If you've read much of anything at Job Search Guidepost, it should come as no surprise that I recommend getting professional help in your job search.

Resume writing is a place where most people need help. It's a specialized skill. You aren't "born" able to write an excellent resume. I don't care how many resumes you've read, or how smart you are, or how good you are at your job. Writing a resume isn't something just anybody can do well.

So, hire a professional resume writer and save yourself the pain of not getting interviews. Hearing "No"...or nothing at all...gets old right quick.

But when you hire that professional resume writer, keep one thing in mind. It's YOUR resume. Here's what I mean.

Suppose your resume has some flowery language in it that contains all sorts of fancy terms that you've never used in your life.

Now fast-forward to the interview. The interviewer asks you a question about one of those fancy terms.

Do you feel sick yet?

You see, in the interview, if you can't talk like your resume talks, you're in trouble. The interviewer will smell a bait-and-switch immediately. You essentially lied to him on your resume.

If you hire a professional resume writer, make sure that person will work with you to make your resume speak with your voice. If that person won't, say you're dissatisfied and fire the person. End of story.

Let me explain what it means for a professional resume writer to work with you to make your resume talk like you do.

Only hire a professional resume writer that lets you create your resume in iterations. That means they write a draft, you review it, you send it back with comments, they change it, you make more comments if you need to, they change it...and so on.

The changes you make most likely will be to correct errors of fact (maybe the writer misunderstood something in your work history), or to remove "resume speak". What's that?

It's anything you wouldn't feel comfortable being asked about in an interview. Is the language appropriately professional, but something you'd be likely to say in answer to a question? If so, you're fine. If not, change it. If you're not sure what to change it, hey, that's what you're paying your professional writer for!

Don't go overboard and damage the marketing power of your resume. Definitely make your experience sound as good as it can, but only as good as it can in your own words.

You may not write your own resume, but it has to sound like you COULD have written it.

Copyright (c) by Roy Miller