Quiet Quitting, Part 1: Get Your Resume and LinkedIn Ready!

How are you using your extra hours since you decided to quietly quit? I recommend using this time to find a new job. If you are truly passionate about your current job and career, you probably wouldn’t quietly quit. My recommendation is to apply this new found time toward finding a better situation. Here are a few ways to spend your time getting ready for your new job after quietly quitting.

Item #1—Definition

What is quiet quitting? I realize not everyone is familiar with this term, but it’s a common scenario I see when coaching and consulting with my clients. Quietly quitting is when you are just doing your job. You are taking care of your assigned tasks. You’re leaving on time, but you are not really working outside of your regular hours.

It’s not that you are slacking off. You are simply setting boundaries. You are trying to avoid getting burned out and you are generally not taking on additional work outside of your normal scope. You may not even hate your job, but are no longer willing to go above and beyond. Maybe you can utilize this extra time and energy to find an even better job.

Item #2—Calendaring

Let’s assume you were working an extra five hours a week. You were working approximately nine hours a day instead of the requisite eight. My initial recommendation here would be to stick to the same calendar. However, you can repurpose this time. Instead of the extra five hours, take one hour back for yourself. Build it into your calendar and think about using this extra time to focus on getting a better job. 

Item #3—Resume

If you do decide to pursue a new job, your next step will be to work on your resume. The good news is you have a steady job already, so you can take your time to prepare a strong resume, about one week. Spend your four extra hours and focus on three specific items: 

1. Summary—The summary section is a critical part of your resume because your audience has limited time. You want to format that summary section so it really catches your audience’s eyes. Use bullet points and make sure your bullets never go beyond one line each. Recruiters will likely skip over resume summaries written in paragraph form or longer bullet points. Remember the average person is viewing your resume for about 3-5 seconds. Focus on very specific skills in your summary points. There shouldn’t be anything generic about being a team player or hard worker. Include defined skills related to the position you are going after. Eventually, you will want to develop customized resumes for each job for which you are applying.
2. Experience—Here, you will want to focus on your responsibilities and accomplishments. The reason you want to focus on both of these areas is because you want to highlight your accomplishments while providing context at the same time. Including your job responsibilities will also be important when it comes to online keyword searches relating to those duties. And of course, you want to showcase your accomplishments and back them with numbers and other important data. 
3. Education—Lastly, you will want to make sure your education section is clean along with any technical summary section to highlight your specific training and technical skills. It’s okay to repeat key technical skills in both your initial summary and technical summary if needed.

Item #4—LinkedIn

It’s smart to work on your physical resume first, so you can repurpose some of these items into your LinkedIn profile. Your profile is essentially an online resume. You will want to be constantly tweaking and updating your information. Since you have quietly quit already, you should use this time to focus on items that will help you find success in your new job search.

It all starts with first impressions. Before someone starts scrolling down your LinkedIn page, make sure you are creating a great first impression with the  information they see first.. Your background image is very important. Use something that is visually pleasing and something related to your career or current company. Just visit canva.com to make sure the image size is correct and lay it out properly. Don’t have your head blocking any words or key image details. That can look lazy and may create the wrong first impression.

The second item is going to be your headshot. Your image should generally be shoulders and above. Have a smile on your face and have a clean background. People are more attracted to those who smile and look pleasant.

Next, move onto the headline. Sometimes, I see people trying to be too creative here and it can come across as strange. If you are a software engineer, just put “Software Engineer” as your LinkedIn headline. Review your admin details and make sure everything is right. Your education should show your highest degree first. Keep your contact info accurate and up-to-date. Your current position should be displayed at the top. If your top section is really good and clean, they are going to keep scrolling down to learn more about you.

For the summary section on LinkedIn, simply copy and paste the summary section bullet points from your updated resume into your LinkedIn profile. Remember to prioritize your bullets, as well. They can only see the top three lines of the summary section before having to click to read more. Those lines should feature your top three skills. 

Next, paste your experience bullets into each position on your profile. Some people may recommend you don’t just copy and paste your resume into LinkedIn. However, the best way for people to find you online is through keyword searches. If your resume is optimized in this regard, your LinkedIn profile should mirror it.

Make sure your education section is clean and be honest about your educational background. Lastly, there are other LinkedIn sections you can fill out to include as much data and insight as possible. Just put most of your focus on these top sections as those will be what generate the most attention and can create the best first impression.

Spend a week on your LinkedIn profile just like you did your resume. Continue to check your profile and update it periodically so it always has a strong presentation.

You can watch my full video on this topic for more resume and LinkedIn writing examples:

Be sure to check back next week as we dive into Part 2 of this quiet quitting topic. We will talk about using your extra time to prepare for the interview process, including practicing for key behavioral and hypothetical questions.

For more resources visit my website -  Practice Interviews and check out our AI Practice Interview App.