In this episode, Michael Gardon chats with Joel Bein. Joel Bein is passionate about self-driven learning, creativity, personal growth, and human consciousness. He is a content marketer and job hunt coach at Crash.co, a startup on a mission to help people discover and do what makes them come alive. He is a writer for The Daily Job Hunt newsletter, host of the Career Crashers Podcast, host of the Exponentially Empowered podcast, and, as a classically trained musician and conductor, he is Founder and Artistic Director of the New Orleans Chamber Players.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
- Joel’s background
- Be your own credentials - what this means to Joel
- Are resumes dead?
- How to use video pitching instead of resumes
- Do the job before you have the job - take initiative
- Quality over quantity matters when applying to jobs
- The formula to standing out on a job hunt - creativity + persistence
- Memorable pitches that have stood out to Joel
HELP US OUT!
Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it.
BOOKS AND RESOURCES:
- Praxis - company Joel mentions. Get matched with a full-time, paid apprenticeship without the cost or hassle of college. No degree required.
- Crash.co - where Joel works. Skip the resume and get hired fast.
- Use free work to not just get your foot in the door, but to kick the door down.
- Don’t stop your search at job boards
- Connect with Joel on his website, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.
Michael Gardon (00:00):
Hey everyone. And welcome back to another episode of CareerCloud radio. I'm your host Michael Gardon. I'm on a mission to help job seekers build thriving careers of their choosing. And to do that, I try to have interesting conversations with people that approach the idea of career a bit differently. Today's topic is, are resumes, dead, and how to stand out amongst the crowd. Today's guest is Joel Bein. Joel is passionate about self-driven learning creativity, personal growth and human consciousness. He is a content marketer and job hunt coach at crash.co a startup on a mission to help people discover and do what makes them come alive. He is a writer for the daily job hunt newsletter, crash.co he's also host of the career Crashers podcast and also hosts exponentially empowered podcast. He is a classically trained musician and conductor and founder and artistic director of the new Orleans chamber players. Joel definitely stands out amongst the crowd and has an amazing backstory that led him to work with crash. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Joel Bein.
Michael Gardon (00:53):
Joel, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you.
Joel Bein:
My pleasure. Thanks so much.
Michael Gardon:
So I'm really excited to kind of get into this topic of how do you stand out. Everybody knows the word resume and everybody's got their own take on what that means and, and are they outdated? And there's a big debate around this, but the core to what you and your, the business that you're affiliated with does is, is kind of teach people how to stand out and get a job. So I'm really excited to dig into that with you, but I want to start with your background personally, because when I got introduced to you, I saw that you were a classically trained musician. Can you just give our audience a little bit of your background story and maybe how you started out in music and how you also got into, you know, wound up in sort of this content marketing role?
Joel Bein (01:51):
Yeah, totally. I like quotes. So I'll start with the, one of my favorite quotes by Howard Thurman. He said, ask not what the world needs ask, what makes you come alive because the world needs people who have come alive. And so I heard that quote some 10 years ago and the seed was planted for me. And it really resonated with that. Although I was already following my passion in a sense, I fell in love with classical music as a 17 year old. And I went to study music education in my undergrad. And so I had this passion to perform and that ended up turning into a passion for conducting, I got a master's in conducting, and I'm still conducting to this day and that's turned into a side project. I run a group called New Orleans chamber players, which is a chamber music organization. And I get to conduct a couple of concerts each year.
Joel Bein (02:40):
That was my life for most of my career for 10 years was music as well as education. So I mentioned I was studying music education, and it's kind of funny because at the time I chose that major almost as a safety net, like, oh, I'm going to get certified to become a band director in a K through 12 setting. And I love music. I'm not sure I want to do that, but I know I have a job coming out of college and I felt like this kind of security thing. But while I was in college, I really started thinking and questioning a lot and getting curious about what is my philosophy of education and education over time actually became a passion as well, but really not teaching in the K through 12 schools, but rather creating new paradigms in education. And I did teach for eight years in the academic world as a high school band director in middle school band director while I was also pursuing conducting projects professionally.
Joel Bein (03:38):
But I'm in, I'm sort of in this system and I'm questioning it. And I'm listening to all sorts of podcasts, questioning the fundamentals of this system, the history of it and how it's really not serving kids. It's, it's really teaching a lot of obedience, conformity apathy. You're not really fostering creativity and curiosity. And so that thread was sort of planted in my early twenties and kept on. I kept on following it. That curiosity was really sparked for me. And I ended up following this company called Praxis, which is founded by Isaac Morehouse, which is a college alternative for young people in the apprenticeship program for people to launch careers without college. And I was really obsessed with Praxis. I'm still obsessed with Praxis, with the whole mission to empower young people, to not rely on institutions, not rely on a degree or resume in order to get a job, but to launch your career when you're 17, when you're 19, when you're 20 and be, bad-ass be awesome.
Joel Bein (04:43):
And so crash, which is the company I working for now is an extension of practices. It's Isaac Morehouse, a second company and crashes the same principles as Praxis, but it's, we're trying to really scale this mindset to the entire world. And we can talk more about what that's going to entail, but in terms of my story, I've sort of had these two threads, these two passions and these two elements of life that make me come alive, right, as Howard Thurman said in that quote. So I'm really passionate and love conducting and classical music, but I've also had this passion for education and creating new paradigms. And, and when I say new paradigms, I'm talking about self-driven living basically where young people are following their curiosity and creating portfolios based on their interests, finding opportunities based on their interests so that they can come alive professionally and not relying on the school system.
Joel Bein (05:38):
This whole school systems with teaches us. We need to have these diplomas and credentials and resumes in order to, for someone to prove for us to prove that we can create value. Cause there's like a third party stamp of approval that you're qualified. But when we're talking about a crash and practices is talking about is be your own credential and prove your ability to create value through forging your own path. And so that sense of agency that creativity, ultimately, that that sense of a liveliness is what it's all about. I mean, the quote that I gave you from Howard Thurman is actually the mission behind both practice and crashes to help people discover and do what makes them come alive. And so I have a vision for a world full of people who are alive doing work that makes them really, it brings them a lot of meaning and purpose.
Joel Bein (06:26):
So I was in, in a couple of years ago or 2020, I was finishing up my last position as a high school band director. And I was really set to become, to change careers. I've been set to work for Isaac Morehouse for some time. And I ended up pitching him using the crash platform and to crash my own career. So I can tell you more about kind of what that looked like, but that's what happened about a year ago. And I've been learning a lot in the startup role doing a lot of most recently content marketing.
Michael Gardon (06:57):
That's a fantastic story. I love that. Like, you don't have to have passion in these kind of specific niches or industries, if you will, right? Like your story is a passion for education, which can span sort of a number of different things. And obviously it's taken you in a kind of, really on an interesting career path. I love your comment about agency. I mean, I have three kids, I have three boys, nine, seven, and four and a half. And I did a poll on LinkedIn just the other day. I was like, I basically feel like it's almost a slam dunk that at least one of my kids won't go to college because there's all sorts of things, right? Like education itself right now is so easy to get outside of higher education. The value of paid higher education is crumbling in a lot of respects.
Michael Gardon (07:51):
And there are so many opportunities to just go out, save yourself that money and start building skills and careers. I mean, there's trade jobs, but then there's also just, it's never been easier to start a business with your computer and doing things digitally and selling products. So I love that. I resonate very much with what you said, and you've educated me now on Praxis and crash. And I think that's fantastic. I mean, one of the central kind of tenants of crash it's right there on your website is essentially resumes are dead or they don't work. I can't remember exactly how it's phrased, but talk to me a little bit about that. Why is that and why are we still using resumes?
Joel Bein (08:35):
Yeah, I think it's habit. It's momentum. It's unconscious momentum, inertia. It's inertia. It's just, I actually just read that the resume was first created in the middle agents. It's like, it's pretty incredible. So, I mean, I don't know the whole history of the resume, but there's a lot of sort of status quo bias people have in our culture where, oh, this is, I got a job, you get a resume. People just toss the word around. And so there's like this baked in assumption that that is what you do. If you want to get some food, you go to the grocery store. If you want to get some, a job, send a resume. There's not really an interruption or raising a consciousness for most people about, well, how, how else could I get a job? And so what we're seeing is less than 1% response rates to resumes from hiring managers and people are frustrated sending out these resumes and waiting to hear back, you feel like you were productive that day.
Joel Bein (09:33):
You clicked apply. You submitted the resume. Maybe you sent a couple of messages on LinkedIn and you try to activate your network a little bit or build that. But then you get the generic rejection from the ATS and you're just kind of stuck. And so we're trying to flip that around and say, you can delete your resume. You can burn your resume and you can do something entirely different. That's empowering, it's creative and it's gonna help you stand out. And what we're teaching is to send a custom pitch and we have a video platform, or you can do that. And we find that video pitching is incredibly successful and we're seeing 80% response rates to, to pitches and people getting interviews about 35% of the time. And so what you do is you flip your mindset where instead of trying to apply to as many jobs as possible and hoping that something sticks making the job on a numbers game, you take a quality over quantity approach.
Joel Bein (10:35):
And you say, let me just pick 1, 3, 5 companies. I like to say, just start with one company because you just focus, just focus. Now you're, you're, you're customizing this pitch just for them. And you're being very selective about what that company is based on your curiosity, based on your interest, maybe based on your passion, you're based on your dream job. I mean, for me, as I said, in my story, I was following Isaac, our founder. I've been following him for five years and really obsessed, right. This was my dream to work for him. And so I was putting my eggs in that basket. Now, when, when I was making my career change, I did, I was looking at pitching other companies as well, but ultimately I really wanted to work, work for Isaac. And so I pitched him and that I got the best results because I was really, really interested in this particular mission for this particular company.
Joel Bein (11:30):
So you'd be really selective. And then you make a compelling pitch just for them. You say into that camera, Hey, I really love your company for X, Y, Z reasons you smile. And you say that into the camera with some enthusiasm and some authenticity, like you really mean it. And then there's this humanized connection. And then you pitch them on what you can do. Tell your story, tell him what top accomplishments are. Maybe you ran a marathon and that's one of your best accomplishments. And you talk about the soft skills. You gained the consistency, the work ethic, the perseverance, and you sell them on those soft skills because most employers are looking for soft skills and, and you can also create a custom project just for them. Maybe you're looking for a sales role. And so you create a list of leads, 50 leads, do some research on that company, figure out who their target audiences.
Joel Bein (12:20):
And you just go ahead and create a list of leads and some contact information for those leads. And you say, Hey, look, I made this for you. I'm giving you a gift just for you. And so what you're doing is you're doing the job before you have the job, and you're signaling that you go above and beyond and you're signaling that you take initiative and that you don't wait for permission, which again, it goes back to that school kind of mindset where we learn what the rules are. And we try to ask for permission, but you just say, oh, I'm just going to create value for this company right now. And it's hard for them to ignore you. It's hard for them to ignore you when you just do something just for them. And you make it customized because they're receiving hundreds of applications that are boring and generic. And when you send something in an email, you skip the ATS. So you just email a human being at a company. Here's my pitch. And it's just for them, it's pretty hard to get,
Michael Gardon (13:11):
Right? So for our audience who don't know the definition of ATS and ATS is an applicant tracking system, applicant tracking software. They're used by HR departments all over every industry, every, every company imaginable. And it's really a system that helps the hiring manager, weed out resumes. Essentially, they're looking for certain keywords and they're looking for any way to reject applicants because I don't know the numbers off hand. Maybe, maybe you do. But I mean, you know, again, it's, it's like, well, you said 1% response rates, right? So like your average hiring manager is going to get 250 resumes and respond to just a few of those. Right? So that's what an ATS is. And that's where Joel was kind of saying, this is, it's very similar with old-fashioned networking, right? Like building relationships and doing things that way help you essentially just bypass that big gatekeeper to talk to a human being.
Michael Gardon (14:12):
So I have a couple of questions about what you said. So number one, I think there's this interesting numbers play, right? Where a lot of people say, Hey, I need to apply for as many jobs as possible because I know the numbers are level, but when you sort of flip, when you sort of, and I think people are scared to go really deep a lot of times and invest a lot of time and energy into creating something creative. If they don't know that they have a much better response rate, but you guys have had documented that. So I think that takes some of that initial fear out of it. But do you get a lot of resistance from job seekers in terms of the amount of time that they may have to invest in to creating one of these videos? Or how does that kind of go?
Joel Bein (15:04):
Yeah, we definitely hear that sometimes where people are, are hesitant to focus on just a couple of companies because of what you just said, and they really want to get that job. And so they, there's a mindset of let's cast wide net, and that's gonna give me the best chance of catching a fish here. But the reality is that's what everyone else is doing. So if you want to, I'm thinking about like, I don't know if you're familiar with Dave Ramsey and like his system of getting out of debt, like he's talking about, if you want to be like everyone else, then do what everyone else is doing. Like, there's a lot of people in debt in this country. It was a lot of people will spending, getting into credit card debt. For example, when he, and he says, don't have a credit card and that's weird, right?
Joel Bein (15:45):
But it's like, well, if you don't want to have credit card debt, then don't have a credit card. It's like, it's weird maybe, but then you're going to be successful in that department. So there's sort of this default to, to go with that mindset of casting a wide net. But the reality is 1% response rate. So, but there's also this concern that you're going to not be using your time wisely. If you only pitch one couple of companies and let's say you fail. Well, my response is you can't fail because if you take the time to do an hour of research, a couple hours of research on one company, do a deep dive, figure out what their problems are. Their pain points, maybe connect to a couple employees of that company, create a custom project for them, create a video pitch. And then you get an interview.
Joel Bein (16:36):
Let's say, that's awesome. And that's a success right there, but maybe you don't get the job, but did you fail? You just went through that entire process and you are going to build confidence and momentum because I'll tell you what the first time that you ever send one of these pitches. It is thrilling, especially when you get that first response back. The first time I ever pitched a company, I got a response back with them in a couple hours. This happens fairly often. And so you see the results and you know that this works in terms of getting responses. So even if you don't get the job in that one pitch, you are going to be digging out these grooves of the process and the mindset of pitching itself. And so from doing the research, creating the video pitch, maybe creating a project, sending the email, finding the, the decision-makers email, address, the step, sending it, and then following up with them, they might not respond right away.
Joel Bein (17:30):
And so you want to make the job sort of a sales campaign and you keep following up with them every couple of days until you get that response. So that's part of the process too. These are all like skill sets that you're building. And so is it possible that you won't get the job? Yes. Is it possible you won't get the interview? Yes. Is it possible that you don't even get a it's possible, but again, we have 80% response rates and compare that to the conventional way. So it's not really a losing situation here because you're going to be building the group, digging these groups where you know the process and you feel empowered like, oh, I know how to do this now, now. Okay. It didn't work this time, but the next one, I know what to do. I'm going to get some feedback from how this first one went and I'll keep going and you keep building momentum and you feel in the driver's seat and you're going to have success. But if you just don't stop.
Michael Gardon (18:21):
So within the, the crash playbook, if you will, is it an entire sort of system that you walk people through? It's not just the novelty of a video. Is there an entire process that you end up coaching people on and how to do this? Because those skills absolutely like how you described them are replicable to not just crash. But I mean, I would say networking in general is that part of the playbook here with crash be working with, with people.
Joel Bein (18:51):
Yeah. We're working with people one-on-one and coaching them on this process. And it is a process. The video pitch is the main tool, but the process is key. Like I said, a little while ago, the key at the beginning is to choose the company selectively where don't pick just any old company, but really pick a company that when you do turn the camera on that, you can look into that camera and smile and have a genuine smile cause you really want to work with this company. And you know, it's funny because people think myself included for awhile that pitching the dream job is actually that's asking too much. And just, just wanting to just get a pretty good job. But if you do have a dream job, go for that, because you're going to be able to have that much more Gusto and power and motivation to make it happen.
Joel Bein (19:47):
It's not going to be easy necessarily, but you don't just want to just get any old job. Not only because you, why would you not want to be like really alive when you're at work, but also in terms of the efficacy, people want to work with people who are really gung ho about their mission. So don't shy away from finding that dream job. But if you don't have a dream job, just follow your curiosity. You don't have to have the pressure on yourself to have the passion and your calling just don't pitch companies that you don't like that are just going to make you feel dead inside. Otherwise, as long as it's kind of looks pretty interesting, then go for it. And you're going to learn over time what your strengths are and what you really enjoy doing. And you can keep adapting from there.
Michael Gardon (20:28):
So you guys have a process and you, you, you coach people on doing this. If you had to like, sort of pick four or five things. Like if I were to say, Joel, is there a formula to standing out like amongst the crowd in not just resumes, but let's say you could probably extend this to any type of endeavor. What would it be? I mean, I think w themes that I'm hearing off of just off this conversation are you choose your target carefully. Like, what are you really trying to accomplish? And put more eggs in that basket. Don't do a whole bunch of things. Mediocre go after something and have passion. And two is probably like the risk. You know, you talked about research, right? And finding something personal or finding something that the company is really doing delivering value. Like that would be maybe, maybe two. Are there others? Like how would you kind of maybe break that down?
Joel Bein (21:21):
I mean, two words that come to mind are creativity and persistence. Where if you just go back to creativity and persistence, then you will be successful and thinking, how could I get a job without a resume? What if instead of following the rules of, I need to send a random, I need to send a resume to make up a new role, which is I can't send a resume. You kind of create this, this constraint, which can breed creativity, right? Creativity is dependent upon constraint. So you say, I can't send the resume. Now your imagination is forced to activate. And you say what I do in order to get a job, to get someone's attention. So that's when you start thinking outside the lines and you think, oh, well, I could actually, instead of applying on this job board, I can contact an individual person in an email.
Joel Bein (22:07):
Oh, we're, we're living in 2021. It's actually very easy to get someone's email address during a site like hunter.io, you can verify email addresses and you, you find decision makers based on the company's LinkedIn profile. And you, you, you contact them directly and you send something custom and creative as well. And then the persistence where again, this key leg is the followup process. After you email them, your pitch, you continue to follow up every two to three days until you get a response and not letting up on that. And that's another skill to build because it might take four or five, six follow-up emails or more. But if you talk to sales professionals, they'll say that there's not really an, a number of follow-ups that's too many, and you're not really at risk of being annoying. You're just going to be signaling that you're persistent and you're interested.
Joel Bein (23:02):
So continuing to follow up. And so, yeah, creativity and persistence, and just always asking yourself, how am I in the driver's seat? How can I stay in the driver's seat? What's the next step that I can do. Once you get an interview, let's say you have an interview. Are you going to wait around and see if you get the job? No, keep going, keep going. You got an interview, send them another video pitch. And you say, Hey, I really loved our conversation. I took this and this out of the conversation. I'm really excited to create value. I went ahead and made this new FAQ page for you. I thought that might be valuable. Add lifting new questions based on information I gained. And you keep on creating value without waiting for permission. And if you keep doing that, you're going to get a job. And then you get to just keep that mindset for the rest of your, I mean, you're going to stand out to get the job. And then when you're at the job, you can keep doing that mind. So how can you create value without being told? That's what they want. That's what they really want is someone who can be independent and self-managing, and that's the best form of job security is to be able to say, I'm always empowered to make opportunities happen.
Michael Gardon (24:06):
Very cool. When you said the word creativity, you were, you were coming alive, you kind of had this like little smirk on your face. So I want to ask, do you have any good stories of just really creative pitches or ways that you've heard of, or even seen that people have have stood out kind of in the job search process?
Joel Bein (24:25):
Yeah, definitely. We've had people do flips off of trampolines, I guess that was just one person, not people. There was someone named hunter who did a flip off of a trampoline before he made his pitch and his video. There's someone who, who was playing the guitar at the beginning of his video. People making all sorts of just really highly produced videos that are more creative. I've heard a story of, of people, someone who sent a, a burrito to the CEO's house. Cause she found out that he loved to put Les. And so she hand delivered this burrito. When I was in the job hunt, I was pitching companies and I would, I would send them books. So I'd send them a pitch. And then I would also send a physical book to the office of the company. And I had a little note in there and that had my, the link URL to the pitch that I made in there.
Joel Bein (25:20):
So I write this daily newsletter, the daily job hunt. And we kind of have this playful tone in there and I've been just joking around in a sense, but not joking around like, Hey, like you can send a video of yourself, dancing in a clown suit and you're going to have a better chance of standing out. Just send them a picture of you lifting 300 pound weights, like get imaginative. And yeah, at the end of the day, you need to actually create tangible value for the purpose of the, of the role of the company. But what you're doing is when you get creative is signaling that you're creative and that you are, you're willing to think in that way. And that is what they want when you are actually on the job, they want you to be able to stop and think, huh? How could I make this happen in an interesting way, in a valuable way for whatever the task is at hand, rather than being a cog in a wheel and just doing the tasks, they want people who come alive that are creative. So just start doing that right away.
Michael Gardon (26:19):
Yeah. I think there's a couple of things there. You said like you have to eventually create real, tangible value. Yes. But step one is essentially upping your odds of just being noticed and by staying out of the ATS, you're exponentially upping your odds. And I think the, on the flip side hiring managers are probably kind of sick of seeing the same old resume is all the time. Right? And so they're interested in seeing something creative and seeing something stand out. So I think those two things are kind of working together. I wanted to just share a story. I saw a story on LinkedIn a few months back about a guy. He was a copywriter trying to find a copywriting job. And he found the hiring manager on Venmo and actually sent a request for $50,000 for a copywriting job. He sent a request to the person and it like totally got them the interview. I'm not sure if he got hired or not, but it was a LinkedIn post from the hiring manager that was like, this was amazing. And yes, we're absolutely interviewing him tomorrow. So I just like, I love that story of just using a different medium and finding a way to stand up.
Joel Bein (27:33):
Yeah. I've also heard stories of people creating landing pages. There's a famous one, Nina for airbnb.com where this was some years ago, but she created this full landing page for Airbnb, with her proposition. I forget the details, but she had, I think a marketing plan all written out on this page and saying how she wants to work for Airbnb. And she didn't actually end up getting a job with them, but lots of other companies saw what she did and reached out to her. So that's another ripple effect. And that's another reason you can't fail is that even if you didn't get that particular job, you could tweet your pitch and you could get the attention of all sorts of other companies by showing what you're doing. And the landing page ideas is a great one because you can stand out and you're creating specific value and you're, you're creating a plan of what you actually are planning to do. What's your value proposition. You're identifying the pain points in your you're going ahead and showing the value upfront. So there's still that duality there of, of can you create a project, maybe that's tangible in its value, you know, like the landing page or the FAQ page or lists of leads. And then there's also just getting creative and maybe some of these more silly ways like the Venmo request. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's just about signaling that you're going to be different and you're not afraid.
Michael Gardon (28:52):
Cool. Joel, thanks so much for your time. Can you leave our audience with where they can learn more about you? I think you talked about a newsletter, give them, give them all the details for where they can find you find crash and a follow up if they need to.
Joel Bein (29:06):
Yeah, sure. For crash, you could go to crash.co crash.co that's our website, and you can see what we're doing there and what we're teaching in our coaching system go to crash.co/daily. That is the site for our newsletter, the daily job punt, which is what I'm heading up. And that's six mornings a week. It's a really short snappy email just giving you this kind of daily dose of encouragement, empathy, and no nonsense advice. Let's try to have that, that sort of collage of different tones to where we really understand that the job hunt can be discouraging. So hopefully if you're on the job hunt, reading this email in the morning can be, can be a place where you get that a little bit of that and encourage have an en cheerleader in your inbox, but also like, Hey, try this instead, do this instead. And this is going to work and it might take a little bit of, it might feel a little uncomfortable at first, but go for it. And you're going to build that confidence. And if you want some support, then reach out to us at crash and we can get you going on in our coaching system.
Michael Gardon (30:12):
Awesome. Joel, thanks so much. This has been a great conversation. Really appreciate your time.
Joel Bein (30:18):
My pleasure. I really appreciate the chance to come on.
Outro (30:24):
The show CareerCloud Radio is a production of careercloud.com. Please review this episode on iTunes. We really appreciate it a lot. And thank you for listening.
