Resume Help Blog

Posts Tagged ‘resume service’

The part of the hiring process known as the interview is something that scares most people to death. It doesn’t have to if you have thought of prospective questions before hand and prepared yourself accordingly and also thought of some questions you may have for the interviewer.

Here is a brief list. We kept it brief because the list could be four pages long if we so desired, however you would not read it and it would be very frightening. So we pared it down to the most likely ones:

1. How would you describe yourself?
2. To be successful in this career, what do you think it takes?
3. Do you have the qualifications and personal characteristics necessary for success in your chosen career?
4. Why should we hire you?
5. What are your long-term goals and objectives?
6. What major problem have you handled recently? Did you resolve it? How?
7. What characteristics do you think make a manager successful?
8. Why did you apply to our company?
9. How do you approach critical assignments?
10. If you had to think on your feet to solve a difficult situation, what would you do?
11. Why were you fired?
12. What steps do you take before making an important decision?
13. Name the most difficult assignment you had and how you finished it.
14. What kind of supervisor do you prefer?

As you can see, the questions are open-ended, not allowing for a simple yes or no answer. The more you talk, the more the hiring authority learns about you. That’s why you need to be prepared before you utter one word. Each answer must be crafted carefully to maximize your chances of being hired.

I was reading a recent article on Reuters news site that said the following:  “Single spelling mistake can derail job application.”  Wow! That sucks!

The article went on to say that a recent survey revealed that 1/5th of Canadian employers stated they would not interview someone if they had just ONE spelling error on their resume! That percentage probably grows if the overall writing quality is poor.  The survey was conducted by AccountTemps.

So what’s the point of this post? The point is that there is no shame in admitting that you are a bad speller, or that you have trouble writing a decent sentence. It’s better to swallow your pride and ask for help than it is to lose opportunity after opportunity because your resume gives off the impression that you are sloppy or don’t pay attention to details. 

There’s a couple of things you can do to double-check your resume and make sure that it doesn’t have spelling or sentence errors. 

The cheapest one is to find a friend that you know is a good writer, or has an eye for detail, and ask them to honestly read through your resume and locate spelling or sentence errors.  And while this sounds easiest, and the least expensive, it also entails a little bit of humility.

Don’t be so personally invested in exactly how a resume is written. If your friend thinks a sentence would read better, don’t get defensive. Listen to what they recommend and make the change if the sentence honestly sounds stronger. Nobody wants to help you if their opinions are met with abrasiveness or argument. And pride can lose you that job opportunity!

Bottom line. Swallow that pride and make sure your resume is the best it can be! No typo’s and no bad grammar! You’ll be glad that you did when you trot off to work while many other people are still job hunting.

Why should you spend good money to hire a professional resume writer? According to Louise Fletcher the President and CEO of Blue Sky Resumes; “Most resumes are ineffective because they don’t communicate a clear value proposition”.

The real advantage in having a professional resume writer prepare your resume is the professional has developed a resume writing system based on how actual hiring decisions are made.

A few years back, I owned a family upholstery business, the business did reasonably well but we were always cash poor and I decided to apply for an SBA loan. If you have ever known anyone who applied for one of these you know how much paperwork can be involved. A friend gave me the name of a professional loan writer and I got the loan without any trouble. It was explained to me that the loan writer knew from training and experience what the SBA wanted to see and prepared the paperwork accordingly. Incidentally the final paperwork was two inches thick.

A professional resume writer is exactly the same. A professional resume writer working with you one-on-one will give you a definite advantage over someone else with identical experience. Their resume writing process is rooted in the real world and is centered around the importance of developing a clear picture of how hiring you will add value to their company.

Don’t waste any more time sending out resumes that don’t fully communicate your unique value. Let one of our professional writers give you a leg up on your competitors.

Whether or not to have someone write your resume for you is a personal decision.  Based on experience, however, very few people who have had their resumes professionally written have regretted their decision.  Why?  Because after they saw how big of a difference their revamped resume was compared to their original one, they realized they made the right decision. 

So what is at stake?  Your future!  Some people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a new wardrobe to look good during interviews, yet they are not willing to spend money on a resume…  Agreed, a resume is only a piece of paper… but that piece of paper holds the key to the job interview and to your future.

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