How I Turned My Resume into a Podcast
Recently I read on LinkedIn about how people were using this new cool AI tool from Google called Notebook LM to turn a resume into a podcast. So I thought, what the heck? I’ll give it a spin.
It was… quick, easy, fun — and it made me squirm in discomfort just the teeniest bit. Do you get wiggly and a little red in the face when someone talks about you glowingly to someone else in front of you? That’s how this feels to me. But I’m sharing it here anyways because I think it’s such a great example of how we can begin to reimagine consuming something as dry as a resume, and understanding at a more human level who a person is as a potential employee.
Basically, Notebook LM applies what I think of as a “podcasting formula” to your content. They call it a “deep dive conversation.” So these two AI hosts basically discuss your content in the same way real podcast hosts would do. It’s all a very positive treatment, highlighting experiences, credentials and any specific examples you may have fed it.
The hosts sound so much like real people, that I found myself wanting to know more about them. What are their names? Their professional bonafides? What are they bringing to this experience from their own lives?
What Notebook LM created for me is about 15 minutes long, and I wish there was a way to request iterations so that I could have a shorter version. Some of it was a bit repetitive, at least to me (although I do happen to know this particular subject forwards and back). Also on my wish list? An easy way to edit the audio file. I thought I could potentially manage it in iMovie, but it needed to be done in Garage Band. Alas, I’ve never dabbled there, and the learning curve was too steep for the time and energy I had to dedicate to it.
I hope you’ll give this a try, too — and tell me all about it if you do. Here’s exactly how I did it.
1. I went to Google’s Notebook LM site and clicked the blue “+create new” button.
2. Next, I uploaded my resume and added a link to Pink Pineapple Post. I also wanted to add my LinkedIn profile, but Notebook LM wouldn’t accept it. The site automatically pulls up a window where you can upload sources in three different ways. You can upload Google docs or Google slides, links to sites (including YouTube), or you can paste in content. My resume is in a Word doc, so I just copied and pasted it in. You can add up to 50 source materials! Once you’re done, hit submit.
This is what the experience looks like for adding sources.
3. Google LM then brings up a new page that has a summary in the middle, and a section on the right called “Studio.” You just hit the blue button that says “Generate.”
This is where the AI magic happens!
4. Then you wait. With the speed we’ve all come to expect from AI, I was surprised how long this took to create, definitely 5 minutes.
5. Notebook LM produces an audio file with a .wav extension. You can hit the “share” button and it will generate a link that you can send anyone you want and it will take them to a web page where they can listen.
6. I knew I wanted to embed my audio file on my site, so I downloaded it and saved it to my computer. I hit a snafu when I discovered that Squarespace doesn’t support .wav files, only .mp3 or .mp4. Notebook LM does not have a function to convert to different file types, so that option was out. Luckily I found this awesome site CloudConvert, that was free and super easy to use (and fast as lightning). On the homepage, there’s a red button that says “Select File,” which brings up your finder window. You simply upload your file and select the new format. It converts it in seconds, and then you download it.
7. I then embedded the audio file into my post for your listening pleasure!
AI-Generated Podcast Usage Inspo
Really, the sky is the limit for the ways you could use this functionality. Here’s my top 5 to start.
1. Content Remix. Already posting a new .com article? Or a newsletter? Throw the content into Notebook LM and make a podcast version of it. Share it alongside the long-form written version so your audience can pick their own poison. I’ve noticed that Mintel is doing this in one of their Comperemedia newsletters. I’m a skimmer-reader, so I haven’t yet tried it, but I would if I had a commute or similar where my ears were free but my hands were otherwise occupied. Read more about content remixing in my post from last week about the top trends in content marketing for 2025.
2. Performance Evaluation/Review. People managers, I’m looking at you! How great would it be to listen to a batch of podcasts highlighting your direct reports’ wins and opportunities for the past year? I am SO here for this one. The process could be the same as it currently is, where each employee writes out their goals and how they met them or didn’t, but with one added step. All the info would be fed into an AI tool like Notebook LM and transformed into a deep-dive conversation all about each person.
3. Deeper Understanding. I really like the idea of using this functionality to help synthesize dense information. For example, what if you generated a podcast about a business case to help you process all the details and strategies therein? Or what if you had already read two big annual reports, and wanted to take it a level deeper? You could feed them both into the tool and further digest the information as this deep dive conversation. I think I will try this with the two “state of marketing” reports I recently read, one from SalesForce and one from HubSpot.
4. Simple Summarization. Especially if you could get Notebook LM to give you the 5-minute version, it could be so great to give it a long email or a brief your direct report wrote for you, and then get this deep-dive conversation format to go through it.
5. Hiring Managers & HR. You could quickly and easily get a holistic picture of an applicant by repeating the same exercise I used to produce my podcast. Simply upload a candidate’s resume, cover letter and any websites and listen to the output to quickly understand their background and qualifications. As a hiring manager, I would appreciate this piece of information as part of the process.
From The Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary, by Bryan Doyle. This is excerpted from “Prayer in Celebration of the Greatest Invention Ever, the Wicked Hot Shower.”
Prayer in Celebration of the Greatest Invention Ever, the Wicked Hot Shower
by Bryan Doyle
I leave you today with a bit of lyrical prose in praise of that modern marvel, the hot shower, that we all take for granted until that disheartening day when we unwillingly take a frigid shower. Like when your kid hogs the hot water supply. Or you take a shower in a Spanish apartment in the early 2000s and realize that hot water with strong pressure is so far from a given.
Special thanks to Maria Popova at The Marginalian, for including this snippet in a recent edition of her newsletter.
“Oh God help me bless my soul is there any pleasure quite so artless and glorious and simple and unadorned and productive and restorative as a blazing hot shower when you really really want a hot shower? When you are not yet fully awake, when you are wiped from two hours of serious basketball, when you are weary and speechless after trip or trauma? Thank You, Inventiveness, for making a universe where there is water, and heat, and nozzles, and towels, and steam, and hairbrushes, and razors for cutting that line that distinguishes your beard from your chest, and toothbrushes. Thank You most of all, Generosity, for water. Deft invention, water. Who would have ever thought to mix hydrogen and oxygen so profligately? Not us. But it is everything we are. It falls freely from the sky. It carries us and our toys and joys. It is clouds and mist and fog and sleet and breath. There is no sweeter more crucial food… And so: amen.”
