Key Takeaways
- Clinchy reviewed thousands of resumes from highly qualified candidates at the White House.
- People encouraged her to start a resume-related side hustle, which she launched on Fiverr in 2020.
- Now, Clinchy’s business continues to grow — and even helped her become a homeowner.
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Seattle, Washington attorney and entrepreneur Jennifer Clinchy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) only enforcement attorney in the Pacific Northwest, Clinchy runs Clinchy Career Consulting, offering resume consulting, cover letter writing and LinkedIn optimization services, as a side hustle. She launched the consulting side hustle on Fiverr in 2020 and hit $250,000 in total earnings on the platform last year. The piece has been edited for length and clarity.
When I was working at the White House from 2010 to 2017, I served as a hiring manager and as legal counsel there. As part of that role, I reviewed thousands of resumes from some of the most talented candidates in the country. It really showed me both how highly qualified people can have incredibly compelling resumes, as well as some surprisingly weak ones that don’t do justice to all of the skills and experience that they bring.
Leaving the White House and starting a side hustle
When I left the White House in September 2017 to accept a position with the Washington State government as director of policy and planning at Puget Sound Partnership (a state government agency), I took a 30% pay cut. During the transition, I considered starting a side hustle — and realized that many friends, colleagues, former mentees and junior employees had come to me over the years asking for advice on resumes.
Resume writing is something that I’ve always just personally enjoyed for my own resume. It’s always a work in progress, so I was constantly reading up on different trends and best practices, and one of my friends said, “You know, you’re actually pretty good at this resume writing thing. Have you ever thought about trying to do this professionally?” I hadn’t, but I realized the skillset would transfer well.
I moved back into a higher-paying federal position 18 months later when my current job became available at NOAA and had been in my current job for a year when I started freelancing as a career consultant in mid-2020. Government salaries all around aren’t quite high enough to easily afford becoming a homeowner in a high-priced housing market like Seattle’s, so starting a side hustle has helped me achieve that goal.
People should write resumes with their end goal in mind
Whenever clients come to me and say they need a resume, I ask what they need it for and what they’re trying to accomplish. We start from there, then work backwards together to engineer the products and the messaging that they need to achieve that goal.
I started the side hustle on Fiverr and Upwork, but there were some aspects of Fiverr that I found were the best fit for me as a seller. On Fiverr, the people who are offering services are called sellers, and unlike Upwork, where I would have to go out and find clients who had posted projects they wanted people to bid on, which is very time intensive, Fiverr lets you as the seller post flat rates for your services. Then people who have specific needs come to you and ask questions about your services and can directly place orders. So the administrative time commitment for selling on Fiverr is lower. I was able to much more quickly reach a user base of people who needed my services compared to some other platforms that I could have tried.
Starting with low rates on Fiverr to build a reputation and positive reviews
I did start off with intentionally low rates so that I could build up a reputation, establish my credibility and get some good reviews. Then, as my track record increased, I started slowly increasing my rates. However, pretty quickly, in those early days, I had clients coming in at a fairly steady pace. There’s, of course, some variation. It seems like January is the time when people take a reflective look at their life and happiness on the job. January and the fall back-to-school season time often coincide with a bit of an uptick in people who are reaching out and thinking about going in a different direction.
Fiverr is no longer the primary platform where I’m getting business from, but that’s because Fiverr launched me so well that now most of my clientele is actually coming from direct referrals from former colleagues and clients, a lot of whom found me on Fiverr. I still do receive new clients from Fiverr, but it’s not as high in volume compared to what I’m getting from referrals now. I think that’s fairly common for many consulting and professional services businesses — once you establish yourself, then you start getting more clients through word of mouth than through direct marketing.
AI layoffs and job pivots lead people to seek career help
A lot of people are seeking career help right now, and I think there are many different reasons for that, especially within the last 18 months or so. We are seeing AI disrupting so many industries where it is creating job scarcity or layoffs in ways that people didn’t anticipate even a few years ago. So that’s creating ripples in the types of expertise that people need, and it’s forcing people to learn new skills or seek jobs elsewhere. It also used to be much more commonplace to spend your entire career with one company or work a few jobs. Now, people change jobs in entire fields much more often, and with that becomes more job searching and a greater need to tailor your resume to specific positions. And as that need increases, the need for consulting services to help people with that also increases.
The value of career consulting services
Also, now there’s a greater awareness of the value of career consulting services. When I started in this business, I’d worked with a career coach before, but prior to that, I had very little insight into what this type of work was. Writing about yourself for many people is awkward and uncomfortable. And hiring a resume writer can really help you articulate the value of what you can bring to a potential employer.
I see it as an investment that you make in yourself when a resume writer can write a fantastic resume for you and that shortens your job search by weeks, or it lands you a position with a $10,000 higher starting salary. The service more than pays for itself. That’s a comment that I often hear from clients after we’ve worked together and they have landed their dream job that they have been trying to get for years and never got traction with.
ATS-friendly resumes and using AI in the job search
People often ask how to write an ATS-friendly resume, a resume that is machine-readable for applicant tracking systems. Most companies and government agencies as well now use some form of an applicant tracking system to screen resumes and do an initial filter. People are also asking how to use AI in the job search process. And that’s a very complicated answer. There are definitely some dangerous pitfalls with using AI, but there are some ways that you can use it to help make your job search more efficient. You have to use it with caution. Another area people often wonder about is how to pivot from a job they’ve been in for years to a completely different one.
Many skills are transferrable from one industry to another
Many of the skills that we use every day in our jobs, even if it’s not in the exact same field we’re targeting next, are transferable. So for people who are looking to switch into a new job, I would suggest that they really carefully look at what strong skills they demonstrated in their jobs. Think about how those skills apply for the jobs that you are targeting.
One of the things that’s helpful about job searching and targeting positions that have published job descriptions is the job description is essentially a manual for what you need to bring in order to be a qualified candidate. So when people are applying for jobs, I encourage them to very rigorously scrutinize those job descriptions, annotate them, highlight them, whatever your preferred method is, and figure out what skills and experience they need. If you don’t have that exact same skill and experience, consider what you have that’s analogous. And how can you argue in your cover letter that this skill closely matches up and that you’ll be able to succeed in this new role.
Focus on how you delivered value for prior employers
The No. 1 way that people can strengthen their resumes is by focusing on how they delivered value for their prior employers. Most of the time, in the big experience section of people’s resume, they list what they did, and not why it mattered. That’s a mistake.
When you talk about why your work mattered — it contributed value, reduced cost, made your employer’s operations more efficient or effective — you’re showing how you succeeded in the job. In contrast, when you basically copy and paste your job description into your experience section instead — so it says, responsible for X, manage Y — somebody reading your resume has no idea if you were fantastic at your job or just barely good enough to avoid getting fired. Your resume should make you sound like a superstar because often people are really skilled at their jobs and have accomplished a lot, but they may not articulate that.
For cover letters, one of the most common mistakes I see is people write a short-form version of their entire life story or a short-form of their whole career story. If you’re a recruiter or a hiring manager, you want the cover letter to tell you how the candidate will meet your needs. It’s about the company’s needs, not the individual applicant’s needs. I often see cover letters that begin with, “I’m applying for this position because I want a position that…” If instead you say, “I saw this position posted and I understand that your company needs X, Y, and Z in a strong candidate, I bring exactly those traits and here are four examples of how I’ve demonstrated that exact expertise in my prior goals,” that is much more compelling.
Earning over $250k Fiverr, averaging $70k a year
I hit $250,000 in total revenue on Fiverr last year. It happened incrementally enough that I didn’t really put it together until one day I logged in and thought, Oh wow, that’s actually a lot. I certainly was not expecting to be pulling in that kind of revenue when I first started this. I truly do the work because I really enjoy it; I enjoy helping other people and working with people who are coming from so many diverse places. I’ve worked with clients in 25 different countries from every field imaginable. Also, I’m a lifelong learner. So being able to learn about all these different fields and the work that people have done and hearing about their individual stories. It’s really cool. That’s what keeps me going.
Looking back over the past six years or so, the side hustle averages about $70,000 a year across Fiverr and direct client engagements. It ranges, of course. Some years are a little bit higher; some years are a little bit lower. But it’s been pretty consistently around the $70,000-a-year mark.
This year, I reached another milestone: I’ve now earned over $400,000 in total revenue from freelancing in the last six years — an amount that astonishes me. That number is total revenue from all sources, including Fiverr projects and direct client engagements.
The side hustle income helped me buy my first house
This income really enabled me to become a first time homeowner in Seattle. Seattle’s housing market is pretty hard. On a government salary, it’s not easy to buy a home in the Seattle area. The side hustle income made it possible for me to buy a house that is over 100 years old. It was built before women could vote. When you buy a house that is that old, it requires a lot of maintenance, repair and renovation. Almost all of the income that I’ve made from my consulting business, I put into the house to make it liveable and bring everything up to code.
It’s never too early or too late to start a side hustle
To anyone considering starting a side hustle of their own, it’s never too early or too late to do it. Don’t wait until the perfect moment because the perfect moment never comes. I credit friends and my career coach for giving me the push that I needed to get started. Otherwise, I might have waited until I got all the certifications and training, and it could have taken me years. If you dive in and just give it a go, see how it is, you’ll probably find that there are areas that you need to get more training in that you didn’t even realize at the outset. It’s better to start connecting with people who are doing that work early on so that you can prioritize what kind of training to get.
Tips for resume writing and new freelancers
For anyone who’s looking to do resume writing, I highly recommend the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches (PARWCC). It’s fantastic; for a relatively low membership fee, you get access to hours and hours of free training experts in all of the areas that you could ever think of for career coaching. Through that, I’ve gotten to know people who are global experts in interviewing, resume writing, cover letter writing and LinkedIn profile optimization. Being able to interact with and learn from those people has increased my own skillset so much compared to where I was when I first started this work.
Additionally, for new freelancers, it’s so important to ask clients to leave reviews for your services. It can feel awkward, but it makes a huge difference. It’s not enough for a client to happily accept your service delivery. If you want to maximize the ranking of your gig service in Fiverr’s ranking algorithms, your clients need to leave reviews and rate your service.
I didn’t learn this nuance until later on and didn’t know I could ask a client to leave a review. I was lucky that my early clients left reviews without any prompting from me. Their enthusiastic reviews propelled my service gigs to achieve Fiverr’s Choice status, which resulted in Fiverr showcasing my gig at the top of the results page. That top-tier exposure then attracted new clients, and the positive feedback cycle continued. Those early client reviews are what enabled me to quickly scale my business on Fiverr.
Key Takeaways
- Clinchy reviewed thousands of resumes from highly qualified candidates at the White House.
- People encouraged her to start a resume-related side hustle, which she launched on Fiverr in 2020.
- Now, Clinchy’s business continues to grow — and even helped her become a homeowner.
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Seattle, Washington attorney and entrepreneur Jennifer Clinchy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) only enforcement attorney in the Pacific Northwest, Clinchy runs Clinchy Career Consulting, offering resume consulting, cover letter writing and LinkedIn optimization services, as a side hustle. She launched the consulting side hustle on Fiverr in 2020 and hit $250,000 in total earnings on the platform last year. The piece has been edited for length and clarity.
When I was working at the White House from 2010 to 2017, I served as a hiring manager and as legal counsel there. As part of that role, I reviewed thousands of resumes from some of the most talented candidates in the country. It really showed me both how highly qualified people can have incredibly compelling resumes, as well as some surprisingly weak ones that don’t do justice to all of the skills and experience that they bring.
Leaving the White House and starting a side hustle
When I left the White House in September 2017 to accept a position with the Washington State government as director of policy and planning at Puget Sound Partnership (a state government agency), I took a 30% pay cut. During the transition, I considered starting a side hustle — and realized that many friends, colleagues, former mentees and junior employees had come to me over the years asking for advice on resumes.
