M’sian satirist disses corporate culture, dishes out brutal resume reviews & people love it

Lately, I keep stumbling upon an account called Lumrah Lanyard (LL) on Twitter. I found myself chuckling over some of the memes they’ve posted as well as relating to the more heartfelt tweets.

While LL’s content today is humorous and mostly lighthearted, it didn’t always start that way. In fact, when they first started the account in 2020, they were coming from a rather dark place.

“I just felt this deep nausea to even send out an email [at work],” LL shared. “That was my sign. I knew I had to do something about it.”

Despite quitting and finding a new job, LL was still recovering emotionally, and they could see how it impacted their friends. So, they decided that another outlet was needed.  

It was at this time that LL started getting “unexplained flashes” of drawings in their mind. These illustrations showed the contradiction between what people said and what they actually meant.

This imagination lingered for a few days before LL decided to do something about it by creating a personal vent account.

“Never would I have ever thought, that my personal vent account would have grown to what it is now—a community,” LL said.

From vents to a venture

Now, LL has over 20K followers on Twitter who relate to the funny and satirical content LL posts. Shockingly, the satirist does not have a graphic design or illustration background but instead had to pick up basic drawing skills online.

To be fair, LL’s art is rather simplistic, so people probably aren’t following them purely for the quality of their illustrations. Instead, it’s the quality of the content and its values that matter more.

“I do think you need to stand for something,” LL shared to Vulcan Post. “I reflect [honesty] in my artwork, in the way I roll out projects, and even in the way that I communicate bad news or delays in our projects. No matter how hard or how uncomfortable it is, I embrace honesty with LLers.” 

As honest as LL is, there’s one thing they can’t be fully honest about—their identity.

“Earlier this year, I took some time off and decided to reflect a little on my intentions and what’s next for LL,” they said. “I wanted to keep myself grounded and make sure I never stray away from LL’s values.”

So, LL came up with some principles, one of which is to stay anonymous unless it one day becomes more sensible to reveal their identity. For now, LL enjoys being anonymous. They claim to be an introvert in real life, so this system works well for them.

“In fact, my boss from real life is also an LL-er. Yes, tell me about it,” LL shared. “I also remember joining a meeting and people were talking about LL’s post that day. I even get forwarded WhatsApp messages on LL’s illustrations too in real life. It’s kind of funny!”

However, not everyone is as receptive as LL’s boss. According to LL, there are also companies that are unhappy with their content.

“I’ve definitely heard rumours of companies looking for my identity and trying to find me and blame me for god knows what,” they said. “So that’s another factor that I think about too.”

Currently, only a handful of people know of LL’s true identity. Six to be exact. Apparently, not even volunteers for LL’s projects know who they are. In order to uplift the community instead of themselves, LL vows to be anonymous for as long as they can.  

Resume reviews

On top of posting funny and relatable content, LL also offers something that can directly benefit employees—a brutal resume review. In fact, the “most” brutal resume review, according to LL themselves.

LL started the service because they’ve struggled with job-hunting, having received numerous rejection emails before.

“That led me to go on my own journey to ‘hack’ or ‘outsmart’ the whole process,” LL explained. “I reached out to recruiters personally and spoke to them one by one to really understand how things work.”

This was how LL found out about the use of something called the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) where recruiters would screen candidates and rank them for potential hiring. Candidates who don’t pass the screening would simply not make the cut.

So, they decided to change their approach. True enough, they started getting calls back. As the LL Twitter presence grew, they realised providing honest resume reviews was how they could be useful—emphasis on the honest.

“The biggest reason people trust me is because I’m brutally honest,” LL claimed.

On top of being honest, LL also has real experience reading through piles of resumes and interviewing candidates. As LL, they are also able to tap into the huge network of people who are happy to share hiring advice.

My resume, reviewed

To make sure LL was the real deal, I volunteered as tribute to receive one of their so-called brutal reviews. First, I was told to share a link to a job opening I was applying for, so I randomly selected a writing-related job listing. (If you’re reading this boss, don’t worry, I’m not actually jumping ship, I swear.)

I was worried that LL would go easy on me, considering I’m writing this article, but they thankfully delivered with their brutal honesty.

LL ranked me on searchability, credibility, and readability. I scored medium for the first, low for the second, and low for the last. It’s definitely a good thing that I’m not actually out of a job right now, or I might have some challenges with looking for one…

Apparently, I didn’t use the right keywords to be considered attractive according to ATS machines. To improve this factor, LL helpfully provided some keywords as per the job posting.

On top of this, LL also helped reword some portions of my resume to make my work sound a lot more impressive and credible.

I’ve actually received a resume review before that was more specific to grammatical mistakes and formatting errors, but LL keeps it more about the content itself, which I think is more helpful. LL also provides some more general feedback and advice, and I really appreciated how quickly they responded too.

To give a brutal (or honest) review back to LL, I do think that for a review worth RM100, I thought it would be more specific and detailed to each resume. I expected my resume to be completely marked over with a bunch of red circles and lines, along with scathing feedback in every section that needed it.

I’ve to admit that I have received harsher reviews in my college days from career fairs and professors. LL, your reviews are not as brutal as you think! (At least not for mine.)

In any case, it seems that there’s some traction for this service by LL. They said, “I do get quite a number of clients every month, enough to push me to create an entire ‘system’ of managing an influx of emails and resume requests.”

Changing workplace culture

Having followed LL for a while, I know that their content is mostly poking fun at the corporate world. It’s not obvious at first, but other than providing some laughs for corporate professionals, LL also provides a safe and welcoming space for them.

As for what’s next, LL doesn’t have a long-term plan, as they prefer short-term goals and being flexible.

“What I know deep in my heart is that I will always aim to be useful to people,” LL said.

Speaking of useful, LL is also working on a referral project whereby they’re coupling the resume reviews with a referral for the job. This programme will include a panel of referrers who will refer customers’ resumes to get better visibility.

On top of that, LL has also launched Project Fly, an intensive step-by-step virtual job-hunting boot camp in January.

“I don’t know whether I can really change the corporate culture, but I’m sure as hell going to try,” LL said.

Considering that they’ve already grown a community of people, many of which presumedly work corporate jobs, I’d say that LL is already affecting some level of change within the corporate world of lanyards.

Featured Image Credit: Lumrah Lanyard