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Navigating Canada's Job Market: A Gen Z's Guide to Resumes and Portfolios

An interviewer marking a resume

Now more than ever, workers, especially Gen Z, from all industries are looking to change jobs or break into a new industry. The key to securing your dream job? An optimized resume and portfolio.


As a Gen Z graduate joining the job market in 2024, I've witnessed firsthand the increasing difficulty in securing or finding new jobs. Bankrate's March 2023 survey of 2,417 American adults reported that 78% of Gen Z workers are likely to change jobs in the next 12 months (Gillespie & Rubloff, 2023). Similarly, in Canada, Robert Half's July 2023 survey of 1,140 workers reporting 64% of Gen Z workers are already looking for a new job (Levick, 2023).


Though these surveys don't reflect the entire Canadian job market, they show a depressing trend: AI tools automating hiring processes and a saturated market of skilled workers. It is absolutely critical, now more than ever, to create a resume that will ensure employer interest, and with the right keywords, contextualization, and strategic application of the skills you learned and applied throughout your life, you can rebuild yourself into an employee that companies will recognize as valuable.


I should clarify, I am not offering a miracle, even with the perfect resume, it will be difficult to hear back from employers, but you deserve to create the most advantageous odds for yourself. If you, like me, are struggling to break into the job market, or are looking to change jobs into one more aligned with your personal goals, I'd like to offer my personal guide to rebuild your resume and portfolio to engage prospecting employers and get your foot in the door.


Tip #1 - Learn What Your Job Needs

Job postings often include a company objective, role description, minimum qualifications, and crucially, the skills required. These skills are your cheat sheet for resume crafting.

Jobscan's ATS Usage Report reveals that 97.4% of companies use ATS (applicant tracking system) software to grade applicants, with the top ATS software like Workday, Greenhouse, Success Factors, and Lever checking for listed skills, degrees, experience, and credentials, ranking you among other applicants (Myers, 2023).


If your resume lacks these keywords, even the perfect candidate will likely be overlooked. This means that your resume may never reach a human if it doesn't meet the AI's basic criteria first (we'll discuss this further in Tip 3). Researching and formatting your resume to every single application can be a hassle however, so I recommend using AI tools to assist you. If they're using it, why don't we use it too?


My personal recommendation is Resume Worded, which I used to tailor my resume to copywriting, media production, and digital marketing job posts. Next, compare the listed skills to the jobs you plan to apply to on whatever platform you're using: LinkedIn, Indeed, and GlassDoor are all good places to start your search. After refining your profile down to about 10 to 20 skills, you can start using them to grab the AI's attention.


An important note is to distinguish between hard skills and soft skills. It's crucial to balance hard skills (specific job-related skills) and soft skills (transferable, interpersonal skills), aiming for an 80/20 split favoring hard skills. Hard skills are weighted higher and are often seen as indicative of a candidates performance.


Tip #2 - Optimize Your Skill Profile

Now that you understand what an employer is looking for, rewrite your skill profile to match employer criteria. Keep it brief, include keywords, and illustrate how your skills have led to success.


Now, if you're like me, and by that I mean a Gen Z worker (I hate that term so much), you were promised that high grades and university was all that was needed to get an entry-level job. But times have changed, and many of us, myself included, now recognize that as an utter lie, because education alone doesn't prove you are capable.


My advice is to consider everything you've accomplished so far, and how you did it.

  • Were you oftentimes the one who wrote and spoke during group presentations? You are skilled in research, team management, task delegation, and public speaking.

  • Did you suffer through fast food and restaurant jobs, dealing with angry customers and rushes all for a soul crushing minimum wage, or even worse, student wage? You are skilled in stress management, customer service, conflict resolution, and teamwork in a dynamic environment.

  • Did you post commissions online, drawing art for strangers? You are skilled in online advertising, social media marketing, deadline management, and negotiations.

We're not lying about our skills, nor our experience. These soft skills are transferable, and contextualizing them as keywords that ATS software can read will make the difference.


What about hard skills? Not all of us can afford a degree, but we can start practicing those skills. There are plenty of web courses offered by Google, LinkedIn Learning, and many more that provide a certificate to include in your resume, and thousands more tutorials on YouTube to help you learn practically anything. If you can showcase your work online, post it where employers can find it: Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever. We'll discuss this more in Tip 5.


Most importantly, whenever possible, include how your skills enabled you to complete a difficult task. Maybe your skill in team collaboration helped you clear a rush at a fast food restaurant, but how big was the rush, what did you do? "Fostered a collaborative environment and delegated tasks appropriate to each member's capabilities to complete up to 120 orders an hour" sounds much better than "Used team collaboration to handle rushes."


Tip #3 - Format Your Resume for AI

Your resume must be AI-friendly. This means maximizing keywords, ensuring proper grammar and punctuation, using minimal graphics, and sticking to Word doc formats. Avoid headers/footers and PDFs, as older ATS software may struggle with them.


Use Google Docs to convert a file to Microsoft Word
Google Docs offers download into .docx format.

You should also try to keep your resume to one page; no one wants to read a novel, and if you can't efficiently present your skills, that will reflect poorly on how efficient you are in other areas of interest.


For creatives, there's no other way to put it; this sucks. Anything other than plain text will be a struggle for AI to read. Luckily, Google Docs allows you to download your files as Word documents, so you don't have to use the terrible interface Microsoft offers. As for graphic elements, you don't need to make your resume a blank sheet with 12pt Arial font, you can include neat formatting that will catch a human's eyes, but ensure anything fancy you include doesn't obscure what needs to be read.


Tip #4 - Portfolios: Do You Need One?

With a one page resume, you obviously can't include everything you are capable of. But you can include your LinkedIn and email on your resume, and this is where a portfolio is needed.


For creatives especially, it cannot be understated how useful a portfolio is. You don't necessarily need to make your own website, as it is costly in both time and money (ask me how I know) but something as simple as making a Projects section on LinkedIn and including links to YouTube, Vimeo, ArtStation, Twitter, or even DeviantArt (I won't judge) can work beautifully. How you go about your portfolio is up to you, this is very individualistic and allows for a HUGE amount of creativity.


Of course, we live in the digital age. Showing that you can build a website and effectively showcase your portfolio to people online will earn you some serious merit. There are plenty of resources online to learn the process, both Wix and Squarespace offer some cheap plans and simple interfaces, and you'll be able to say "yeah, I own a website." Bonus points if you open a blog section on your website and talk about your personal process for making one...


But likewise, remember that not everyone is proficient with the web. Just because the internet is universal, doesn't mean understanding of it is. Keep it simple to navigate, and even easier to find. As a general rule of thumb, never more than 3 clicks; the less work a person needs to see your stuff, the better.


Tip #5 - Demonstrate Your Strongest Skills

This might be hardest part of the whole process. Most creatives, myself included, are hypercritical of their work, and feel a plethora of emotions about showing it off. But remember, you are in this career path because you have something to show, you deserve to be recognized for skills that you have spent years or decades working on. For creative people, these skills we've cultivated eventually feel like second nature, and we're hesitant to even call it skill, but if everyone could do it, there wouldn't be a market for it.


It doesn't matter how you show it; YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook, a website, LinkedIn, whatever; just record it and post it. An understanding of SEO can be useful here, and asking your friends to share it can really help. Likewise, getting views on a post IS a marketable skill, include it. My film Paternalism only has ~300 views on YouTube, but that's still 300 people who watched my film, that's an accomplishment, so I included it in my resume.


This enables one of the most valuable components of creative work; networking. When people find your work, connect with them, ask them to share it, ask if you can work with them, inquire into their work. You'd be amazed how small of a world it is.


Final Thoughts

Despite all of this work and effort you put into your resume and portfolio, finding a job nowadays is ridiculously hard. Ghost jobs are so prevalent, you're more likely to apply to one than not. According to Forbes, nearly 50% of hiring managers make job postings "to keep a warm talent pool “at the ready” for when they are hiring without the intention to hire," (Dennison, 2023) and I'd wager the number is even higher as this trend continues to grow every month.


I really wish I could offer something to easily find a job. But honestly, there really aren't any magic solutions, and if anyone tries to sell you one, they're scammers. Half of the process is pure luck, but when you do get lucky, that other half will make all the difference.


I hope this post helps you in your job search, or at least provides an interesting read while you sat on the toilet. Please share it on social media, leave a rating, or comment if you found it useful. While you're here, check out my film 'Paternalism' on YouTube!


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