot and the headline are probably the most important. And, of course, your name.

There's a lot of other sections on LinkedIn that you can use. There's the About section, and the About section is, you know, many people don't take any advantage of that. It is a section where you know you can, you know, write a little summary about yourself in there, and that is, you know, a good section to use.

Of course, the experience section is where you're going to describe all your prior jobs. You have the Education section. You can list every course you've ever taken. You don't have to go overboard, but you can put a lot more in LinkedIn than you can put on your resume because you don't have any page limit.

You can put your certifications. You can list volunteering skills. One thing that's really fun about skills, by the way, is that you can get people to endorse you. So we have a very nice group here today. And there's a bunch of people who put their LinkedIn into the chat, and my recommendation is, go visit each other's LinkedIn, and endorse each other, have a little endorsement party, go endorse each other for skills that you know that you have earned through AmeriCorps. And it's just a nice way to help other people out.

You can ask people to recommend you, and that's even more awesome. So you can put recommendations in there. If you, you first have to connect to somebody, and then they can recommend you. There's all sorts of other stuff. You can write posts and all of those good things.

So I'm going to go and take a look at the first person. Bianca, you won the prize as the first person to share, so hopefully, we're seeing Bianca on here. And so, I love your headline, Bianca. This is a fantastic headline. In fact, this is one of the best headlines I've seen in a long time. So everybody, please take note of this fantastic. Let me zoom in, because this is actually too small. Alright. So Bianca's headline right here, “data storyteller,” I love that. That is the coolest headline. So you did great. “Public health strategist, taking the madness out of methodology.” Awesome. So you did great on the headline. Your name is unique. You put your middle name in there so we can figure out that it's you, that's awesome.

You might want to do a headshot where you're like a little more directly looking right into the camera. This is on the side, which is okay., but I would do like a little bit, maybe. But you have a beautiful smile, and you're making eye contact, which is awesome.

We can see that there is this fantastic opportunity to add a background image. So think about an image that you think would be, you know, on your personal brand.

And then we will scroll down. Look, we're both in the APHA group. And look at this, you did the About section, and you did what I would suggest. Most people don't do this, but I write the About section in the first person, where it's like, you're imagine that you're talking to the person visiting your profile. You're saying, “hey, thanks for visiting my profile. I'm going to introduce myself as if I'm you, you know, speaking right to you.”

So you know, you've got this very nice. And look at this, “data whisperer.” This is awesome “data whisperer” is like my new favorite. That's so great. “Strategy sidekick.” I love this so much, so creative.

“Social impact teams that cut through the noise and actually see what their data is telling them.” This is fantastic. Let's make your work as impactful on paper as it is in real life you did such a great job with this. I love it. You've got some interesting posts in here. We have your resume in here, which is great.

And then we have. Look at this. Look at this awesome job title. So, you got your experience section and you're talking about this product which is so interesting, I would talk about, you're mostly talking about the product. I would talk about what you actually did, whether that was, you know, developed new products or own franchise, and, you know, brought in sales of however much money. Whatever you can add here. You have this prior project as a Grant writer. Again, I would love bullet points in here, you know, “wrote successful grant proposals, doubling the amount of donations for XYZ organization,” etc., “Manage multiple complex projects under a deadline.” These are things where you can put in those bullet points. So, this is awesome that you've got some really interesting experience. I would just love to see those quantified bullet points in here. We've got some great skills, though. And you've like got links in here. You have some awesome job titles, and here again it's mostly talking about the employer. But here we have a great example. I love this, and it's also such a great, what a great organization! "Normalized breastfeeding"! I love it! So here you've got, you know, some explaining of what you've actually done. And you've got all these great skills.

You've got your education in here. Awesome. Magna cum laude, awesome fit. This is great. So we've got your activities. We have honors. You have licenses. Look at that, that's awesome. You've got human subject research. You've got your internships and volunteering experience, some awesome skills. And you even have some recommendations. Look at that, courses. You've really gone, absolutely not, I'm not gonna say overboard. But you've taken really good advantage of this LinkedIn profile. So really awesome job. My main suggestion is just adding bullet points to all of these job experiences and then consider, you know, a different background image, maybe a maybe a different headline, but otherwise you did a beautiful job on here.

And I'm going to go back to are slides. Let's see if I can figure out where they are. And I know we're really almost at the end of time, and I want to make sure we have lots of time for Q&A. Questions and answers. So I'm going to talk about a few other things. But you know, really great job. I really love the work you put into the wording on here is awesome.

So, definitely, guys, I've seen a bunch of people putting their LinkedIn profile. Why not connect to each other, make some new friends today and do some, you know, do a little endorsement party of each other. It's like, why not? You could leave with that as a gift. Other things to think about, your online brand. Again, if you want to add more positive content, you can have a blog. Substack is really popular. There's all kinds of other blog platforms. It's a lot of work to do a blog, but it also can create a really nice positive brand for yourself, especially if you're writing about a topic you care about.

You can post on all these other platforms, you know. I think it's reasonable to have some social that is just for your personal use, and you can decide, you know, if you have a post like a social platform, that's, you know, just for family and friends or something. Just make sure you use the right privacy settings so that you can post stuff, then that doesn't get posted elsewhere.

So we've talked about your, how do you build your personal brand? How to kind of craft your message? How do you get that done in person and on paper? And then in person, right? How do you present yourself in real life? It's going to depend on your target audience. I have to say that when I first, many years ago, started out after grad school, I really did not know this, very ironic, but I didn't really know how to navigate the workplace at that time. Years ago, before I became a career counselor, and I was like, not sure what to wear for job interviews, because there were some organizations I interviewed with which were kind of like large formal corporations where I would want to wear a suit. But then there were also some grassroots, more community-based nonprofits, and I remember I wore, like, too fancy of an outfit for a really grassroots advocacy, nonprofit, and I did not get the job, and I remember the feedback being that I looked like kind of too business-y because I had dressed up too much. So it's a little bit, sort of sensitive, how you want to present yourself in person. But basically, the best way to figure it out, in my opinion, is, go to the company website and look at photos of people who work there, or look at them on LinkedIn and look at what they're wearing. And if everybody in all of those photos is wearing a business suit and a tie, and whatever then, definitely, that's what you wear for the interview. If everybody's wearing, you know the tie-dyed t-shirt, you don't need to wear a suit.

So target your audience if you're meeting somebody for an interview, or even networking. This is again a very, I guess, American culture thing, but you know, try to be there a few minutes early, and then prepare for that meeting, even if you're just chatting with a business networking contact, you're getting advice from someone, at least read that person's bio, or learn a little bit about them.

The elevator pitch. So this comes in handy in different situations. And this is how you verbally introduce yourself to someone. And you want to remember: who is your target audience, and how are you looking to benefit them? So, let's say you're at a conference or an event. This is a suggestion, but you can find a lot of times you don't need to spend a ton of money to go to a national conference and do networking, but you can find, if you go to meetup.com or eventbrite.com, you can usually find some free events in your community that you could go to. There's also lots of online events. Let's say you're meeting somebody at one of those events and you want to build a connection with them. So, you want to think about what's in it for them. And “how do I tailor this and keep this positive?” So, I like this as a formula, you don't have to use this, but this is my one formula that I like, I do present, past, future. You don't have to use this, but it's kind of my one of my favorites.

So what's the present? You know, “I am someone who just recently completed my public health AmeriCorps service. I did a year of service at the Topeka, Kansas Health Department,” whatever it was. “How did I get to the present?”

Now let me just say a lot of folks may be job seeking right? That's, that's real. Right. So you can say, you know, “I'm currently looking for a new opportunity.” I would still say, “I, recently, you know, I'm a recent person who's just recently completed my AmeriCorps service, where I worked at XYZ. And I'm currently looking for a new opportunity where I can use my passion for health equity to make the world a better place.” How did I get to today? So then you think about, you don't have to get too personal, but think about how did you get inspired to get interested in public health or healthcare, you know. Maybe there was an incident or situation right like, maybe you were a volunteer in a hospital in high school, and you realized that you wanted to go beyond helping people after they got to the hospital. You wanted to prevent them from having to go to the hospital instead. So you know, you can talk about what inspired you to pursue this. Maybe other experiences that you've had. And then what led you to, let's say, AmeriCorps? Then you can talk about at AmeriCorps. What did you do? “I was in charge of A, B and C, I created new relationships with different organizations.”

And my results. You can pick on this achievement, and then you end with your future. And let's say you're doing, maybe it's a job interview, you're interviewing at an organization that does access to healthy food. I promise. I prepared this before we heard from the person about the full bellies at the beginning. It's just, it's funny that it's the same mission area, but like, getting access to healthy food. So maybe you're talking to an organization that does that work. So you can talk about, “I'm very passionate about this mission, and I'm really excited to help contribute my skills to your mission.”

So this is a package. So we've got a few things we can put them all together. You don't need to do this, but I love that “data whisperer” that Bianca had, right? You know, you can think about a phrase, a sentence, you know, pick a couple of adjectives: “mission driven community health advocate,” “dynamic social media manager.” “I write messages that help people improve their health,” right? Like, “I do A, B and C. This is how I help the universe.” You don't have to have a tagline like this, but it is just sort of like how you can try to sum everything up in just one statement.

And there's other things you can think about for the longer term, such as you know, other ingredients of personal brand. You can think about awards. You can think about achievements. We talked about the, you know recommendations and endorsements on LinkedIn, relationships with different groups, people who know you, people who, you know. There's also ingredients such as knowledge of your community and your own personal experience. Having a thread of your story of sort of connecting everything to that longer term mission.

So this is a resource that everyone can take advantage of. This is a free online, like self-paced course that you can use. And it's about charting your career path in public health. So feel free to take advantage of this. There's also, on the PublicHealthCareers.org website, a great career quiz, you can take. That's even more information. There's also another resource: if you're interested in applying for jobs in government, especially local or state government health departments, there's also a little online course you can try that helps give you special tips about that also.

And that's it for today. I am really glad to take any questions people have. Thanks, everybody, for your awesome interaction and questions. And I'm going to want to go and look at all these LinkedIn profiles that people shared. So, thanks for being brave and doing that. And yeah, I'm glad to take any questions people have, thanks so much for for being so engaged in the workshop today.

Feel free to write any questions you have in the chat.

NANTHAVONGSA-MOSLEY:
And while folks are thinking, Heather, I do have a question. So, particularly knowing today's job market, what could folks do to stand out during today's challenging job market?

KRASNA:
Yeah, I think this is a really great question and I've been thinking about this a lot lately. You know, one thing that I think it's going to sound like, it's kind of sound like I'm contradicting myself right now, but doesn't necessarily contradict. On the one hand, I think it's good to have that vision and brand what your mission is, what you care about that sort of stuff. And at the same time be really flexible because it's a strange time, and it may take a little bit longer than normal to get to that point of achieving that dream job or that personal hitting that personal vision.

So when we think back to that three circles idea, which of those things are non-negotiables? You want to make sure you know what is the absolute, non-negotiable you need to know. Like, if I can only live in, I don't know why I'm picking St. Louis, Missouri, today, but let's say I'm only going to live in St. Louis. I cannot live anywhere else. I need to be there. So that's a deal breaker. You need to be looking in that geographic location. If that is my requirement, and I cannot compromise on that, then I need to be then flexible on something else on the list potentially.

Maybe in this moment I might need to think about organizations that do something health-related. But maybe they're not like my dream passion or something like that. Maybe I need to look at what are the local companies in St. Louis that are hiring the most? And what skills do they need? And if I don't have exactly those skills, maybe I need to pause and do upskilling like, go take an online class, a Coursera or EdX, or you know, go get an additional credential or certification, or whatever, because I want to pivot into that job market and the fastest growing companies in St. Louis are these five companies and they all seem to want people who know, I don't know, coding in Python or something. Whatever random new thing that I need to know about. AI. We just learned all about AI. So you know, so that may mean like, if I've got a deal breaker thing. What else could I be flexible about?

And then I'm also looking at what are the fastest growing industries and occupations? And the U.S. Department of Labor still has some good data on fastest growing occupations. You can look them up. There's also some reports you can look at to see where is there. You know, there are certain parts of the country even today that have a workforce shortage. Now, they might have a shortage of workers for jobs that you do not want to do. That's the problem. It's a shortage of what right? Maybe they have a shortage of licensed practical nurses, and, like me, you can't be a like, I can't be a nurse right, because I would probably faint every single day. Right? So, it's great if they have a workforce shortage for something. But is it a shortage of people who have the skills that you want to use? So, you can do a little bit more of that research.

The other thing that you can try to do is to build relationships with people. And some of what I'm talking about a little bit today can also help you with that. So the idea being that you would want to try like, let's say again, picking St. Louis, I'm going to look at the biggest companies that are there, which ones are the fastest growing? What jobs do they have available? Are there certain companies that I've realized are interesting to me, and I really want to work at one of those companies? So let me try to proactively build a connection with somebody at one of those companies. Well, how am I going to do that if I'm just starting out my career? I don't know anyone at that company. What should I do? This is why LinkedIn is also one of my favorite tools. You can go on there and connect to everyone you do actually know.

And then go look at that company and see you can go to this, there's a section called “People” under the company page, and you can see who works at the company. And then you could see if you might have something in common with one of those people. So you know we can, we can pick any…I'm going to pick, just thinking of a good example of a Guinea pig, New York City Department of Health. Let's see if they will come up on LinkedIn and I can kind of show you how this works.

Maybe that's the wrong example. You know what I'm going to do just for fun? I'm going to pick the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Why not? Just for fun. Okay. So just to show you what I'm talking about. We're gonna go over here and show you. Let's say that I love the ASTHO organization, which I actually do love, you guys are awesome. I can type their name into Linkedn and then their company page will pop up. And under their company page you can learn all about the company, see if they have any jobs. But there's this section here called People, and I'm gonna see…it's being a little slow today. There's about 287 people, at least according to LinkedIn, who work at ASTHO. I can see this is probably a DC based company, right? Most people seem to work, you know, live in DC. Maybe there's people in other places, but there's a very DC-based company, you know, company.

So right off the bat, I don't know, I can see if anybody at ASTHO went to my undergrad. Did anyone go to the University of Michigan, which is where I went for my undergrad? Five people are, you know, U of M alums. Go Blue. I can scroll down, and if I did not know anybody ASTHO, I could find one of these folks. And I'll pick someone randomly. This is one of your colleagues, probably. By the way, excellent headshot, but also needs that background image. So go tell Talia...I'm just, I'm just messing with you guys.

But anyway, so you got this profile, I can look at this person's whole story. I can see how they got there. Look, they did something that U of M. They went there for undergrad and grad school. So, we've got like four or five different things in common already, right? That we, she and I went…Did they went to? She went to the same school as me for undergrad. She's obviously, you know, excited about public health. You know we've definitely got several things in common. I can hit this connect message and then I can ask for her to give me some advice.

So if I really want to be proactive and reach out to somebody at an organization, no matter what it is, I can go to their company page, and I can see if I can find somebody that either went to my same school. Maybe we didn't. Maybe there's no one who went to my school. But there's some other thing that they have in common. You can see on LinkedIn, if I connect to someone, then they’re first-degree connected. You'll see a little “1st” after their name.

This person that I just looked at, I am second-degree connected, which means that it looks like I have like 24 people that could introduce me to Talia. So that means I'm second-degree connected. I know somebody who can introduce me to this individual person. So instead of just randomly cold-contacting people and saying, “Hi, I need your advice. I'm trying to find a career in public health.” You can be really specific, “dear Talia, you and I both went to the same undergrad. We know 24 people in common. I'd love to get your advice about health education.” Hopefully, the person is nice, they say yes to you. They give you some advice and they will help you grow your career.

I'm going to guarantee there's a lot of AmeriCorps alums and you're going to find some other AmeriCorps alums who are doing really awesome things. My personal experience is that every single person that has done AmeriCorps, every single AmeriCorps person that I've ever met, has been awesome. So you're going to have that in common with people, right? You are somebody who cares about their community. You want to do public service, help each other out. So that's a great way to connect with other people is that you're both AmeriCorps, members, alums, etc. Americorps folks tend to like helping, so you're going to find other people who want to help you.

So again, figure out, what's your deal breaker? Be flexible about everything else except for those deal breakers, and then proactively build those relationships so that when a job is opened up, that I already know somebody at that organization. I can reach out to them, and maybe they can help give a little leg up in the interview process, or at least give me some tips about how to apply, or give me some extra advice, or whatever. Sometimes you can find somebody who will like advocate for you. It can help you get more interviews.

The other last piece of advice about this weird job market is that it's also sort of a numbers game. So one thing I suggest is to apply early and often, which means, don't wait to apply for a job that you see. If you see a job that's posted today and you have time to apply today, apply for it today. If the job was posted a month ago, the chances are pretty good that there's a lot of applicants already, and it may not be open anymore. You don't want to waste a ton of time applying for jobs that have been open a long, long time, unless you can find a contact in the organization. You know, some places have like a rolling, hiring process, and they're always hiring for certain jobs, so it could be fine. But just, you know, try to apply as soon as you can.

 

And you may need to do a volume, like a high volume. Don't apply to random stuff by just clicking on the apply button, but as much as you can, try to apply to things you're interested in. I know, that was a really long answer. But it's a long story.

 

NANTHAVONGSA-MOSLEY:
That was an amazing answer. Heather. I didn't even know that there was a feature like that on LinkedIn. So thank you for sharing that.

KRASNA:
The alumni section of the Company page, when you go to the People section and then you could look by, you can look by geographic location. It's a treasure trove. I'm not saying I'm not, by the way, I don't work for LinkedIn, and I don't get any commissions or anything. You don't need to upgrade. That's the other thing. You don't have to upgrade to get everything out of it. So, it's just a tool. There's other tools that are also good. But this is a fun one to try.

NANTHAVONGSA-MOSLEY:
Thanks for being candid, Heather. We have 10 minutes left, folks. Does anyone have any questions for Heather while we still have a few minutes left? You can, you can come off mute as well.

Heather, I had a follow up question to that, sure. How? How do we identify what companies are hiring?

KRASNA:
That's also a good question. You know, I think the simplest way…so it's tricky because you can see what jobs are posted, but we don't usually get to see what's going on on the receiving end of those job postings. But here's a suggestion. I mean, the quickest way is again, go to job boards and see what jobs are popping up on their job boards like, indeed.com. LinkedIn also has a job board. There's a lot of other job boards. Public Health Careers, great job board. There's other things you can do if you want to get fancy. One thing that I try to do is I look for newsletters or blogs where people are writing about industry news for certain industries. So, like in New York City, there's a company called Cranes New York Business, and they have a healthcare newsletter, and every day they post some sort of healthcare-related news, and so they will post something like, “ABC Medical Center opens a new branch in Brooklyn.” “ABC Medical Center, expanding its services in Brooklyn, will be hiring 500 people in Brooklyn.” I'm like, okay, let's go to Brooklyn and get some jobs, because we see right away, you know, there'll be another article. You know, “XYZ tech startup raises, you know, 1 million dollars in venture capital funding.” Guess what? XYZ startup is hiring today because they just got all this money. They're going to launch some kind of new technology. I better get on top of making friends at XYZ Company.

So keeping on top of business news is helpful, you know. Even things that are announcements from New York State government like, or your state or your local government. Like, I try to follow, even like elected officials, not most of them, but some of them I'll follow, and, like the Governor of New York State, has a newsletter, and there was some news announcement that there's an increase in the state budget to pay for either tuition assistance or student loan repayment for certain healthcare occupations, like nurses or whatever. I'm like, “okay, this is good to know, somebody's thinking about nursing school. They can actually get some of it paid for. And here's the program they can look at”, right?

So just kind of staying on top of news is really, really helpful. Like, I mentioned like, Bureau of Labor Statistics. It sounds like the most boring thing in the universe. But it's actually my one of my favorite organizations, because they do also have announcements. You can sign up for their newsletters, and it'll say stuff like you know, “projected labor market, you know, there will be large scale layoffs in the you know, manufacturing industry in Nebraska or something.” And then I'm like, “alright, well, let's not look for the jobs in that industry in that location.”

So, if you're in a certain geographic location. You want to start to follow the news of all the main companies. You can do that. You can also follow companies on Twitter or X or whatever, and LinkedIn and Instagram even, and they'll make announcements also. So you can kind of keep watching out for news. And you want to be like the person who hears about something before it's even announced, you know. And I mean with public health. It's very crazy, weird situation. But I'm like, well, what is this “Make America Healthy Again” thing? And what are…so maybe nutritious food will be something that will be important. I don't know. I don't even want to go there. I'm not sure. But maybe there's some new positive thing we can look for, or there's discussion of apprenticeship programs, and that, maybe that's something that we can look into as a, as a positive. So, anyway, just kind of keeping an eye on news is also really helpful.

NANTHAVONGSA-MOSLEY:
Thanks, Heather, we have 5 min left. If there's no other questions I will go ahead and start to close us out. Heather. You have been amazing. We talked about AI and Chat GPT, I feel like you're the walking, talking AI for public health careers. I've learned so much from you within this hour and a half. Thank you for such an insightful session today.

Folks, reminder that this recording, and Heather’s slides, gonna be shared. It's going to be sent to your email, but then it's also going to be posted on Train. So, we encourage you to reach out to us on LinkedIn. Let's connect through there, and we hope this webinar has helped is going to help shape your professional journey. Please take the survey at the end, as well. And we both wish you on your luck in branding and everything, all public health careers, and thank you for what you do in AmeriCorps.

Folks, have a great rest of your week and thank you for being here today, y'all.

KRASNA:
Great meeting you all. Lovely to see you virtually. And feel free to…as you can imagine, I'm on LinkedIn all the time, so you can connect to me there, I'll be happy to connect to you. And good luck with everything. Thanks again for having me today.