Should You Write Your Own Resume?
Write Your Resume Like a Sports Star Writes a Book–Hire a Writer
An interesting question came up recently in an online discussion: Why do you need a professional to write your resume? For those of you who have been in the job market recently, you have faced this issue. Employees who feel secure in their jobs and are about to discontinue reading, this would be a good time to think again. Unfortunately, job security is no longer a reality. So please keep reading.
Let’s start with the basic question—“Can I write my own resume?” Of course you can, and you will save money in the short run. This is one reason there are so many mediocre resumes floating in cyberspace that have been rejected by the automated scanners. Are you insulted? Are you thinking, “Certainly that would not be my resume? After all, I made ‘A’s’ in English.” You’ll have to trust me that quoting Coleridge, while it may set you apart in an interview if you can do it without sounding ridiculous and effete, will do nothing to actually get you the interview, and that is the primary purpose of a resume.
If you had not considered that submitting a resume is no different from submitting a detailed brochure for a product you want to sit down with the customer and sell, once again, think again. How good are you at selling? Have you ever created a marketing campaign based around one protocol that must be written in a style which does not automatically cause it to be dismissed with 90% of the hundreds of others received within a 2-3 day period?
Now, the part that is actually difficult (the first part can be accomplished in some fashion by following the guidelines or models used in many resume books and online resources). You can learn to copy a format so that your resume actually looks good, but may not serve you well at all. HR employees need to see that you fulfill at least the minimum qualifications for the position listed. Beyond this, your resume must give them a reason to want to talk to you, either via an initial phone screen or through a face-to-face interview. What will stand out in your resume that gets their attention? How do you communicate your past, present and future value to employers? What language sounds too boastful, and what is irrelevant? Why don’t they want to read about all of the tasks you did on your former jobs? How do I handle the six months 4 years ago when I was out of work?
I don’t know. Yes you read correctly—I don’t know—yet. This is where the skills of a talented resume writer (who in my humble opinion should also be a general career coach) come into play. I am not supportive of using a distant resume service that takes your basic resume or job history and arranges the information into a neat and acceptable resume format, throwing in a handful of superlatives and action verbs to “make it come alive!” Working on a resume should be a collaborative process. I tell my clients all the time, “How will I know enough about how you think and about your real value, when you’ve never expressed it yourself?” Most people are humble, and don’t like to brag. I have to literally pull the information out of them in order to have the understanding and details so that I can state their accomplishments in the most positive terms possible.
Another huge rationale for hiring the right talent to help you create a winning resume is that a resume is an interview guide. You have to elaborate on it, bring to life stories alluded to in it, and defend it during an interview, so you better know it inside and out. You need a sense of ownership of your resume, or else you are going to be uncomfortable using it as your key marketing piece.
A resume, as mentioned above, is your primary marketing tool for your career search. The less effective your resume, the tougher it will be to get an interview. If you can’t get in front of the hiring manager, they’ll never know they missed out on a great hire.
