Online Resume Templates Scale Recruiter’s Expertise

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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For a lot of different business ideas, there are multiple ways to bring them to life. For example, if you wanna help students prepare for a particular standardized test, you could offer your service as a tutor, or you could make an app that drills them in key skills. And one isn't necessarily better than the other, at least not all the time, because you might really like providing the more personalized service that comes from in-person tutoring. You'd also likely be able to charge a lot more for that in-person tutoring. Still, there are some clear advantages, perhaps even more advantages, to doing it the other way, where you create a resource that can scale and sell to many people at once.

And that direction is what you're gonna hear about in today's story, how turning her skills into a product allowed this corporate coach to help others at scale. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Welcome as well to a new month. I'm excited to bring you this story and many others this month.

This one's called Online Resume Templates, Scale Recruiters' Expertise. I'll bring you that story after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]

Anna Cholak-Fushton has spent her career helping others plan their dream jobs. For her day job at a British headquartered bank, she leads a team that helps employees make internal moves within the company. Working with professionals ranging from fresh graduates to experienced VPs, she makes sure that each person is able to demonstrate competence for a new role they're hoping to land.

One of the things she discovered through her work was that most candidates struggled with crafting a resume that reflected their true qualifications. And this was the case even with experienced candidates, which made Anna realize that almost everyone could use some help with a job search. Her first thought was to become a coach, but while Googling competitors and reading about successful coaching businesses, she realized she could do the same thing at scale with digital products. Resume templates weren't a new thing, but after looking through the ones she could find, Anna learned that most were overly designed and just wouldn't cut it in corporate recruitment. What was needed were minimalist formats that succinctly highlighted a job seeker's greatest strengths and experiences that would make recruiters want to start a conversation.

Moreover, the simpler the format of a resume, the more likely it was that the applicant tracking systems used by companies would be able to digest the information. This led to her idea, an online shop offering professional and functional resume templates. For the next two months, Anna spent her downtime designing templates, compiling best practices and job search tips, and creating an editing manual. But of course, product is only the first step. Getting the distribution right is often just as difficult.

Anna researched a few different e-commerce platforms, ranging from eBay to Redbubble, before finally deciding to go with Etsy. She thought it was the best choice, even though Etsy was most well-known as a marketplace for personalized art. Its huge audience of over 35 million buyers per year meant more organic traffic to her shop. Finally, the selling fees on Etsy were also lower than other platforms, so she was all set up to sell in just minutes. Anna then spent much more time optimizing her storefront, and this was crucial because, even though Etsy has a large number of buyers, they're also a large number of sellers.

So competition can be fierce. Anna made sure that the banners and logos she used were eye-catching, and also that her product and shop descriptions were SEO-friendly, so they would show up in search results. This was an important step since there are a lot of resume templates out there. In July 2018, the Etsy storefront went online. Anna would then go on to start her own website at the end of the year as another way in which people could buy her products directly.

Since then, she's grown her business even more, and one of the ways she's done so is through Etsy ads. She was initially skeptical, but found that her conversions gradually increased with tweaking, to the point where they now provide an ROI of 116%. Basically, whatever she spends, she can make more. Now, although she succeeded after a lot of trial and error, she says that ads won't work for everyone. Really depends a lot on the type of products you're selling.

Today, she sells up to 400 templates a month, which nets her an average of $2,500 in monthly side income. With over 6,000 products sold to customers from over 50 countries, it's safe to say she's done far more digital products than she could just selling her time as a job coach. Now, what's been difficult? Well, Anna had to learn a lot because she was an expert in recruitment and job searching, but found herself struggling with new skills like SEO, paid ads, and social media marketing. It took more than a year to get to her $1,000 months, but now she wakes up every day to sales notifications and feedback from customers who have used her templates to land new, higher paying jobs.

Moving forward, her new year's resolution for 2022 is to create a comprehensive coaching program for job seekers that will help them navigate their search strategically. [Music]

All right, so as I mentioned, for lots of projects, for lots of business ideas, there are multiple ways to bring them to life. And so here, Anna really wanted to focus on digital and creating something that lots of people could purchase. It's good to ask, what if she had done it the other way? What if she had focused on a more in-person, or it could be virtual, but let's say, individual high touch model.

She might be able to also make $2,500 a month or whatever the goal would be, but it definitely wouldn't be passive. It would be a lot more active involvement, and she would serve a lot fewer people. Okay, so this is the kind of model that can scale because she's selling 400 templates a month right now. What if she sold 800 templates a month? What if it were 1,600 templates?

Now, obviously, you run into lots of factors in terms of the number of customers who are out there, the competition, there tend to be kind of just natural ceilings to these things. So it doesn't expand indefinitely. I mean, it would be great if it did. It doesn't always work that way. It doesn't usually work that way.

But the point is there's no predefined limit, okay? So for Anna, clearly this model was better. And I also think for a lot of our listeners, trying to find a way to create something that is replicable, that can create some form of passive income, I do think that's better. So of course, take what works for you. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes are at situskillschool.com/1858. We're gonna include links to Anna's work. Anything else I mentioned in the episode, if you've got a comment or question, you can leave it there as well. I hope you will subscribe or follow. Come back tomorrow for a new episode.

As we're beginning a new month, I hope you're taking time for yourself and working on something that's important to you. That's it for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From the "Onward Project."