Erica Breuer is the founder of Cake Resumes.com.
At Cake resumes, Erica specializes in teaching talented people how to capture their career brands, tell their professional narrative across multiple platforms, so they can get the job opportunities they want and deserve.
Erica specializes in working with career changers, remote work seekers, freelancers, and solopreneurs.
She also works with people whose resumes don’t quite fit the typical 9-to-5 mold.
If this describes you, you’re going to want to tune in today.
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ERICA BREUER’S CAREER JOURNEY
Erica’s journey to writing resumes and personal narratives really started with her love of writing. As a senior in college, she started doing freelance writing and was hooked.
She discovered through her freelancing, she really enjoys working with people to help them tell their story in an effective way.
She attributes her success to her “X-ray” hearing, the ability to hear what the person actually wants to say. This is a critical skill to have for any good resume writer as Erica soon discovered.
CAREER BRANDING vs PERSONAL BRANDING
Erica specializes in helping business professionals discover and develop their career brands. She started using the term career branding over personal branding because she feels it confuses people.
They get lost in the word personal, which makes them question things like how personal they need to be.
Using her X-ray hearing, Erica discovered her clients talking about her preferred the term career branding which she defines as the version of you that applies to your work life.
Career branding allows her clients, maybe even you, to focus on their career vs their personal life.
If you have a career, you have a career brand.
Once her clients identify their career brand, Erica has found them to be more confident and more focused during interviews and networking events for example.
She attributes this to the clarity they now have about their career direction.
Your career brand consists of all your marketing documents, your online profile, and your personal narrative.
Your personal narrative is your career story, who you are and how you can help.
DEFINING YOUR CAREER BRAND
In order to get started building your career brand, you need to understand your goals and where you are headed. This is very similar to the advice we’ve heard from Hanna, Dorie, Lea and Richard.
Once you can verbalize your goals, Erica then walks her clients through a series of questions narrowing down your focus all the while using her X-ray hearing.
She is listening to discover your audience, who you can help, what you love about your job and why you continue to do it. All of the answers to these questions help form the basis of your career brand and personal narrative.
Remember in this case your audience is hiring managers, people in your network and maybe even your peers.
Erica utilizes this information to help draft a resume and update their Linkedin profiles, specifically their headline and summary.
Erica and I spoke briefly about the differences between LinedkIn and a resume, interestingly Erica views LinkedIn as almost a website.
YOUR DIGITAL PRESENCE
Erica believes a web presence as vital to your career brand today, even if you are a private person.
She likes to see people with websites as the basis of a strong online presence. While a personal website is “killer” Erica knows there are other mediums that can be used.
A website or another blogging platform enables you to share your thought leadership and demonstrate your expertise.
This is one area that gets Erica excited, helping people determine their areas of thought leadership or expertise.
For those of you who are not writers, Erica recommends finding the and sharing the work of others who are thought leaders in your space.
Comment on their blogs or their posts. This still allows you to get your name out their while sharing useful information.
For those of you who are ready to start a website, Erica recommends the following be included.
- About Page
- Contact Page
- Portfolio Page
- Blog Page
- Testimonials (especially for freelancers)
- Services Page (especially for freelancers)
If the thought of having your own website “freaks you out” (which it shouldn’t. Check out this video here), Erica recommends using branded.me to get started because of its simplicity.
ERICA BREUER CAKE RESUME
Erica named her business Cake Resumes, possibly because of her sweet tooth. Even that’s not entirely true I’m sure it came into play because when thinking of a name for her business she kept brainstorming names such as easy as pie or a piece of cake.
She settled on, resumes are as easy as cake. Hence Cake resumes.
Erica not only helps her clients with resumes and Linkedin profiles but she will also help with thought leadership articles, professional bios, copywriting, and will even ghost write articles for her clients.
THE BEST WAYS TO CONTACT ERICA BREUER
Web: cakeresumes.com (Contact Page)
