Not All Resumes Are Created Equal!

I was contacted recently by a client looking to update their resume. The client wanted us to add in his most recent position but did not want us to re-write the resume as it had been "professionally done" by another resume writing firm.

After reviewing his documents, I was dumbfounded.

The format of the "professionally written" cover letter was unlike anything I had seen in a decade of reviewing resumes! The letter itself started more than half way down the page, with the entire top half dedicated to the inappropriate structuring of personal contact information and a sequence of bizarre spacing that made me wonder if a high school student had attempted to format it. The content of the letter repeated the detail found in the "Summary" section of the resume - never a good idea for reasons that will be explained in a future blog.

The resume itself looked like any other resume I've seen where job seekers have attempted to 'give it a go' themselves by using online templates and such like and the client had actually paid money for someone to produce this for him!

The content was bland, uninspiring and merely listed basic duties and alluded to "bringing value" and a "terrific ability to connect with people", without ever expanding upon these statements with facts, results, achievements or any other tangible benefit resulting from his corporate contributions or personal attributes.

The professional experience section gave as much weighting to his post-graduate entry level position 12 years prior as it did to his most recent advanced professional experience. They were afforded 4 bullet points each. WHY?

Tenses fluctuated from past to present within the space of a few words, full stops were missing in action, there was even a section on there where they had used a smaller text size to squeeze it all onto 2 pages. It looked terrible and I felt very sorry for him.

Here was a very nice guy trying to make his way and advance his career and who had invested in a service he thought would serve him well in front of hiring managers. Instead he was given a resume document that looks like he had thrown it together himself and a cover letter a high school student would receive a 'D' for (or a clip round the ear if it was 1960).

As much as I wanted to help him, I couldn't consent to working on the project as I could not associate my business with that resume unless I was tasked with completely re-working it. This was something which the client was unwilling to do as he had already paid for it to be "professionally done". I understood his predicament.

Choose your resume writing partner carefully. If a resume writer does not have an extensive prior professional background in recruiting, then they cannot possibly know how a diverse range of employers across a variety of industries hire, who they hire and why they hire them.

My background affords me the luxury of knowing what works and what most certainly does not work when it comes to grabbing the attention of a hiring manager.

Watch out for a future blog entry detailing 'what you should look for in a resume writer' and how 'telling isn't selling'!