Michelle: Your beautifully designed, perfectly worded resume is probably getting you rejected before a human ever sees it. Mark: Hold on, what? I spent a week choosing the perfect font for mine. It has elegant columns and a tasteful logo. Are you telling me that was a waste of time? Michelle: According to the author of our book today, not only was it a waste of time, it was likely counterproductive. He says you should write your resume 'like a caveman.' Mark: Like a caveman? As in, "Me want job. Give job"? That sounds like the worst advice I've ever heard. Michelle: It sounds completely wrong, but that's exactly why we need to talk about it. We're diving into Get Hired Now!: How to Accelerate Your Job Search, Stand Out, and Land Your Next Great Opportunity by Ian Siegel. Mark: Ah, the ZipRecruiter guy. Okay, if anyone knows how resumes are actually processed, it's him. He's probably seen a few million of them. Michelle: A few hundred million, actually. And what makes this book so compelling is that Siegel isn't just another career coach. He's a tech CEO with a background in sociology, and he's pulling back the curtain on how the machinery of modern hiring actually works. The book became a Wall Street Journal Bestseller precisely because it gives this data-driven, insider view of a process that feels like a total black box to most of us. Mark: I'm in. My inner caveman is ready to learn. Let's get past these gatekeepers. Michelle: Exactly. But the first gatekeeper you have to impress isn't human at all.

Michelle: Siegel's first major point is that most job seekers are playing the wrong game. They're writing a resume to impress a person, but the first reader is almost always a robot—an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS. Mark: Right, I've heard of those. They're the systems that scan your resume for keywords, right? Michelle: Precisely. And they are not sophisticated readers. They get confused by columns, images, fancy fonts, and creative layouts. They're programmed to parse simple, linear information. So when Siegel says "write like a caveman," he means use a dead-simple template. Single column, standard font, clear headings like "Work Experience" and "Education." Mark: Okay, that's painful to hear for anyone who's proud of their design skills, but it makes a certain kind of brutal sense. You have to feed the machine what it wants. Michelle: And you have to do it fast. The data is just staggering. One study found that when a resume finally does reach a human recruiter, they spend an average of only 7.4 seconds looking at it. Mark: Seven point four seconds? That's barely enough time to read my name! I've spent longer deciding on a coffee order. Michelle: It's brutal. Which is why the language itself needs to be incredibly direct. Forget flowery prose about your dynamic contributions. The robots, and the humans who follow, are scanning for facts and accomplishments. This leads to his next rule: quantify everything. Mark: What do you mean by quantify? Like, add numbers to everything? Michelle: Exactly. Let me give you the example from the book. Imagine two candidates for a communications role. Candidate one writes on their resume: "Wrote press releases. Managed PR firm. Ran the company customer conference." Mark: Sounds pretty standard. A little boring, but it gets the point across. Michelle: Now listen to Candidate two: "Wrote 18 press releases over 12 months. Managed a $3 million annual PR budget. Ran the company customer conference with more than 8,000 attendees over two days." Mark: Whoa. Okay, that's not even a contest. The second person sounds like a superstar, and the first one sounds like they might have just been an intern. They could have done the exact same job, but the numbers change everything. Michelle: It's the difference between telling and showing. Numbers are concrete. They provide scale and impact. The robot can parse them, and the 7.4-second human can grasp them instantly. Siegel even has a cheeky tip he calls "One Million Anything." If you worked on a project that reached a million users, or managed a budget over a million dollars, put that number in there. It’s a psychological flag that signals high-level experience. Mark: I love that. It’s like a little bit of marketing flair in an otherwise robotic document. But how do you know if you’ve done it right? How can you be sure the robot is even reading your resume correctly? Michelle: This is my favorite piece of practical advice from the book. Siegel says you should give your resume the "Robot Test." Mark: A Robot Test? How does that work? Michelle: It's simple. Before you apply for any job, go to a major job site like ZipRecruiter, create a new profile, and just upload your resume. The site's software will then try to auto-fill your profile—your work history, your skills, your education—based on what its robot could parse from your document. Mark: That is brilliant. It's like looking over the robot's shoulder to see what it understood. Michelle: Exactly. And Siegel says if the profile it creates is a jumbled mess, if it missed your last job or thinks your high school hobby is a core skill, you know your resume is failing the first test. You can be sure that other, less sophisticated corporate systems will have even more trouble. It’s a free, five-minute diagnostic that could be the difference between your application being seen or being sent straight to the digital void. Mark: Okay, so we've outsmarted the robots. We've created a simple, quantified, caveman-style resume that can pass the test. But now we have to face the final boss: an actual human being. That seems even more unpredictable. Michelle: It is. And that's where the strategy shifts entirely from technical optimization to human psychology.

Michelle: Once you're in front of a person, Siegel's advice gets really interesting, and a little provocative. He argues that the goal isn't to pretend bias doesn't exist; it's to understand it and use it to your advantage. Mark: That feels a little... calculating, doesn't it? Like we're trying to manipulate the interviewer. Michelle: Well, let's play a quick game from the book. It's called "You Only Get to Know One Thing." I'll give you two candidates, and you tell me which one you'd rather interview, based on just one fact. Ready? Mark: I'm ready. Let's do it. Michelle: Candidate A graduated from Stanford. Candidate B graduated from a local community college. Who do you pick? Mark: I mean, I feel bad saying it, but... Stanford. It just signals a certain level of achievement. Michelle: Okay, next one. Candidate A used to work at Google. Candidate B used to work at Yahoo. Mark: Google. No question. One is at the cutting edge, the other is... well, Yahoo. Michelle: Last one. Candidate A has a Gmail address. Candidate B has an AOL address. Mark: Come on! That's not fair. But... Gmail. An AOL address feels like a digital fossil. I'm already making assumptions about their tech-savviness. Wow, okay, I see your point. I'm a biased jerk. Michelle: We all are! That's Siegel's point. He says, "No matter how old you are, the color of your skin, what gender you identify with... you are racist, sexist, ageist, and elitist." It's a harsh statement, but he argues these biases are baked into our mental shortcuts. The brands we associate with—schools, former employers, even email providers—create an instant positive or negative halo. Your job is to consciously build a resume and a story that triggers the positive biases. Mark: So it's about curating the signals you send. That makes sense. Once you get into the interview room, though, it's a whole different ballgame. What's the hack there? Michelle: The first 20 seconds. Research shows that interviewers make snap judgments about competence, warmth, and hireability in that tiny window. So you have to nail the entrance. He breaks it down into four simple actions: a real, genuine smile; strong, steady eye contact; a firm, dry handshake—no "dead fish" handshakes; and saying the interviewer's name. Mark: The handshake one is huge. I've heard managers say they've mentally disqualified someone over a weak handshake. It signals a lack of confidence. Michelle: It absolutely does. But the most powerful tool Siegel offers is what he calls the "magical first sentence." Most interviews start with the dreaded, "So, tell me about yourself." And most candidates launch into a rambling, five-minute monologue. Mark: Oh, I've been there. You just start talking and hope you say something impressive before they fall asleep. Michelle: Siegel says to flip the script entirely. After the initial pleasantries, you say this: "[Interviewer's Name]—(pause for a second)—I'm so excited to be here because [fill in the blank with something specific and positive about the company]." For example, "Mark, I'm so excited to be here because I've been following your podcast for years and I think the way you approach storytelling is brilliant." And then, you immediately pivot and ask them a question. Mark: Can you repeat that? That feels like a game-changer. Michelle: You express specific enthusiasm, then you pivot. "Mark, I'm so excited to be here... Now, I read that you led the team on the recent brand relaunch. I'd love to hear what that experience was like for you." Suddenly, you're not the one on the spot. They are. And people love talking about themselves and their accomplishments. You've transformed an interrogation into a conversation and made them feel seen and important. Mark: That is so smart. You're hacking the human need for validation. You're not just a candidate anymore; you're an interested, engaging peer. Okay, this is all great for getting the offer. But what about the part everyone dreads? The money. Michelle: Ah, negotiation. This is where the psychology gets really deep. Siegel points to a survey showing that 64% of job seekers accept the first offer they receive. They don't negotiate at all. Mark: That's a huge number. Why? Is it just being polite? Michelle: It's deeper than that. It's a cognitive bias called the "endowment effect." The moment you're given an offer, you feel like you possess it. And because we overvalue things we possess, the fear of losing the offer becomes greater than the desire to improve it. We get scared that if we ask for more, they'll just pull the offer away. Mark: I totally know that feeling. You don't want to seem greedy or ungrateful. Michelle: But Siegel says that's a huge mistake, and he tells this one story that is just devastating. An HR employee was hired at a company for $50,000, which was a big raise for her, so she accepted immediately. Five years later, her role expanded and she got access to everyone's salary files. She discovered she was the lowest-paid person on her team by $15,000. Mark: Oh, that's painful. That's a mistake that costs you for years and years, because every future raise is based on that lower starting number. Michelle: Exactly. She realized her colleagues had all negotiated their starting offers, and she hadn't. She left tens of thousands of dollars on the table over those five years because of a ten-minute conversation she was too afraid to have. The reality is, employers expect you to negotiate. They often build it into the initial offer. Not negotiating is like leaving a wallet full of cash on the table just because you were too shy to pick it up.

Mark: Wow. So the whole process is this strange dance. First, you have to be a robot to get past the robots, and then you have to be a master of human psychology to win over the people. Michelle: That's the perfect summary. The core insight of Get Hired Now! is that modern job searching is a two-front war. You need the technical, data-driven skills to optimize for the system, and you need the emotional intelligence to navigate the human element. Most people focus on one or the other—they have a great resume but are terrible in interviews, or they're charming but their resume never gets seen. Siegel's argument is that you have to master both fronts to truly succeed. Mark: It’s a fascinating blend of cold, hard strategy and warm, human connection. If there's one thing our listeners should do tonight, after hearing all this, what's the most practical first step? Michelle: I think it has to be the Robot Test. Go do it right now. Take the resume you've been sending out, upload it to a major job site, and see what the machine spits back out. See what it thinks your job titles are, what skills it pulled. It might be the most revealing, and perhaps humbling, five minutes of your entire job search. It tells you if you're even in the game. Mark: That's a great, tangible action. It’s like a free diagnostic for your career. For our listeners, we'd love to hear from you. What's the most surprising or counter-intuitive piece of job advice you've ever received? Find us on our social channels and let us know. Maybe it's even better than "write like a caveman." Michelle: It's a high bar to clear! This was a fantastic look at a process we all have to go through, but few of us ever truly understand. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.