Resume writers...anyone use them?

[John Coloccia]

I'm looking for a new job. I'm currently employed but I think my current position has run it's course and it's time to move on to bigger and better things. I know many will think this is a bad time to look for a new job, but I think it's actually the best time. Many of the weak and nonviable companies have been weeded out, right? If you've stuck around and are hiring, you must be doing SOMETHING right! LOL....okay, fine, that's a bunch of baloney, but it's the right time for me regardless, so a looking I will go.

I looked at some of my old resumes and I'm shocked I was able to ever get any job at all. I've decided that resume writing is simply not one of my talents, although I have to mention that one of the resumes was from a headhunter and even that one was rather childishly written.

I'm thinking of hiring a professional resume writer. I'm not talking about "www.JohnsPrettyGoodResumesAndThings.com". I'm talking about a legitimate, brick and mortar, local resume writer. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Were you pleased with the results? I have an engineering background and also spent some time as the engineering manager for our west coast office. I'd probably be looking to migrate back into a more managerial roll but I still want stay somewhat technical. Any advice for finding the right writer that is actually familiar with a particular field and can convey the proper nuance? I know there must be resources out there, but google is proving rather useless in this particular case.

I know the conventional wisdom of the mid to late 90's and early 2000's was that resume writers weren't worth it and that you should just do it yourself. When I think back, though, my recollection of that period is that I could draw a simple little stick figure house, put my name and phone number at the top, mail it to any company I wanted and nail a job offer over the phone the next day. If you bothered to draw the chimney with a little squiggle of smoke coming out, that earned you a sign-on bonus.

Times have changed. Any help or advice is appreciated.

[Lee Schierer]

I did this once years ago and the results were disasterous. I went to an interview and the interviewer asked what I meant by a particular phrase and I could explain why I chose that wording because well, they weren't my words. I didn't get the job and I immediately re wrote my resume. I never was confused or challenged again about what was in my resume.

You know your self best, you know what you did and what you didn't if you are honest in your resume, it comes across to the interviewer. No professional writer can match your knowledge of yourself. Write what you know you have accomplished and it will get you through to the job you want. Never exaggerate a resume as you never know what the person across the table knows about the subject you exaggerated.

Most of all keep it concise as these days there are hundreds of applicants for every job and the interviewer doesn't (won't take) have time to read 4 pages of stuff you wrote. Bring out those extras in the interview. Also do your home work and know the business you are interviewing before you step into their lobby and be early for the interview and leave yourself plenty of time between appointments. You can never tell how long the factory tour or lunch with his/her boss will take.

[Sean Troy]

Best to do it yourself. Keep it short and relevant. Not a good idea to use spell check for anything but spelling errors. They can't detect if the word is used correctly.

[Jim Rimmer]

I've reached the point in my career where I won't be needing a resume but I have been in a position for several years reviewing resumes and I can give you some hints:
1. Keep it to one page. I used to think this was bull but now I know it's true - if it is more than one page, I probably won't read it.
2. Don't try to baffle me with model numbers of equipment you have experience with or have worked on. If I am not familiar with them it is just irritating waste of my time.
3. After the 2 most recent jobs, don't go into much detail. I don't want to know that you were in the drama club in high school.
4. I don't care if you hunt, fish, golf, or do woodwork.
5. Get a smart, good friend to proofread for you. Have them look for grammatical errors, spelling errors, etc. Mistakes like that have turned me off more than once (especially if you claim to be or are interviewing for a detail oriented position)
6. Keep it short (see#1) If you tell me everything in the resume, why do I need to interview you? Give me enough that I would want to find out more.

Good luck.

[Bob Vavricka]

John,
You might want to check out this site. http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/welcome.htm
He has what seems to me a common sense approach to job hunting. Fortunately, I haven't had to try it out and with retirement just around the corner, I don't think I will have to.
Bob V.

[Eric Roberge]

John,

I have been in the staffing industry for several years and my first bit of advice is similar to Sean's. Do it yourself (look online to get some tips if you're struggling), but do it yourself.
Most recruiters, me included, don't read a resume word for word, we skim through and look for key words that pertain to the open position. Even during the "skimming" process we tend to pick up on grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes, etc... Read it 5x+ checking for those issues. I can't tell you how many resumes I throw out because of simple mistakes. (If the job seeker can't be thorough on proofreading their own resume, then... ) The standards seem to be changing every day on what a hiring manager is looking for in a resume.

1. Take your time and make sure it hits the key points, don't fill it with a bunch of BS that's not relevant.
2. Tailor the resume to the position that your applying for.
3. Do a Career Summary for the heading not an OBJECTIVE. As a hiring manager, I look for a summary (highlights in a short paragraph) of what you have done in the past.

Not to sound cold, but I don't care about what the applicant's "objectives" are, I care about what they can bring to the table for my business and you can get that point across in a quick paragraph

Cover letters.....I don't care for them personally, but I notice that some companies still have the option on their sites. (For that matter, I still have the option on my own website)

Good luck in your search!

[Bill Clifton]

I'm an old engineer that has been on the brink of unemployment twice in the last 4 years.

I think it is hard to write your own resume - you know yourself too well and may not know (understand) what the hiring party is looking for. At least go find a resume book and understand what it is saying.

I write a unique resume for each posted job I apply for. I tailor the resume to the ad - send them back what they posted and use your experience for support.

The one book didn't encourage complete sentences or even punctuation - "guided project to successful completion" . Use strong, positive action words that you can support when you get the interview.

Read about the various questions that the interviewer may ask - the touchy feely concepts that are hard to explain. They will ask. Be prepared - "if your boss assigns you something that you think is needless what would you do?" (Unless it is illegal, unethical or immoral I would complete the task!)

The longer I have worked at it, the more successful I have become meaning good interviews.

Good luck!!

[Dennis McGarry]

Depends on where you are applying.

In face to face and you know for a fact that a person is going to read it, do it yourself.

If applying online, Pay to have a professional write it. They are key to getting the search engines that scan the resume to actually see your resume and forward to the HR contact.

[Eric Larsen]

Format your resume last. Get the information on paper (or on screen). Then read your resume out loud. Read every word. If it's difficult to read aloud, edit.

Most people tend to be wordy. Their sentences are too long. Short sentences work best. Hemingway made a career writing short sentences. He won a Nobel Prize doing it. Steinbeck and Twain also wrote short sentences.

When I edit my own work, the first thing I do is look for conjunctions. I hack them with gusto. "And" ruins copy. Avoid hyphens. Avoid sentences that have more than three commas. Avoid parenthesis.

Specific to resumes, avoid the following words: Realized, implemented, facilitated, synergy, strategy, stratagem, challenging and the rest of the "business ridiculous" stuff that passes for English these days.

In addition, put "what you hope to do" high up in the resume.

I think it's best to leave personal information out of the resume, unless germane to the job. Languages spoken might be helpful. But a love of French cuisine belongs only on a chef's resume.

My "I want a brew master position" resume can be summed up:

1) I want a brew master position at a brew pub.

2) Here's my experience brewing beer. Here's how much money I made monthly for my last employer. (Calculated in volume per month. Anyone in the industry can do the math and arrive at a dollar figure.)

3) Here's what I'm good at. Consider me ahead of the rest of your applicants because of this stuff.

I've had marginal success. Only one position opened up in the past year, and I shook hands with the owner and agreed to a salary. Then the brewer decided not to quit after all. So I'm still looking.

[John Coloccia]

Thanks for all the advice. I should mention that before I came back east, I was a manager and spent my days looking through resumes. I appreciate what makes a good resume and what makes a poor resume, and I decided I'm not very good at creating a good resume. Keep the comments coming, but I just wanted to remind folks that I'm really looking for information or experiences with pro resume writers.

[Tom Winship]

Not needing to write resumes any longer, one thing I always did though was to list my military experience....... simply "1964-1968 Captain US Air Force".
If I saw the same on a resume I might have always been partial to veterans.
I never thought about it hurting my chances, because if it did, I didn't want to work there anyway.
IMHO

[Brian Kent]

John, if you cannot find the right pro, is there someone whose resume you liked? Use that format.

Also, when hiring an office manager I got about a third of the resumes from one "pro" who did cookie cutter resumes. They all looked and sounded the same.

The person I hired was also the only one who called back in a few days to follow through and ask if she could offer any further information.

[Jason Strauss]

Funny thing about resumes, their worth is completely in the eyes of the person reading it. After 11 years as an HR professional, I’ve decided that there is no one correct way. The fact is there are hundreds of thousand of correct ways to write a good resume. That being said, here’s what I like to see:

- The shorter the better – one page for most people
- No grammar or spelling mistakes – those types of mistakes, to me, go directly in the trash can (well, not actually in the trash can because of the confounded “expressions of interest and consideration” laws, but you know what I mean)
- Not full of extreme amounts of technical gobbldy gook – IT folks, take note (I once got a 10 page resume from a recent Computer Science graduate enumerating every project he ever worked on – yuck!)
- Never send an unsolicited resume – in my world, if your not applying for a specific job, I have too many other things to do than file your resume for future consideration

A professional resume writer will simply write your resume in a format or fashion that they prefer. You can do this yourself. Take a stab at it, show it to your friends and family and ask them to be brutally honest. Be open to suggestion and willing to spend some time editing.

[Dave Gaul]

When I was getting out of the Navy, they provided a "transition class", which included a resume writing class... it was an incredible insight into writing a resume! I distinctly remember them saying NOT to use a resume writing service, they said services like that tend to make your resume look "too slick". My LOML is in HR and she says she can always tell when a resume was written by the person or a service.

I agree with Jim Rimmer... great advice there!

[John Coloccia]

I have to say that I hated going through the long resumes too. I generally wouldn't penalize someone for that, though. I WOULD penalize someone if I had to sit there and translate every line from techno-garble into English. All I was looking for was "is this guy worth giving a call". Then I'd do a short phone interview to decide if he was worth bringing in, or if it would just be a waste of my staff's time.

Oddly enough, the WORST resumes I got were the ones directly from headhunters. I had to be careful and not whack a guy's resume if I knew it was coming in through a recruiter because I knew it wasn't their fault. The recruiter resumes were absolutely painful to read through.

re: unsolicited resumes
I disagree with this. You would be surprised how many times a resume came across my desk and the guy was impressive enough that I called him anyhow and found a way to make it work. Not at my current employer, but this isn't unusual. In fact, I got a job offer years ago like this. There was a company I really wanted to work for, I threw together a resume and sent it to them with a cover letter that basically said, "I really want to work for you and here's why. Here's the job I'd like to do and why I know I can do it." Sure enough, I got a call back and eventually an offer. I didn't take it because I didn't like what I saw when I interviewed there (I was interviewing them as much as they were interviewing me), but we left it on good terms and chalked it up to simply being a poor fit. I've also referred back to resumes I saw months ago. "Hey, what happen to that Joe guy. Remember him? This is right up his alley."

The worst anyone can do is ignore it and just throw it out. No harm done. Just remember that by the time you see the job posting in a newspaper, people have been talking about opening the posting for weeks, and often months. They've gone around the office and asked everyone, "Do you know anyone that can do this job." They've exhausted all their resources. The job posting is an act of desperation, IMHO, and the process stinks for them just as much as it stinks for us. Wouldn't you like to be the guy who's resume shows up just as they're looking for someone just like YOU. That would have gotten my attention, for sure. A good recruiter will do the same. If he has a really stellar candidate, he'll call around to his clients and see if anyone can use him.