You Don’t Need A Resume To Network. Seriously.

PLUS: Actions to get hired quickly, avoid online scams, and resume writing prompts you should NOT use!

Author

Hannah Morgan
May 11, 2025

Welcome to Career Essentials, where I share actionable insights and curated articles that will help accelerate your career and supercharge your job search.

You Don’t Need A Resume To Network. Seriously.

Stop bringing your resume to networking meetings. Here’s why:

If you’re job hunting, you might think you must have a polished resume in hand before you can start networking. That makes sense, right?

Not really.

In fact, you don’t need a completed resume to start having meaningful career conversations. That may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. Once you understand why, you’ll never feel the need to share your resume during a networking meeting again.

WOULD YOU SHARE YOUR RESUME IF YOU ALREADY HAD A JOB?

Imagine you’re happily employed and someone asks to meet for coffee. Would you bring your resume?

Of course not.

So why do you feel like you need one just because you’re job searching? You don’t. What you DO need is a purpose for the meeting, a few good questions, and a willingness to listen and learn.

NETWORKING ISN'T ABOUT LANDING A JOB. IT'S ABOUT LEARNING

The best networking conversations aren’t job pitches. They’re mutual exchanges of insights, experiences, and ideas. When you lead with “I’m job hunting,” you risk turning the meeting into an informal interview — and that’s not what you need at this stage. What you need is information.

APPROACH NETWORKING AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO ASK FOR AND GIVE AIR

Think of networking as getting some fresh AIR:

🎈 Advice – on career moves, job search strategies, or changing direction
🎈 Information – about companies, industry trends, or future opportunities
🎈 Recommendations – for people to meet, groups to join, or skills to develop

Networking keeps you connected and informed, whether or not you're actively job hunting.

ASK SMART QUESTIONS

Come prepared with thoughtful questions like:

  • “What challenges are you seeing in [industry] right now?”

  • “Have you or your team tried any new approaches lately?”

  • “What trends do you think will have the biggest impact this year?”

These kinds of questions show curiosity and spark meaningful conversation.

AND DON'T FORGET... YOU HAVE VALUE TOO

You’ve gained insights, experiences, and lessons so don’t be afraid to share them! Think about who you’ve already met during your networking journey. What stories or tips could you pass along that might help someone else? When you position yourself as a connector or resource, you become someone people want to stay in touch with.

WHAT IF THEY ASK FOR YOUR RESUME?

If someone does ask for your resume during a networking conversation, chances are you haven’t made the purpose of the meeting clear. You can avoid that situation by:

🔹 Sharing your LinkedIn profile in your meeting request
🔹 Stating clearly that you're looking to learn, not pitch yourself

Bottom line: Networking isn’t about handing out resumes. It’s about building relationships, exchanging ideas, and uncovering opportunities. Show up curious, prepared, and professional. No paper required.

stop sharing your resume while networking

I posted a version of this on LinkedIn this week.

This isn’t just a list of hot jobs, industries, and cities. It’s an article with stories of recent grads who found jobs outside of what they were looking for. There are fewer jobs new grads, so we owe it to them to teach them how to adapt! This will help them consider new options. 

How to Identify Social Media Career Services Scams - Mark Anthony Dyson, The Job Scam Report

There are so many variations of scams targeting job seekers these days. Mark investigates and documents the scams to keep you informed. In this episode and post you’ll lear what happened during one of his live events in the chat. Mark highlights these 5 red flags to be on the lookout for:

  • Appear randomly offering unsolicited help

  • Distant connection with fake profile

  • Identical replies across threads

  • Many cloned or copied profiles

  • Suspicious or missing profile photo

How To Get Hired Quickly After a Layoff - The Job Hopper Newsletter

If you are unemployed, read this right now. Take action on every one of these six steps. Job search is about diversifying your activity. All of these things need to be part of your strategy: 

  • Post on LinkedIn

  • Network

  • Target companies

  • Set alerts

  • Identify stop-gap job

  • Consider a different industry/role

💻 LINKEDIN

Navigating Your Career in the AI Era - Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn

One of the benefits of the new AI job search tool is that it can uncover jobs you may not have found the “old” way. And wouldn’t it be great if you knew how good a match you were for the job? Well, that’s available too.

However, you need to be a Premium member to access these (and other features). So, if you haven’t recently used your free 30 day trial for Premium, this might be the time to do it. (Just make sure you remember to cancel before 30 days is up if you don’t want to continue/pay.)

🗨 INTERVIEWING

Instead of asking a boring, meaningless question like “what is the culture like here” try asking one of the suggested questions in this post. Culture means something different to everyone and you have to think about what aspect of company life you want to know about.

⚙ AI

If you are using AI to “write your resume,” you need to watch this. It’s all about what and how you ask AI to create your draft! This video is designed for resume writers/career professionals, but the info is too good to keep to myself. 

Warning: Did you know 57% of hiring managers are significantly less likely to hire applicants who submit AI-generated resumes, even if the content looks polished (CV Genius survey).

🔮 WORKFORCE

Hung Lee’s Recruiting Brainfood newsletter featured this article. Hung wrote “Microsoft will automatically build skills profiles from users of Microsoft 365, ultimately enabling employers to identify skills within an organisation via Skills Agent. Great for internal mobility but presumably soon, will operate externally also.”

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It feels too invasive, but it is worth knowing about. 

💰 CAREER

Don’t miss the opportunity to show your market value and executive presence! Use this social media audit checklist to increase your online activity and presence. 

You’ll see actions like: 

  • Review what you’ve posted online

  • Refresh profile and check for consistency

  • Tips for posting thought leader content

  • Follow fresh thought leaders

  • Suggestions for expanding into podcasts, newsletters and more!  

And also check out the articles on executive presence listed in the comments.

Professionals who show up consistently are 40% more likely to get promoted than their brilliant-but-absent peers, according to a Harvard study. This article lays out the four phases of showing up plus wisdom on why you don’t need to be perfect every time! 

📶 RECRUITER PERSPECTIVE

AI-geism - Matteo Cellini, Work3 - The Future of Work

This is another gem from Recruiting Brainfood. It looks at the age bias and the AI-bias.  The data is really interesting. Matteo addresses:

  • Population trends and why this is an important topic (that no-one talks about)

  • How AI specifically can bring benefit or make things worse

And the bottom line is that both young and old workers will need to upskill. AI will shake things up for everyone!

💗 WELL-BEING

Dr. Ethan Kross shares the science-backed tools that will help you stop negative self-talk and reset your mind. You’ll learn: 

  • Why you talk to yourself

  • The 3 toxic forms of self talk

  • How mental time travel gives you peace

  • The #1 way to ease anxious thoughts

PREVIOUS EVENTS

I sat down with Teegan A. Bartos to unpack what actually works in today’s job market. Here’s what we covered:

✅ The biggest job search mistakes we’re STILL seeing
✅ How to shift from reactive to proactive
✅ Why visibility is your secret weapon (even if you’re not posting daily)
✅ And how to track your way to more interviews

Whether you’re actively searching or just planning your next move, don’t leave your career to chance.

JOB SEARCH VISUAL

Too many job seekers walk into interviews underprepared—but not you. Here are 7 steps to help you stand out and show up with confidence.

1. KNOW THE BASICS

➡️ What’s the role?
➡️ Who do you know at the company?
➡️ What recent news or trends could you mention?

2. GET INSIDE THE ROLE

Identify the top 3 skills or qualifications the job requires. Then ask:

🛠 What problems does this role need to solve?

4. CRAFT YOUR OPENING

Your “Tell me about yourself” answer should highlight your skills and the reason you’re excited about this role. Use Past, Present, Future to structure your 1-2 minute answer.

5. BUILD YOUR STORIES

Use the STAR method to structure 3 compelling examples that prove you’ve got what it takes.

✔️ Situation
✔️ Task
✔️ Action
✔️ Result

6. ASK SMART QUESTIONS

Come prepared with 3-5 thoughtful questions that show you’ve done your homework.

7. CLOSE STRONG

Remind them what makes you the right fit—and why they should remember you.

Check out the slides here

Interview prep

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WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

Compare Occupations - CareerOneStop 

Using data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, you can easily compare two jobs based on salary, skill requirements, typical education/certifications, and more. You can even fine-tune the results to see data on the state and local levels.

Pro Tip: You can only use occupation titles available from the pull-down menu so you may have to do some research first to find the most appropriate occupations. Use O*Net.

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