About Us
Proven process to start your job search
The Job Guy Method was built from the inside out. Shaped by deep expertise in career management and thousands of conversations with the people who actually make hiring decisions.
Rooted in insights gathered from over 4,000 hiring managers, this approach goes far beyond traditional resume writing or interview prep. It’s designed to reverse-engineer what employers truly look for, and position job seekers as the clear solution to their needs.
For nearly two decades, the Job Guy Method has guided more than 1,700 professionals in their pursuit of more meaningful, impactful careers. Whether launching into the workforce, moving up the ladder, or making a strategic pivot, clients rely on a proven, time-tested methodology that’s delivered consistent results across industries and roles.
And now, with services offered entirely virtually, the Job Guy Method supports clients nationwide, delivering personalized strategies, expert guidance, and actionable tools to help you stand out, all from wherever you are.
Our Team
John Bates
I am a career changer myself.
My first career was in retail management where I owned P & L responsibility for a $70 million 350-employee territory. My latest assignment there involved me taking over a territory from a colleague who had just left the company. Little did I know that this colleague would play a key role in defining my second career two years later!
It was then that I applied to a business generalist job that had appeared in the Boston Globe…
-
The colleague who I had replaced had been charged with screening applicants for career advisor jobs for the career management firm at which he then worked. The company’s new president wanted to bring in “unspoiled” people and did not want to hire experienced career coaches. My friend said I would be great at the job even though I had no idea that the field even existed before that day.
In short order I found out why career management was becoming so popular. I loved the variety of clients that came through my door. I was successful helping executives from all sorts of industries and functions. I learned how to manage careers for people who were infinitely smarter than me in their fields of expertise. Every hour represented new challenges.
About a year into this engagement, I was recruited by the owner of a staffing firm to come work for him. He had just hired one of my clients who raved about her experience with me as her coach. My tenure as a recruiter offered me a new perspective on hiring and paid better, but it was not for me. I simply didn’t get the same charge out of working for companies as I did coaching job seekers. In less than a year, I was back to the career management firm.
For the next five years I managed client services for the firm’s MA, RI, and NH offices. Eleven career coaches, a resume writer, and a research director reported to me. One of my primary duties was to present day-long job search seminars to the executive-level clients in those offices. While the primary purpose of these workshops was to educate the clients, I also used the forum to survey these execs on their hiring manager perspective regarding candidate selection. This was great because I was able to foresee trends in hiring, particularly at a time when the Internet was disrupting the job search process.
I was able to use these clients as a proving ground to develop my own approach on career changing, resumes, interviewing, networking, and salary negotiations. Unfortunately, my employer chose not to listen to what the clients were saying in some critical areas outside my control. Client success and satisfaction began to suffer.
It was my job to deal with more and more unhappy clients. One of the reasons that I was promoted in the first place was because I am good at handling conflict and deescalating tense situations. I was able to turn around nearly all the clients who came to me. Those clients never again thought well of my employer, but they liked me enough to ask me to work with them and their friends and family privately once their contracts with my employer expired. Job Guy was born from the need to service these people.
As Job Guy I have been free to evolve my tools and techniques to remain current with the way jobs are filled today. I have complete control over service delivery. The result has been awesome. Since my start in 2004 I have been able to help over 1700 job seekers in their pursuit of more meaningful careers.
Lindsay Hofbauer
We are all career changers.
I am passionate about helping career seekers achieve their goals and find happiness in their next position. As someone who has experienced the quest for the defining “career success” and gone through the process of a deep reflection into my strengths (and maximizing them) I know firsthand the struggle of not knowing where to start with a search. The hours spent trying to write the ‘perfect’ resume or trying to pivot into a new industry could have been saved had I partnered with someone who already knew the ins and outs of the ATS (Applicant Tracking System), spoke with recruiters weekly on changes in trends, or had the advice of hundreds of hiring managers.
-
My experience in marketing, business, and development has led me to spend the past few years supporting executive and legal talent in their career transitions and creating personal branding packages to increase visibility, attract new clients, or drive sales.
I take a highly personalized approach to our writing services and the personal branding for your career transition. Your career tools should be specific to you, not part of a mass production. The clients I supported have secured opportunities or work across multiple industries including: finance, legal, agriculture, human resources, tech, and many more.
Combining John’s arsenal of tools and expertise with my marketing and writing experience, together we have a streamlined process to provide a personalized service for your pursuit of a meaningful career.
There are lots of people you could work with, so why partner with Job Guy?
Our approach is different.
Job change is almost always driven by something negative (layoff, economics, work-life balance change, bad boss, unrealistic expectations, etc.). Most clients historically have taken jobs more to escape a bad situation than as part of a well-developed, longer-term career plan that matched their skills, interests, and lifestyle needs.
Career changers typically don’t take enough ownership for translating their skills and experience into the language of the new direction. This puts too much burden on networking partners and employers to connect the dots. Most won’t bother. The same is true for later-career clients who are looking to “downsize” into smaller jobs.
Resumes must be written to work at three levels: the applicant tracking system, staffing team, and hiring manager. They must be written in scale with the targeted jobs and not be focused on past experiences that may be very impressive, yet not appropriately connected to the next role.
Interviews need to focus on the measures of success for the job in question and be tailored to the perspective of the individual (not the company) doing the interview. Successful candidates match their accomplishments and skills in a way that best aligns with the level and function of the job from the point of view of the individual across the “desk.”
Networking is not only the most effective tool to minimize elimination by screeners, but also to tap into the hidden job market. Most job seekers burn through their network very quickly by asking for help instead of offering it. Networking partners will always be more excited to introduce us as a solution than they will be to hit up their network for favors.