Why a Professional Resume Writer Should Not Do Your Resume?
Many executive job hunters recognize that the resume is important to their campaign, but they do not want to take the time to develop the superior resume they need. They do a very natural thing.
They turn to the professional resume writer. Don't make that mistake. It is essential to your campaign that you prepare your own resume.
To begin with, no one knows you as you know yourself. Even if the professional resume writer spends several hours with you (and most will not), consider how long you have spent with yourself. You cannot remember everything you should during the time you interview with a professional resume writer or complete a questionnaire. Important facts will occur to you later, as your campaign proceeds. Even more important, small items that you considered incidental to your career will assume a more primary role. The professional resume writer, not knowing you as you know yourself and not being a part of your campaign, will fix in concrete at the beginning a resume based on only what he knows about you at that time. No matter how well written, this resume may be useless only days into your campaign.
Every professional resume writer has a particular style, good, bad, or indifferent. You may like the style or not. The point is it is not your style. Many people who receive large numbers of resumes have learned to spot the styles of certain professional resume-writing firms.
Inevitably the thought must occur to them that a resume prepared for you, and not by you, indicates a lack of writing ability or a lack of self-confidence in written communication.
In developing your own resume and wording your experiences and accomplishments properly, you will have a chance to think about your career in a logical fashion. You cannot do this if you fill out a form or discuss your background with someone. You cannot do it by reading over what someone else has interpreted your career to be. You must take the time to organize these facts yourself. There is no easier way, but it will be worth the effort. The experience will help you later in writing a sales letter, answering advertisements, and discussing your background on the telephone or in face-to-face interviews.
A professional resume-writing service, whatever it costs, is a misallocation of your financial resources. Remember, any job campaign costs money. Unless you are financially independent and don't need to work, it is important to allocate your financial resources where they do the most good. Hiring someone else to write your resume will waste money that you could spend more profitably elsewhere.
How to Use the Resume Preparation Form
The type of resume that I will show you how to write is not one that many employment counselors would encourage. There is good reason for this. Much of the information commonly put in resumes and subsequently distributed to prospective employers has little bearing not only on whether you will be hired, but on whether you will be invited in for an interview. You cannot attain the first without the second, the sole purpose of sending information to a PE, whether through a resume or an extract, is to obtain an interview. No one will hire you on the basis of a resume alone; you will be hired only on the basis of a face-to-face interview. Therefore, your resume and subsequent sales letters, answers to advertisements, and telephone conversations must be geared to achieving that objective: the interview. That is the kind of resume I will show you how to write.
The resume preparation form is lengthy and detailed. It should take you several hours to complete even a sketchy outline. Remember, you have allotted several days to preparation of a superior resume in your job campaign plan. Take advantage of this built-in time. You can profitably use every hour.
The resume preparation form, if properly completed, will insure that all important information needed for your campaign is recalled, documented, and kept together in an organized fashion for immediate use. It will focus your thinking on experience? And accomplishments, both in your career and outside of work, that support your job position objectives. It will increase your self-confidence immeasurably, as you see before you the unique experiences and accomplishments that you alone can offer to a PE. Finally, it will save you a considerable amount of time during your campaign.
The Importance of Special, Short, and Outside of Work Assignments
You will find places on the resume preparation form for information about special and short assignments in your career and special experience outside of your career. Such information is frequently overlooked; but it can be vital to your campaign. For example, Douglas M. was an accountant for a small company that manufactured adhesives for the building industry. For about a year, in addition to his normal duties, he represented his department on the company's product evaluation committee. During this period he participated in the evaluation of 32 potential new products. This work, which occupied less than 20 percent of his time during that year and only 4 percent of his total time with the company, was the deciding factor in getting him a position as finance officer with a firm that researched and developed proprietary products for licensing.
Tim O. spent years working as a human factors engineer with a large aerospace company but was faced with a certain layoff. The three months he spent working on ejection seat requirements got him a job as project engineer in charge of the development of a new ejection seat. Special, short, and outside-of-work assignments can be the deciding factor in getting you an interview and getting you a job. Don't overlook them.
The same has frequently been true of my students who have followed my methods. Some have obtained truly incredible jobs, at high levels, although they may have never worked previously. One of my graduate students, Luis E. was a foreign national. Luis obtained a job with a major consulting firm. Yet, he had never worked previously, and he did not graduate from a "name" university. He relied entirely on his experience as a student... that was all he had! He used his classroom accomplishments and his accomplishments during extracurricular activities around campus.
I want to emphasize that Luis did not talk about his "A" grades or his grade point average. These are accomplishments, but research shows that they are usually not very useful in obtaining a great job. The accomplishments I am talking about are the results or potential results of marketing plans he developed, marketing research he did, teams that he led, and the results of his holding office in a campus club. He attained the highest salary ever attained up to that time from his university.
Your resume will change considerably as your campaign progresses. You will think of new items to add, other accomplishments to emphasize, some statements to delete. You will find this happening right up to the last day of your campaign. How, then, do you handle the hundreds of resumes that must be distributed? Simple don't. That is, don't send out resumes by hundreds or thousands. In fact, don't send any resumes out at all. Instead, send out extracts from your resume tailored to the particular market for your talents. These extracts are incorporated into your sales letters.
Sending out sales letters rather than resumes will save you time and money. It will increase your efficiency and effectiveness in getting interviews because you can slant the sales letters toward particular job situations much more easily than you can slant the resume itself. You will also avoid "knockout factors".
If this is true, when if ever do you send a resume to a PE during your job campaign? There are two situations. The first is when a PE insists on seeing a resume before inviting you for an interview. This may occur when there is travel connected with the interview or when a hiring executive wants to see you but is not fully convinced. In both cases, you should find out everything you can about the potential position before preparing a specially tailored resume. You never send out a "standard" resume, no matter how well written or attractively printed. The situation is analogous to having hooked a fish that hasn't yet swallowed the bait:
You could lose him. You will find details on how to gather intelligence about a job later on. The second situation is after the interview. You now know a great deal about the job; if you have done your job right, you know far more than any of your competitors. You are now in a position to write an outstanding resume especially for that particular job. This is the resume that will help to get you the job. Remember, it is sent out after interview.
So begin to develop a superior resume by completing the resume preparation form. Filling out the form in detail is one of the most difficult tasks associated with job hunting. But it is well worth your best efforts and will play a major role in the success of your campaign. Again, this task will not be completed until the very end of your campaign; you will continually update, polish, and reword your resume as you recall additional facts and as your campaign unfolds.
