Emily Durham.
Courtesy of Emily Durham
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Emily Durham, a 30-year-old author, content creator, podcaster, entrepreneur, and former recruiter who lives in Toronto. It has been edited for length and clarity.Before becoming Emily The Recruiter, a content creator with nearly one million TikTok followers, I held a variety of recruitment roles for nearly 10 years. I worked at a couple of large banks and some large tech companies, and focused on all career stages.I noticed that early-career folks weren't passing interviews or didn't know how to advocate for higher salaries. I would be on the phone with candidates, offering them a salary, and they'd say, OK, yeah, I'll take it. I'd then find myself egging them on, trying to get them to negotiate more.I didn't have time to prepare each candidate for every interview round the way I wanted to. One day in 2019, I recorded a 30-minute podcast episode on how not to mess up an interview and how to negotiate. Within three weeks, it took off. From there, I posted to my podcast, Clock In with Emily Durham, regularly, and within the same year, to TikTok and Instagram, too.Between content creation and recruiting, I was working 75 to 80 hours a week and sleeping only four hours a night — I knew something had to give. In 2024, I quit my job to pursue content creation full time.If I were advising my best friend — or myself — on how to navigate today's job market, these are the 12 tips I would give.1. Don't: Customize your résumé for every jobI would never customize my résumé for every job I'm applying to. I think it's incredibly dated advice, and it solves the wrong problem. The problem today is that no one's seeing it. You spend all this time on the "perfect piece of paper," and Susie from HR won't be reading it.
