If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the statement, “I paid someone to write my resume for me, but I didn’t like the result,” I would be very rich by now! Sometimes people even tell me that they paid multiple resume writers, and still didn't like the result. Let's explore what's going on here below, and why 100s of resume writing requests cross my desk each week.
Why do people keep doing it? Why do they not like the end product? What to do instead?
Ok, let’s dig in.
People keep doing it because:
The first thing that people think when they are considering a job change is almost inevitably “I should get my resume ready.” People want to feel prepared if a job pops up or they have a conversation with someone who then asks for their resume. It makes sense, people want to feel prepared and that’s a sound inclination. Yet, at the same time, they are having a hard time writing or finding the time to write their own resume, so they think “hey I’ll just outsource this to someone who is an expert” Again, a strong inclination, so why doesn’t it work out?
It’s not working out, most often, because no one else can be an expert on you. At least not for the price you’re willing to pay!
Any time there’s a lot of demand in a market you see a lot of supply. And there is a huge market for writing resumes because almost no one wants to actually do that task. This means you will get a wide variety of people who call themselves resume writers who have no f&$,)$&!!! clue what they are doing. (A good way to spot these folks, they don’t charge very much). It’s very difficult to produce a high-quality resume without having a deep understanding of someone’s experience and how it aligns with the job someone is applying to.
A few hours and a few hundred dollars, in most cases, is just not going to get you there.
Ok, so what should you do instead?
You’re probably not going to love this answer, but focus on clarity first.
Once you have a really strong idea of the type of positions you’re targeting, you’ll already have a list of skills that are necessary, you’ll have already thought about your transferable or direct experience, you’ll ideally have talked to someone to understand more about what their specific job entails, and you’ll have all the information to plug into a resume template (imo, in most cases a standard MBA style format/combo format is a great way to go).
Is there nuance to everything I said above, sure, but for the most part save your money on someone writing your resume for you, if you are going to pay someone, pay them to teach you how to do it better yourself.
Want to learn how to write your resume with confidence? Get our Revamp Your Resume Training here.