Getting It Write

Lisa Ferguson

Monday, Oct. 16, 2000 | 10:09 a.m.

If you hire an accountant to prepare your taxes, doesn't it make sense to contract a professional to write your resume?

Think about it: If done improperly both could end up costing you some serious cash -- in money owed to Uncle Sam, or that you'll miss out on when a job opportunity slips through your fingers.

That's the message the National Resume Writers Association would have people believe.

The nonprofit organization, comprised of professional resume writers, converges on Las Vegas this week for its annual convention. About one-third of its 300 members will attend workshops, panel presentations and lectures about their business -- making people look good on paper.

The convention will provide members opportunities to network with colleagues from around the country, as well as learn about the latest trends in resume writing, according to NRWA's president Pat Kendall.

"A lot of people don't even know that there are professional resume writers. It's kind of a profession that gets glazed over a bit," Kendall, who owns Advanced Resume Concepts in Aloha, Ore., says.

It's common for resume writers to interview clients about their education and job history before putting pen to paper. They also can (and usually do) coordinate the document's design, including the type of paper it's printed on, and make all forms of copies for distribution, among other services.

Without being too specific, Kendall says the cost of having a resume created by a resume writer (who can be certified in his or her craft) averages between $100-$500.

"It's a project that takes several hours, if you're writing from scratch," she says, explaining about research and consultation time with the client, as well as writing, proofreading and production time.

"The resume is a marketing piece, and most people are finally starting to understand that," she says. "The problem is that most people are not good marketing people. In other words, they don't know how to write; they don't know how to present things in the best possible way.

"We get judged on the basis of the resume ... and we need to make sure that we're giving it our best possible shot."

Kendall has been creating resumes for two decades. She says most people need a resume -- even when they're not actively seeking employment.

"We're in a period of time when jobs are much shorter than they used to be and people need to be in a continual mode of self-marketing," she explains.

Most of her clients these days are in search of jobs in high-tech fields. "I do resumes for truck drivers. I do resumes for CEOs." But resumes for high-tech positions are always challenging, she says, because the job titles and duties are "constantly changing."

And so are resumes.

If you're still using the same resume you did a decade ago, you may effectively be obliterating your chances of landing a new job.

These days large companies, and even small firms that farm out their employment searches to services and headhunters, are requiring that resumes be submitted via e-mail, pulled off of job-posting websites on the Internet and must be scanned into a computer before they are read.

According to Kendall, the standard resume gets a 15- to 30-second look by an employer before he or she decides whether the applicant is a potential job candidate. "With electronic processing," she says, "the resume gets about three seconds."

What employers, and computers, are looking for in that short time, she explains, are certain "keywords" that pertain to the position -- qualifications, education, experience, training and the like.

"Ten years ago there was no emphasis on keywords," she says. "Ten years ago there was the emphasis on active verbs," such as "managed," "developed" and "coordinated." "Those are good to have in your resume, but that's not the keywords employers are looking for.

"They're looking for nouns. They want to know have you used (the computer program) Word Perfect ... They're looking for specific skills and terms."

But how does the average Joe know what those keywords are? Store shelves are loaded with books and computer software about how to write a resume. But even Kendall, author of "Jumpstart Your Online Job Search in a Weekend" (Prima Publishing, $24.99), says those aren't always effective guides.

"I saw one CD-ROM that has what it said were the keywords for a certain job, and there were only like 10 keywords on this list," she says. "People trust it, they believe it and they think it's OK, and that's a problem."

Instead, Kendall urges clients to search job-posting websites for current employment ads to use as examples. "We will build a current resume around those keywords."

Making resumes scanable also presents another set of issues, namely in the computer's ability to read and process the information.

While its still appropriate to present a pretty resume on expensive stationary at a job interview, with scanable resumes, "You can't use certain kinds of formats and fonts and styles of resumes.

"Making it scanable and pretty at the same time is a challenge," she says, since certain darker paper colors usually don't scan well.

In any case, "People need to be proactive about their careers, and that's what they're not doing," Kendall says. "So they're missing opportunities."

That's what Steven Cordero learned.

Before setting out on his search for a job in the hotel-casino industry, 33-year-old Cordero turned to Mel Barosay, general manager of Career Launch Resumes in Las Vegas, to craft his new resume.

"I realized that a better resume on someone's desk is better than just the standard resumes I've had with previous jobs," Cordero says. "I've been using this generic one for about 10 years and it's gotten me generic jobs."

Barosay is a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers. He's been in the business since 1991.

"Making your first impression, you can only do that one time," he reminds. "So the resume has to work for you as your first form of written communication with somebody."

Resumes, Barosay says, have "become the de facto or pseudo-standard to getting your foot in the door, to be noticed and qualify for an interview."

It's no different in Las Vegas, even though the job market here yields some nontraditional positions.

What might a showgirl's resume look like? "She is going to more or less have what an actress or a model would use, and that's a lot of listings of performances," Barosay explains.

How about a card dealer? "If you take a person who's dealing blackjack, they're dealing more with customer service, cash-and-credit management," he says. "Basically that's more of a business-related resume."

For Cordero's resume, Barosay included a number of standard features, such as information about Cordero's career objectives.

When Cordero wrote his own resume, he says, "I never put in objectives because I thought, 'Gosh, I'm going to be going to different (businesses).' If I was gonna go to a car-sales job or another sales job I didn't want to put a specific objective."

Barosay, he says, "was really good about putting an open general objective which is really strongly worded," as well as a cover letter -- something Cordero never included with his homemade resumes. "I just put my name, address, previous job history and education and that was it."

So, $210 later, Cordero says he finally has a resume he's proud to submit. He recently started scheduling job interviews. "I really feel strong about getting another opportunity just off of this resume."

archive