How to Decide on Hiring a Professional Resume Writer

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So you’re thinking about hiring someone to write your resume…

Before you decide to do this, speak to at least two or three of them and examine them for the following:

Competence in your field of work and the recruiting process.

They shouldn’t have to guess at what you do. Many understand recruiting, but will write resumes for anyone and everyone. The challenge with this is they won’t know what questions to ask about your key functions and they won’t know what employer’s specifically want in your target roles.

That they care.

Make sure they seem more interested in helping anyone and everyone rather more than making money and serving only “high-paying” clients.

I’m going to leave you with four different types of resume writers from (in my opinion) lowest skilled to highest based on Richard Bolles ideas.

 

Level One (the lowest)

They will tell you that they can create a beautiful resume for you. That’s beautiful isn’t it, but that doesn’t mean the resume they write will get you anywhere. But hey, at least it will be beautiful - maybe you can frame it somewhere.

Level Two

They will tell you that they an sell you to employers. I hear this all the time in the resume writing world. Many of these writers were marketing professionals in a past life and probably can produce some fantastic looking pieces of work. But here’s some news for you. Now I spent some time in sales (not marketing). And every good sales person knows that you don’t sell the product on a phone call or email. So you certainly don’t want to try and make your resume sell yourself either. That’s for the meeting later, the interview.

What you do want to do is peak someone else’s curiosity. Give them a reason to want to meet you. Your resume isn’t going to make them hire you, it’s designed to make them want to meet you. So if you hear someone say they will “sell you” to employers, make sure you ask what they mean by that term.

Level Three

They will tell you that their resume can get you more interviews. If they can actually do this - they probably know what they’re doing.

Level Four (the highest)

They will tell you that their resume can get you more interviews with a particular target employer or job - a place or a job where you want to be. Now, a lot of people will claim this out there and sadly, it’s empty claims many times. But if they can truly do this -you’ve scored big!


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