empowering young professionals of color

Name: Erika E. Hayes

Title: Owner & Operator of ResumeGypsy.com and author of “No Job. No Joy?: Sex, Money & Motivation : Surviving an Unemployed Christmas”

Company: ResumeGypsy.com

What They Do: Erika is a resume writer. Through ResumeGypsy.com she sells resumes, cover letters including documents and LinkedIn profiles.

Originally From: Texas

College: Sam Houston State University, TX.

Field of Study: Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Journalism.

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A Few Notes From the Show:

  • In high school she had a mentor who was my newspaper teacher.  She was not sure what she wanted to be or her career path. What she did know if that she loved meeting new people, loved to ask questions and loved to write.  Her mentor suggested the career path that ended up working perfectly for her.
  • She suggests for any young professional specially coming out of college: have their own dreams, vision, be open. As you grow, as you change and as you meet people, your idea of what you want to do might change to. Just be open to what direction that will take you.
  • When she graduated from college, her dream was to work for the New York Times. As she met different people, her idea of a dream job changed.
  • She graduated from high school at the age of 16 years old, and instantly started going to college. She graduated from college in 3 years (at the age of 20 years old). Erika says that at an early age she started working on this path that was set up for her, on the daily newspaper, where she worked hard and thought that it was the path she wanted when in reality she clarifies that she didn’t even know herself to know that at that point.  She worked at the daily newspaper for 3 years, where she was introduced to corporate communications (public relations, media relations, marketing, etc).
  • From the age of 23 to 33 Erika spent that time doing what she thought she “should be” doing.
  • A year ago she went through a spiritual re-birth and she asked herself “What is it that I really want to do?” and she spent 3 years using her degree, she spent 10 years working in good jobs but she kept asking “what do I really want to do?” and that is how the idea for her business came along, where she wanted to help other people find the jobs that they really wanted.
  • Erika mentions that it is really difficult to start your own business, but she suggests that the best advice she can provide is to surround yourself with the right people, get in the right circle of influence, start feeding yourself with the right information (Podcast, Books, Videos, Website, etc). Involve yourself in the right information, the correct material, the more that you surround yourself with the right people and the more you involve yourself in the right information, the wrong information and the wrong people will naturally fall away.  Whatever doesn’t feel right anymore and whoever doesn’t feel right anymore let those things fall away; because you never will be able to go where you are suppose to go if those things are still in your life.
  • She wishes someone could have advised her (when she started her career) that even with her degree she needed to constantly evaluate and take inventory of her own hopes and desires.
  • She mentioned that it is not about waking up one day and quitting your job.
  • “You shouldn’t have to wait until you are 34 years old to start feeling empowered”.
  • “The real honey is if you can figured who you are and be true to that”.
  • If you are working for someone else or for yourself, you need to know personal branding skills, you need to know the art of the hustle, you need to know how to tap into your inner voice.

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