Choosing A Résumé Writer - Who works for whom?

I won't enumerate my personal feeling why it is best to get a professionally prepared résumé for those seeking a position over $65,000 a year. After all I am biased.

Rather, I’d like to discuss what I heard from a professional I  recently met in a workshop who decided to write her own résumé this time around rather than trust someone she knew could do a much better job. 

This was nothing new to me. As a matter of fact I’ve heard this same train of thought from many people over the years; “after I paid them, the résumé company came across as if I was working for them rather than my feeling they were working for me. This was disturbing and I did not know what I could do?” 

I asked this VP what exactly she meant by this and this is what she said.

When I had my résumé written professionally a few years ago for my previous position, I asked the person I first spoke to if she is the person who would write my résumé. She said no. We will assign you to one of our best writers.

 

Once I paid and was assigned a writer, as a marketing professional I wanted to have some input into the design and format of my résumé and I was not 100% sold on the way the writer was approaching the project. I voiced this concern to her and she said “I’m the pro here and this is how we prepare all our résumés and this is how we’ll prepare yours. Trust me it will work.” 

I was not happy with the attitude but accepted that they were right and I was the novice. The result was it took me over 7 months of people telling me my résumé was the problem and my defending it until I landed a new job. 

To me this is no reason not to hire a résumé writer; rather it is a reason to go out and find a person who can offer you the respect and personal attention you deserve.

It may be true that most résumé writer are likely to know more about what needs to be done and how to do it than you do. However résumé writing is a collaborative art and you should be an integral part of the process. I’ll take it a step further, so should the people around you who you value and trust the most.

Recently I wrote what I felt was told was an ultimate marketing document for a client’s specific needs; it was extremely creative and at the same time laser focused to its target audience’s needs. What made this résumé stand out was my client had 3 of her most trusted colleges and mentors take a look at it and offer their insight and suggestions.  My client and I then discussed what they had to say and why, and then we incorporated their input and some industry jargon suggestions into her résumé and in the end all 5 of us agreed the final product was dynamic and on the money. (after 2 weeks it is too soon to judge results)

This is how a résumé can be written when you take a collaborative approach and are open to new ideas, constructive criticism and the fact that others know as much or more than you do about what sets your résumé  apart and what puts it smack dab in the middle of the stack. There are so many facets to writing a marketing document that tells a compelling story to the employer on ‘why you’ and not someone else is the candidate to interview and hire. My belief is 2 or more heads are better than 1 and a few extra  sets of eyes can see things that may have slipped through the cracks.

So when it comes to deciding who is best equipped to write your résumé remember the advice the Knight Templar gave Indiana Jones in pursuit of the Holy Grail; “Choose wisely.”

As always I am happy to critique US resumes (and professional overseas CVs) and LinkedIn pages at no cost if you email it to perry@perrynewman.com

What being in LinkedIn’s “Top 1%” club means to me & what it can mean to you

To promote its recent monumental accomplishment of obtaining over 200 million members, over the past two weeks LinkedIn sent out congratulatory notices to those who placed among the Top 10%, Top 5% and Top 1% of Profile page views for 2012. I was acknowledged to be among the Top 1%. This can be interpreted as my being 1 member of a club where198 million people are working hard to join, or as my being 1 person in a club that has 2 million members.

What I’d like to explore is how I believe I was chosen for this honour, what it has done for me, and why you should strive to join me and many of my clients and colleagues who also are members of this club in 2013.

In my business I wear three hats – résumé writer, job search advisor and social media strategist.

LinkedIn page writing & social media coaching has become an increasingly sought after component of my services over the past 3 years. During that time I have invested my own time, money and effort to learn how to be among the best at what I do and in so doing learned the value of having a great LinkedIn page and how to create one, the importance of being an active member in the right LinkedIn groups to maximize my professional exposure, and how to establish my credentials as a subject matter expert. I also learned how to optimize my profile so people and opportunities find me without my extending a continuous effort to be found. This is something you should invest in and strive for as well.

I can proudly say that today nearly 33% of my business is generated by Linked In page views and I am being approached by many people who want to discuss consulting opportunities and speaking engagement with me in the US and abroad as well as by professionals who want to discuss strategic alliances and new business opportunities with me.

In my mind, being in the Top 1% confirms that my social media knowledge and advice are not hollow words. The proof is, in addition to helping me reach my goals it worked for most of my clients who took my advice and did what was necessary to join me at this level. More of my Top 1% clients were found by employers and talent hunters and offered interviews and jobs after using my advice; and in my opinion it is more preferable and profitable to be found for a job than to find one.

This is what LinkedIn did for me and my clients and what it can do for you when you learn to harness its power or work with a professional who can show you the ropes and do the necessary wordsmiths work for you.

Remember this, LinkedIn is here to stay and when used properly it helps thousands of job seekers and business professionals reach and surpass their goals each month at a more accelerated pace than they originally thought possible. So what are you waiting for? Master LinkedIn today and set your goal to be a 1% member in 2013.

As always I am happy to critique US resumes (and professional overseas CVs) and LinkedIn pages at no cost if you email it to perry@perrynewman.com   

What is working in a job search today

Over the past several years I have found people who employ conservative, conventional approaches to find a job too often end up with longer intervals of unemployment between jobs. In the past few weeks I followed up with people I've worked with and those I offered free advice to in 2012 to see what worked and what did not for them in their job search.

Here, again, in no particular order, are some tactics that generated more interviews and shortened the time people anticipated being out of work.

1: The people who used the Bio-Resume and Profile-Resume format I recommended got the highest send-out to employer response ratio. The Bio-Rez worked best for recent grads and early career job seekers while the Profile Resume worked best for high level professionals and executives.
 

2: Skilled professionals 40-60 years old had excellent results in their job search marketing themselves as a consultant or looking to offer a temporary solution. Their ability to broaden their network and get in front of a decision maker was greatly increased thus helping them uncover more employment opportunities in the “hidden job market” than when they conducted a conventional job search.

3: People who, following my advice and upgraded and optimized their LinkedIn page and accumulated a minimum of 8 focused recommendations achieved greater  results after doing so, especially in regards to getting on recruiters’ radar screens.

4: I was surprised (but really not that much) by the number of job hunters who found a new job by going old school and pounding the pavement. By widening their network they got to speak with more decision makers and people who directed them to the ‘hidden job market” at a higher rate than those who used strictly conventional methods,    

5: People who wrote or had a strong resume written for them from the get-go and afterwards only made minor custom modifications to appeal to the job at hand had a better send- out to employer response rate than those who obsessively rewrote their resume based on their perception of its limited value and the  opinion of others not in the know.

6:People who learned how to tell compelling stories in their resume and during a job interview fared better than those who relied on espousing facts and figures to impress decision makers in their written and verbal communication.

 As always I will review your resume at no cost if you email it to perry@perrynewman.com