[00:00:00] hi guys. Welcome back to another episode of Hear and Now podcast. If you’re listening to this happy podcast, miss, I am so excited to welcome Keri Dunn from East and Eversley and Eversley and Eversley and Eversley and Eversley onto the show today. Hi, Keri. Hi, how are you? I’m good. How are you? Thanks so much for coming on. Oh, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to it.
I know. I’m so excited. So why don’t you introduce yourself? Where are you from what you do? What things you want the audience to know? Yeah. Well, I feel like there’s a lot. So my name is Carrie. I am originally from New York and I kind of split my time right now, post COVID anyway, between New York, city, Connecticut and Charleston, actually, where I live with my family.
So I have a little boy. He is. Almost three, actually he’s wild. And then my husband, I have a really big fat black cat, so that was kind of my family life. But what I love to do is my personal business, which is called East and Eversley. And essentially what we do is kind of two different types of things.
Services. So we [00:01:00] offer B2B service so straight to business service of EHR consulting. So we help with HR for small businesses, mainly female owned and operated, which is great, and an area I love to work in. And then we also offer services. To individuals that need career counseling, career strategy. And that’s kind of like literally anything you can think of related to it.
So we write resumes all the time. We do cover letters. We help with networking emails and different ways to approach companies. We do full job strategy. We do LinkedIn audits, interview, coach. I mean, anything you, you name it. We do it. It’s great. And it’s just what I love to do. And my career kind of evolved into that from having worked in HR for well over 15 years, I also have a master’s in HR and I’ve always worked kind of between New York city and LA in fashion companies.
So I’ve been doing HR for really amazing brands. They’re all on my website, but I’ve worked for fingered buy-ins and Louis Baton and [00:02:00] Abercrombie and Fitch. Cool. Yeah, I’ve gotten a lot of really amazing discounts. And it’s just been really exciting. And so I still do that on the side, but then I also do this coaching thing.
So it’s been really great. That’s awesome. Awesome. I think that’s so cool. And you know, we’ve had a conversation before. I know I’m in college and there’s so many people out there that need services like this. And so obviously we’ll talk about that later, but how did you end up get started in creating your own company?
And what was your past experience that kind of led you to that? Yeah. So I essentially, my career has kind of been working with large organizations within the chart of harassment and then sort of getting smaller and smaller as my career progressed. So a company like Abercrombie and Fitch is, you know, a very large company.
I would consider it a very large company. And then my most recent company was a true. Startup had been around for about 10 years, had a founder had 25 employees. So I’ve really loved being able to understand companies from that larger, [00:03:00] more corporate international scale, but also kind of bringing those practices into.
The startup space and into that kind of progressive, maybe non-traditional company space and really making it work for smaller companies. So I love that, but on the side of that, people have always come to me for mentorship opportunities. They come to me for resume writing. I’ve just always had that kind of the past time sort of on the side, but I had never monetized it before.
I was always doing it for free and really in the last. Two years or so. And then of course, with COVID, I’ve been able to really focus on my business much more. So it’s been really exciting. And what I also started to do about a year and a half ago was teaching at the undergraduate level. So I’m also an adjunct professor.
It really solidified for me that I love to. Educate. I love to work with young people, certainly people that are either undergraduates graduates or just people that are going back to school to kind of further their [00:04:00] education. So that’s really been just a really exciting space for me to be in. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think one of the coolest things is having this dual perspective of working with young people and also educating them at the same time. So I think that’s awesome. I wanted to hear a little bit more about the meaning behind your business name has such a unique name. Yeah, that’s such a great question too.
And I don’t get asked at a ton. So when I started the business, those were the cross streets. Of where I purchased my first house. And so for me, it really kind of lent itself to the fact that people tend to be a kind of a crossroads when they come to me, whether that’s in their business and the growth they’re seeing or it’s in their career and they just need some support, they need kind of a tried behind them to really figure out which way to go.
So that cross street. Mentality really worked for my business and it still does today. So that’s fine. Inspiring. I love that. So I remember when we first hopped on the call too, [00:05:00] I was like, Oh my gosh, how cool is that? And like I said, it’s such a pretty and just unique name. And so have you kind of kept up with that crossroads mentality, like you said, it’s throughout your business, is that your vision and mission behind the business?
Yes, I would absolutely say yes. I mean, I think again, whether you’re at a crossroads with your business or you’re at a crossroads with your professional career, we’re definitely the place that people tend to go for that. And people at crosswords can really be a different thing for different people.
Right? So I’ll crossroad can be someone who. It’s just getting out of college and doesn’t know what they want to do with their life. Doesn’t know where to start, where to begin and doesn’t really know what they love to do or how to monetize what they love to do. But a crossroads can also be someone who has been working for, you know, 10, 15, 20 years and has decided that they no longer want to be in that role or they’ve lost their role due to COVID or something like that.
And that’s also a crossroads for people. So we’re really here for when people. And up in that space and we’re [00:06:00] here to support. We’re here to help people not feel like they’re going it alone because that can be a really lonely place to be. And we’re really here to make sure that people come out of our processes and our services, whatever those look like, feeling really confident, feeling like they are really empowered and feeling like they have the strategy and the tools necessary to get where they want to go.
And they have this amazing creative team that I’m working with to rebrand and relaunch and create our new website. Cite. And our new tagline is where success meets sanctuary because we’re really developed for people who are very ambitious, have great goals in mind, or need help creating those great goals.
And they come to this as a kind of a sanctuary, a place where they can really sit and, you know, meditate on what they want to do, but get some really. The specific results out of it as well. That’s awesome. I think that’s so cool. And by the time this episode goes up, that rebrand will be live. So you guys will get a fast hands.
Look at that. So that’s super exciting from, I guess, a college perspective. And a lot of my listeners are college kids as [00:07:00] well. What are some of the services that are direct for them? And what does surpasses look like if we are going and looking for you for job or career coaching or any kind of thing like that?
Yeah, so processes can kind of be one thing or another can do like a big package of services for people and they can go through it. That sort of looks like at a high level, but we also do Alec Hart services. So, you know, if you truly just need help with say interview coaching, you can also come to us for that.
I would say people definitely have a lot of success when they go with a full package of resources from us. So what that could look like for someone who’s in college coming out of college, but that timeline for people is going to be full resume revision. We’re highly personalized in our approach and we’re really modern.
So we keep in mind applicant tracking systems and artificial intelligence and keywords and things like that. So that’s our resume process, but it’s again, super personalized instead. It’s not just a. Resume [00:08:00] factory. We’re very one-on-one with people. We’ll do cover letters for people as well, very similar process.
And then we also do LinkedIn revisions and optimizations. So especially for people who are maybe younger in college right now, we’re coming out of college. You likely think that, you know, everything there is to know about social media and then therefore LinkedIn that’s super possible, but. What we do is we take a front and a back end approach to LinkedIn to really make sure that you are presenting yourself in the best possible way online.
And that you’re also optimized for you to find the things that you want to find on LinkedIn, but for people to find you as well. So we work on that with people. Then we do career coaching and strategy, which is sort of exactly what it sounds like. We can either start from the beginning and talk about what you want to do, where you want to go.
Or we can just talk about how to elevate what you’re doing today, because you love that thing. And we’ll come out of that with action steps, really achievable goals. And that’s usually a really successful place for people to be. We do a [00:09:00] strategy within there. If you’re job searching, we put together a strategy for you.
Interview coaching is exactly what it sounds like, but we do it from either an audio or a video perspective. People get to choose. They can do whichever they like, but COVID interview coaching from a video perspective has been very, very popular because really all interviews. Or like that today you get a fully recorded session back to you.
So you can always come back and revisit it as well. From there we do things like on-call support and we have a line that people can text. If they’ve got kind of a random question or they’re about to walk into an interview and they need some help with something, we’ve got that as a service as well. I think that’s such a popular market these days.
And like you said about, COVID kind of giving it a positive impact. So I was going to say a lot of people have experienced. COVID kind of from the negative side. So have you seen your business kind of been positively impacted and having this positive growth over the last couple of months? Yeah, I think that one of [00:10:00] the positive things that I’ve seen out of all of this has really been people’s willingness and time to finally kind of invest in themselves.
So we’re getting a lot of people who were maybe pushed into making this kind of decision for themselves, whether they were the subject of layoffs or they graduated during a time where the job market was not great, but also people who are just finally taking this opportunity to say, okay, Life is short.
Time is really precious. And I really want to make sure that I make this change before it gets too late for me. So they’re coming to us to say, I want to pivot. I need a new role. This one is not working for me. I always wanted to do this. And then we talk about how to get them there. That’s awesome. And it’s a kind of hot topic for a lot of people that when you’re either just into college or fresh out of college, have no idea what you want to do.
And so have you seen a pretty successful rate of people finding their true passion after they work with you? Yeah, I think so. I think [00:11:00] for some people they’re in sprint place, right? So we get all different types of, some people have lost their job need to get a new job immediately. So we help them with that.
But we also help them to really think they picture and make sure that they’re keeping their personal values and their personal work qualities in mind that they’re not settling. We don’t ever want that for people. So that’s been really successful for other people. We’ve really helped them to feel. So confident and so empowered that they will hold out for the right thing or they will only pursue the right things instead of just going online, sending your application kind of out to all these different places.
They’re very mindful. They’re very specific about where that goes very intentional about where it goes. And I think that that really helps. There’s almost no strategy to sending your application out to many, many places, but there is a strategy to really being very intentional, very specific about what you want, where you want it to be, and making sure that you’re pursuing a lot of avenues for that opportunity.
So sure you apply [00:12:00] online, but are you connected on LinkedIn with someone who works there and can you be connected with them? How do you start that introduction? What does their job description say, should your resume be specifically customized to that role? So if you can spend more time on fewer roles, that will be more successful, but that requires some confidence and it requires a strategy for sure.
Absolutely. One of the biggest things that I’ve seen is just influx and people using social media to connect over the last couple of months specifically, which I think is so awesome. And I like one person who needs to get better at LinkedIn and just. Definitely a plus. So to kind of transition a bit, do you have clients that are way out of college, have no need for any sort of college services?
What else can you do for that in terms of its HR or anything like that? Yeah, honestly, it’s, it’s all the same services, just sort of at different levels. So we have a really diverse client base right now, and it’s like, literally anyone you [00:13:00] can think of, we’ve got 19 year olds who have just started college, but want to get prepared for their graduation, or just make sure that they’re prepared to get a job while they’re there.
But we’ve got. 62 year olds who have worked at the same company for 35 years and have just gotten laid off and need to figure out what’s next for them. We do this for all of those diverse clients. And again, it can come off the card as well. I will say what I find with people who have been in the workforce for a long time, and it may be not had to write a resume in a long time or have never had to use social media have never applied online, have never.
Great. And a LinkedIn account. We started a different place, of course, but we still do LinkedIn revisions optimizations. We help them create a profile and really understand how to use it in a strategic way. But again, someone who’s in college has just written a resume with their career services.
Department has no work experience. We’ll do the same thing, but just in a different level. It’s funny how you bring that up. I didn’t even think there’s so many who’ve been in the company for a long time. There’s no way [00:14:00] that they’ve written a resume anytime soon. So I think that’s awesome that you have such a great diverse range of clients.
And so just from a personal question, do you think that there’s a learning curve with LinkedIn? That might be something that we all need to focus on and optimize more than Instagram or Facebook in terms of, I guess like career services. I would say yes, essentially I have an entire session. And in my course that I teach at the undergraduate level.
I think it’s an entire session on online presence. I teach again next week. So I have to look at it. We talk about online presence a lot. So online presence is a lot of things, right? It’s your Facebook, your YouTube, your podcasts. It’s anytime you’ve been in a newspaper. It’s your Instagram. I mean, it’s every, I could name a hundred things.
You have to be so careful with that in a lot of different ways, no matter who you are, but if you’re younger, chances are you have a larger presence online because you’ve been online for most real life. And you have a lot of different types of things online, so it can be difficult to really corral it [00:15:00] all and put it together.
So there is an entire portion to. What I do and what I feel really strongly that is about having a really clean professional online presence, LinkedIn, and indeed are my absolute number one sources for roles. So if anyone just wants to take small things away from this interview today, and they’re in a job search or they’re feeling desperate or anything like that, LinkedIn and indeed are the absolute best places to be.
I teach my students that I teach my clients. That I work with them when I work within organizations, they absolutely have almost everything that’s on the internet. They will find things for you. If you can optimize it appropriately, it’s definitely the best place to be. If you’re searching for a role, you know, I’ve checked out LinkedIn and indeed and things like that.
And there’s so much potential there. I just think I personally have not dedicated enough time to searching that out and taking the time to learn that. So I’m glad that there’s somebody who does and can do that for yes. So to kind of go off of that, do you have any tips for [00:16:00] undergrads new grads in this 20, 20 COVID world of searching out a job and really just finding out what they’re passionate about?
Yes. Yes. I think to start with that, the one thing I would say on a really functional level is when you’re searching for a job again, I love LinkedIn. I love indeed, but you should not have to feel like it’s a very manual search. So you should not feel like you have to go online every day and search around and look for things.
What you should be doing is really making sure that those services work for you. That they’re very automated. So when I work with my clients, one of the things that I usually recommend is that you create an email address just for your job search search for a job as a full-time job in and of itself. So create a Gmail just for your job search and have all of your alerts go there and make sure that you are either working with someone like myself to optimize LinkedIn and indeed, in terms of.
Boolean search words in terms of keywords, in terms of companies who do a lot of [00:17:00] hiring, if you want to work remotely companies that do a lot of remote hiring someone like me can help you with that. But of course, if you have the time you Google around and you’ll learn how to do that on your own, and then you want to optimize those search engines to make sure that they are sending you the perfect jobs.
As soon as they come online. I’ve certainly had clients before who have seen a job come on on a Tuesday. They didn’t have their resume ready. They were kind of unsure. They wanted to write a great cover letter letter. They waited until Friday and that job is offline. And that’s so frustrating for them. If you’ve got all your tools and resources together, if you’ve got this specific email address that keeps you really organized and you go in exactly same time every day, 20 minutes, whatever it is, and you’d get those really specific automated results, it will really help you out and make sure that you’re on top of it all the time.
From a more kind of holistic perspective in terms of knowing what you want to do or figuring out what your true passions are. I think something that’s really important for people is being really careful that they’re not. Just listening [00:18:00] to the messaging that they’re getting throughout their life, especially if you’re younger, maybe, and you’ve just come out of school, you majored in whatever it is.
And you’re unsure of that really kind of take the time to make sure that that’s your own personal passion, that you’re being able to translate those. Passions into what you want to do every single day, that might not happen in your first or second job out of college, but don’t lose sight of those things.
Don’t just do something because your parents told you, or because your guidance counselor said that there was a lot of money in that area or anything like that. I would say really take the time to be very intentional about it. We’ve got some worksheets that’ll come out with the new rebrand of the site that will help with that.
Because again, we take kind of a holistic and a functional approach to things. We’ve got some support for that too. That’s awesome. I think that’s so needed and today’s world and five set up before nobody really knows what they want to do when they’re 18. And I know I didn’t, and it took a long time to really realize that.
So I think [00:19:00] finding somebody who’s able to guide you in the right direction is. Super important and it can be super inspiring for yourself to kind of find things that you would have never found otherwise. And I wanted to give you the opportunity to promo any offers that you have right now, especially cause this is up around Christmas time.
Anything parents can maybe Hinton gives their kids or anything like that. Yeah. So we’ve got this big rebrand relaunch happening. Um, it should be done by the time this goes up. And then with all of that, we’ve created some really amazing resources. That’ll be up on the websites and freebies and downloads and things like that.
But we’ve also created the very first package deal that we’ve ever done. So I’m really excited about it. And I think it’s. So appropriate for people who are going into entry-level jobs, just coming out of college or grad school. So we’re referring to it as an entry level, career mentorship and strategy package.
So what this is going to include is honestly, a lot of different things. So it’s going to be this really interesting. Effective career [00:20:00] goals, questionnaire. These are all resources that you’ll be able to keep after this as well. We’re also going to be able to do a written resume feedback for the people that go into this package, along with some revisions and recommendations.
You’re going to have a customizable cover letter template that comes along with this as well. And then on top of that, you also. So get a one-on-one 60 minute audio or video call with myself in which we do 30 minutes of career coaching, setting goals, creating an action plan, strategizing, things like that.
And then 30 minutes of interview coaching. And that interview session is really going to be cultivated by our experience in the corporate world. Right now, both in startups, larger organizations. These are truly the kinds of interviews that are happening today. So we’re going to be doing that again.
Things recorded. Everything’s written down for you. So you get to keep it at the end of it. Always refer back to it. And on top of that, you’re going to get eight to 10, that career strategy and development worksheets. So again, they’re [00:21:00] fairly intuition led, but they’re very results oriented. They’re functional when they’re flexible and reusable, which I think is really important because.
We have a whole concept of personal performance reviews that we want people to do annually in their life. I think that that’s really important. And this is designed for you to be able to come back each year or each quarter, whatever that looks like and really see your results, see how you’ve grown and continue to flex with that stuff.
So that’s what the package looks. Like today, it’s going to be three 75 for the full package, which is really an amazing deal because our resumes alone cost between 406 50 for a resume. Because again, it’s a really personalized service, so we’re not the cheapest place around, but we are not the most expensive.
But what I will say based on my experience based on. My client feedback is that we are absolutely the most progressive, the most modern, and we are the most personalized in our approach. So I think this is a really great gift to give someone I’ve had a lot of people give [00:22:00] this kind of thing as a graduation present.
And now with this new kind of cheaper package, I think it can be a great holiday present again, a great graduation present, anything like that. That’s amazing. And I think you and I were talking about this before you recorded. This is that there are so many people out there who would not even have thought to even have this and get this as a gift.
And so kind of having this all in one package, I think is awesome. I’m a super great opportunity for kids who yeah. Maybe you want to give it to their friends or their parents to their kids or something like that. So that’s perfect. And all of the links for that will be done in the show Shona. So don’t forget to check that out.
And my final question for you is where can people connect with you to learn more about what you do. Oh, yes. So certainly on my brand new, beautiful website. So that’s East and Eversley.com. It’s a N D and then also an Instagram that’s at East and eversley all spelled out again, And, and that’s kind of everything on Facebook a little bit, but I would say those are our two most active areas.
And [00:23:00] in order to. Talk to us, or get involved with this package that we’ve got. You’ll just want to fill out one of our contact forms on the page, or you can chat with us on the website. You can DMS and Instagram any way you feel like communicating with us. It’s really easy. Yeah. All of those links will be in the show notes.
So you guys can find them super easily. Yeah. Keri. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m so glad that we could have this chat. I know I was super inspired to kind of kick up my game and figure out what I’m doing and I hope everybody else was too. So thank you so much again for coming on the show.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is great. I’m so glad. So without further, do you want me to close out today’s episode of here and how podcasts this is also a podcast missed, so don’t forget to check out all the other episodes we have up. Thank you guys so much for listening and we will see you guys next time. [00:24:00]