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5 Must-Know Tips For Becoming a Professional Resume Writer
Posted in: Blog by admin on November 11, 2010
You may have decided that, especially with today’s tough economic climate, becoming a professional resume writer would be a great occupation, especially if you’ve been able to help friends write their resumes.
Maybe you’re a displaced recruiter looking to leverage your existing skills, or a former HR professional interested in jumping into the field.
Whatever your reasons, here’s 5 crucial things to know and consider before attempting to launch your own professional resume writing operation:
1 – It’s difficult to write cohesively without business knowledge.
Before creating a website or advertising your new resume operation, you’ll need to be honest with yourself about the extent of your business expertise.
Do you have the background and know-how to understand the metrics behind sales and operations positions? Will you be able to guide a client that isn’t sure how to present a stint in the retail industry?
What will you do when an IT applicant tells you that he or she is looking for a step up in a technical career? Can you analyze the differences between a project leadership position and a program director’s job?
These proficiencies are a must for anyone who wants to enter the field of resume writing. After all, prospective clients will rely on your ability to know what’s relevant at any point in their careers. You’ll also need a firm grasp of the latest developments in job search and hiring practices.
My advice? Become more educated on your clients career paths, corporate hiring models, and the economic climate. Study job search 2.0 concepts by following respected career experts on Twitter.
Read career industry staples such as What Color is Your Parachute and get familiar with the Occupational Outlook Handbook so that you can understand the nuances of career change and what it means for clients that need your assistance writing their resumes.
2 – Reading resumes all day doesn’t make you a writer.
The same way that reading the newspaper on a regular basis doesn’t make you a journalist, and becoming enthralled by a book doesn’t transform you into a novelist, having access to resumes on a regular basis isn’t an automatic qualification for the job of professional resume writer.
Resume writing is a very tight and contrived form of communication, with fragmented sentence structure, limited space, and the need for parallel structure throughout each document.
You’ll need a flair for written expression, a skilled command of the English language, and an eye for technical detail in order to create focused and well-written resumes that truly help your clients.
Specifically, the speed and brevity with which you communicate key information can make or break your client’s options. Even the most qualified candidates struggle to land jobs at the right level without a sharpened business presentation.
To help boost your writing abilities, I recommend obtaining your own copy of the Associated Press Style Guide (a bible for resume writers) and studying examples that demonstrate compelling writing style, strategy, and business aptitude.
You’ll find great samples in the Expert Resumes and No Nonsense Resumes book series, as well as in Resumes That Knock ‘Em Dead.
3 – It’s far more than templates or typing.
Great resume writing requires the ability to elicit the kind of information that most people miss adding to their resumes in the first place.
If you don’t believe this, then you’d need to see a sampling of the resumes that most applicants write… which skip over “details” such as multimillion-dollar budget figures, project success rates, sales awards, and their role in corporate growth.
In fact, information mining is the cornerstone of effective resume writing! Even CFOs and IT Directors leave critical details off self-written resumes