The resume struggle is real.

It’s a dark and stormy morning in Saint Louis, Missouri. “My power will probably go out today, but I really need to at least start on my resume,” said job seeker Megan Salamone, with complete defeat and a hint of panic in her voice. “I’ve been unemployed since February, and I’ve just never been able to put…anything.”

She promised her job coach that she would have a draft to review with her on Thursday, but Megan was ill last week so she wasn’t able to work on it. “It’s not like I was making excuses. I seriously couldn’t work. And I’d say that the last few months of struggle have been excuses, but not really. I would seriously stare at my last resume draft and have no idea what to do next.”

Instead, Megan would go back to her comfort zone: LinkedIn. “I could justify the time that I spent posting and sending connection requests as ‘building my network’ or ‘cultivating my personal brand’ because in a way it was,” she said. “It’s created some business, but it’s not paying my bills or anything.”

In January, she created a blog to document her job search journey: www.megansalamone.com. “I want to build a community where we’re all at, which is on our computers. I think that’s a post-COVID thing, with nobody leaving their houses. But I still want to connect with my community and offer some inspiration. There’s just so much negativity out there. And that’s what we’re fed through media.”

The primary media source for a job seeker is LinkedIn. On April 20, 2026, she posted about this dilemma in her article, “LinkedIn: Reboot.”

However, the time she spends on LinkedIn isn’t resulting in employment. “I’m in marketing and communications,” Megan said. “Full-time, permanent jobs for us aren’t really out there anymore. And I want to have more variety in my work. Not just work for one company. To use all my skills.” As the passion in her voice grew, she said, “I’ve already done consulting before. I know I can do it again. It’s a mix of direct source clients and contracted work. And I looked at LinkedIn for some of those temporary contracts, and for mar/comm there’s a lot out there.”

“But in order to apply for those contracts, you have to have a resume,” she says with obvious frustration as her eyebrows raise to her hairline and her hand gestures become more animated as she speaks. “And I just can’t do it! Why not? I’m in sales! Why is it suddenly so hard to describe myself?”

Thunder claps as if the universe is echoing her inner turmoil. The downpour begins, and she knows that she must start on her resume.

“Updating my LinkedIn profile for the first time in like, 10 years, has been helpful,” she admits. “There’s new features that are similar to what’s expected from a resume now, but I can’t even bring myself to utilize some of those, like project descriptions. I have no idea what’s wrong with me.”

Megan’s former employer partners with LHH to provide career transition services. She has access to an expansive online library, premium learning courses, certification paths, and online webinars to connect with fellow job seekers.

“The webinars have really been the best part,” Megan says. “I’ve been so focused on LinkedIn and my blog and not being able to bring myself to actually build my resume that I haven’t really tapped into those learning courses yet but I will.”

Through the webinars, she has learned that fellow job seekers experience the same frustration. “I hear from others all the time that I’m not alone,” she says. “But, like, seriously? It’s just a <bleepin’> resume. I’ve written these for other people. Why can’t I write my own?”

One of the webinars that Megan has attended a few times is on resume writing. “It’s cool that you can attend a webinar multiple times, and it’s a live broadcast with different facilitators. So you hear new stuff every time. I think I attend the resume one weekly.”

One facilitator shared a basic format with the group: name, contact information, skills, and experience. Skills are listed in a bullet point or multi-line format, in which you would use the | character to separate key terms. LinkedIn’s skills section is very similar, where the skill is added to that section of the profile and can be aligned with previous roles held. Since resumes need to be tailored to the job description to pass an automated review process, having this “skills” section at the top of your resume makes customization easier.

In the group conversations, Megan often hears the frustrations that applicants have with an automated resume review process. “Frustration isn’t even a strong enough word,” she says. “Honestly, I’d have to ask AI for the most devastating synonym possible but that’s probably not a good prompt,” she says with a laugh.

Thunder booms and lightning strikes, seeming to illustrate the electricity that AI generates among job seekers.

Her post, “Ageism,” describes the automated applicant tracking system (ATS) and how it’s used by employers and recruiters. “Don’t get me wrong; I totally support this. But customizing my resume for each job posting when the format is already bullet points? No.”

Her peers are using AI to customize their resumes against the job post, and some have even created workflows to reformat the resume. “How do you add that on your resume?” Megan asks. “That’s pretty advanced AI skills. I don’t know how to do that.”

How does she plan to start this week?

“I’ve blocked off most of my free time on my calendar with the meeting title, ‘Work on Resume’. Then I’m adding events throughout the day to document how much time I am actually spending on something not resume-related, like email and LinkedIn and phone calls or meetings. We’ll see if that helps. Like being able to actually see how much time I’m spending on other activities.”

She thinks that email is taking most of her time on Mondays. “One of the first things that I did this morning was delete all of the newsletters that I subscribe to, so that I don’t spend a bunch of time reading those and think of it as ‘working’.”

She also turned off phone notifications and decided to close out of her browser with LinkedIn open rather than keep it open all day. “I even closed out of my email app on my computer,” she said. “It’s not like a 9-5 job, where I had to respond to IMs and emails immediately.”

“So far, it’s working,” she said. “We’ll see how it goes.”