Madeline Mann is the creator of Self Made Millennial YouTube channel, which provides rapid-fire, battle tested advice on how to find your career and excel in it. In this exclusive interview with Manning Global, Madeline gives tips on how to achieve the ultimate interview wow-factor, plus offers some innovative job search strategies for millennials to try…
You’re a keen blogger, vlogger and writer – what recruiting topics do you enjoy presenting the most?
The short answer is: ALL of it! I weirdly love talking about recruiting and career development constantly. But if I had to choose, my favourite advice to give is the kind that gets people to rethink the way they view the job search process. Small tips and tricks for resumes and interviews are helpful, but most of us were never taught how to fundamentally approach career planning and interviewing to show our true value.
Your YouTube channel – Self Made Millennial – as the name suggests, is targeted to a certain group, so what are your top tips for how Millennials can deliver on their potential?
The tip I’ve had the most success from is how to build your own ‘BAMF Binder’ for a job interview. This is how I was able to land job offers for roles that I wasn’t totally qualified for. A BAMF Binder is a physical portfolio of a person’s work and accomplishments, all laid out in a simple and compelling way. It’s excellent for people who want to articulate the value of their experience, especially when the relevance isn’t directly apparent. Such as if you are switching careers or have non-traditional work experience like volunteering in the community or projects completed in school.
I get many emails from people who have stories of going into interviews and the company being so impressed that they are fixated on the BAMF Binder, pass it around the office, and one person even got a job offer on the spot because of it. Two reasons this creates an impact: first, it makes your experience feel real to interviewers, and second, almost no one puts that much thought and effort into a deliverable for an interview.
Do you have any innovative job search strategies for Millennials to try?
What Millennials or graduates should know is that education means very little to an employer in quite a few industries (I’m thinking of technology, but there are many others). Often they’ll be applying for jobs, feel as if they’re getting nowhere, and will start looking into grad school programs. This is where I encourage them to re-evaluate and approach their job search in an unconventional way. This means having informational interviews, building projects, finding your own clients – getting experience in ways where people do not grant it to you, you create it for yourself!
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to mention?
It’s truly all about the Self Made Millennial YouTube channel, I don’t hold back on there: I reveal real-life emails, templates and resumes. I release new videos every week, and the results people have seen in their professional lives has been tremendous.
