Elevate the Career of Someone You Care About With This One Gift
If you could give a gift this year that will help someone carve out his or her personal brand and grow in their career, wouldn't you? Wouldn't it be better to help someone struggling in their profession or frustrated by job searching, than to give them socks, candy, or a tie? Why not change it up and give the gift of a professionally written resume to those in your life you want to succeed and you will be their hero far past the holiday season!
If this sounds like an intriguing idea, let me convince you further with a breakdown of what you are really giving, why it is valuable, and how a small investment can have a major financial return!
I hear from people constantly, "I think my resume is great, but I'm not landing any interviews". Nine out of 10 times their resume is great, if great is now a synonym for awful. People just don't know what a strong resume looks like for themselves and that is their biggest weakness. That is what is killing their career options and they don't even know it!
"The weaknesses that you're unaware of will hurt you the most."
This quote by David Osborne, President and Founder at Simmetry Solutions, sums it up best!
The statement is tremendously powerful because it holds so much truth. Let me demonstrate how this applies to your resume.
Writing a resume was likely not part of your education. They didn't teach you any hard and fast rules or how to present yourself as employable once you entered the workforce. You probably think to yourself: A resume, one, possibly two, pages on nice white paper filled with work history and skills outlining your career thus far. Sounds simple enough, right? The answer is it's not. We live in a world where very little emphasis is put on preparing people to create this document, which turns out to be their biggest personal marketing tool. If done right, it is your golden ticket. If not, it is a one-way stop to the trashcan.
Without study on the subject and with all the varying bad advice on the web, it is something that we don't know how to recognize as bad for ourselves. The majority thinks they put down the positions held, the dates, and what the responsibilities were and send it out into the world hoping for the best. People job search on an average of 18 different online sites and just chalk up the lack of response to the black hole that is the online application system. This is not always the case as people are failing to look at themselves as part of the problem because they lack the understanding that their resume does not work for them.
As someone who evaluates resumes for a living, I can confidently say that most people are failing at doing this for themselves. The only commonality I ever see between resumes is that most people do not know how to present themselves in a way that they look qualified or like someone worth hiring. The similarities end there.
The 2015 CareerBuilder Candidate Behavior Study backs up this failure. They found the following stats:
•73% of employers say less than half of the candidates make it thru the initial screening process
•Candidates average a 78% rejection rate
•54% of employers say it is hard to find qualified candidates
With job growth averaging 45,000 per month in 2015, it is sad to hear people are still unemployed and employers stating they can't find good candidates. How many times have you applied for a job knowing you had all the skills necessary to do it well and all the experience needed, only to never hear a peep about your application? Chances are, you didn't present yourself in a way that made a hiring manager believe that too. You can't blame the system when other people are landing jobs every day.
A professional resume writer can take one look at a resume and know what is missing. They can take the document from mediocre to compelling. They have the understanding of the industry trends and best practices to give each client the most optimal chance of landing their dream job. This is what they specialize in! The entire hiring system is meant to screen people out not screen people in. Never before has your resume played such an important part in the application process. Professional writers are engrossed in resumes on a daily basis and this gives them a unique vantage point that most will never have. They know exactly what clients are up against and how to elevate your resume to get better results!
In general people are quite accustomed to hiring professionals in many aspects of their lives but scoff at doing it for their career. You could change the oil in your car yourself too, but I bet you hire an expert to do it. You want an expert to take care of that valuable asset. Is a career any less valuable? This is an investment in potential earnings, promotions, career track opportunities and options, and ultimately happiness. If by making this one investment a better job was landed that paid even 10% more this year, would this investment still seem too much?
Still not sure if it's worth the value? Let's take a look at what a resume writer actually does for each client and the money that you spend...
•Diagnostic review of the current resume. We evaluate it for weaknesses and how to best repair them. We identify where the failures lie and what is missing to get someone through the door for their career.
•Review and analysis of the Personal Brand. We learn about the client, where they want to land professionally, their accomplishments, and work history. This helps us understand how to brand them for potential employers as well as how to frame their accomplishments to leave a lasting impact.
•Analysis of the job descriptions they seek. We review the requirements and perform keyword studies to make sure the resume will pass ATS systems and get in the hands of a hiring manager.
•We do the bragging. We will write a compelling summary that highlights unique qualities and cements the client as a qualified candidate for the job. We write accomplishment-based bullets that identify value rather than duties. The content creation is the most critical component of any resume and the most common area people fail drastically!
•Peace of mind! We take the guesswork out of it. We are always up on the latest industry trends and standards. Why spend the time studying up on how to write a resume, best formatting techniques, keyword strategy, language usage, work history gaps, etc. Save that valuable time for something else and have the peace of mind that your resume is in good hands.
•Professional objectivity. We are not attached to career history in the same way clients are. We can hone in on the important information and trim the fat off of the resume. We bring a fresh perspective to the information that clients have been cultivating for years and package it in a way that is more enticing to employers. (This blog explains this more in depth).
If this is still not enough to show you the merit, let's look at hard numbers.
Say you are up for a $60,000 job. A $60,000 job comes out to about $1154 a week, gross. You hired a resume writer at $250. You land the job with the new resume. In one week, your $250 investment has provided an ROI of over 3.5 times your initial expense. For many, the resume costs them just a day or two of pay. It honestly pays for itself and is often tax deductible as part of your job search costs.
Here is a real-life case study from a client. Before hiring a resume writer, this person sent out 50 resumes and received no responses. After submitting a professionally tailored resume, this person sent out 12 resumes, received 8 interviews, was hired, and made $12,000 more than his previous position.
To put that shift into perspective for you, I can go back to the CareerBuilder stats. They found on average each posting only receives three phone interviews and three in person interviews. Not a lot when you think of the hundreds of applications they received. In addition, 60% of applications never receive a response of any kind. Having only changed their resume, this client went from the norm of no responses to a 67% positive response rate. I don't know any frustrated job seeker that wouldn't like those results!
And if all of this still doesn't sway you to the fact that this service is worthwhile, consider your overall happiness and well-being.
People spend so much time working these days. Shouldn't it be something that either they are well compensated for or very proud and happy to do every day? Why would someone not see an investment in their career as valuable, when work has such a large impact on someone's overall life, health, and happiness?
Stop the hemming and hawing over early Black Friday ads and give a gift this year that will keep giving for many years to come.