How to Make Resume Stronger | Thoughts on Staffing Firms

Starting to search for next steps and I'm targeting buy-side research although I am open to different paths. I know I just don't want to go into sell-side or corporate (FPA) so I'm not exactly tailoring it for a specific job, more so a generalist resume.

My current and most relevant experiences feels very lackluster. I don't know how exactly to quantify or measure it since I've mostly been doing reviews of valuations conducted by another firm (which involves performing the calculations), but not performing the actual valuations ourselves (talking to client, arriving at certain assumptions, etc).

Haven't been working too long but I removed all of my coursework and Sherpa / Forage certificates I had when I was first looking for a job from a lack of relevant internships / experience. Now my resume feels so empty. I was a little hesitant on putting a religious organization as part of my extracurricular activity on it in college it was a really transformative period for me and helped build some of the confidence I have today.

Skills and Interests I hear mixed things on. On one hand if a interview also share the same interests then that's something we can connect one. But it feels a little bit much.

Also, I've had staffing firms reach out to me. How do you feels about them? On one hand, it's nice because I don't have to really put effort into searching, just interviewing and preparing but I also feel the stigma of "oh you can't find a job yourself, guess you might not be good enough" so I don't know if I should feel this way or if it's okay to rely on them.