In the professional world, most job opportunities require that applicants submit a resume, which oftentimes is accompanied with a cover letter and formal application. That resume is a critical part of your application – maybe even more critical than you know. And while most applicants recognize the importance of their resume, some to the extent of hiring a resume writing service, others underestimate the value of their resume to securing that final position.
For starters, that resume is what gets you in that employer’s door – poor resume, no interview. Off-topic resume, no interview. Poor formatting, no interview. And a million other reasons. As statistics go, your resume – if it’s even seen – receives, on average, just five to seven seconds of the reviewer’s time. Oftentimes, it receives less time than that in an initial scan to see whether it’s actually worth that five to seven seconds. That’s an awfully short amount of time in which to make – and leave – a good impression.
Assuming that you pass those cursory scans, there are countless reasons that your resume might not score you that interview. Some of our favorites (least favorites?) include:
• Only qualified applicants represented within the first 200 received resumes are considered.
• You have a single typo.
• Even though the position was open, the employer only accepted resumes submitted within the first 20 minutes of the job being posted.
• The resume had too much color.
• The resume didn’t have any color (lack of creativity and presentation).
There are countless reasons out there – so your job as the applicant is to provide a quick and accurate snapshot of what you can do while also limiting the number of reasons a potential employer could potentially disqualify you.
The Things You Can’t Control
Unfortunately, no matter how well you plan and how great your resume is, there are some things simply out of your control. For example:
• The reviewer’s personal formatting preferences
• The reviewer’s individual biases against certain organizations, schools, industries, etc.
• The order in which your resume was received
• The reviewer’s mood and reviewing environment
• The other applicants
In short, you can’t control the reviewer. But you can control what you submit and how you present yourself – and, hopefully, as a result of submitting awesome flawlessness, get that reviewer on your side.
The Things You Can Control
In short, everything else. You can control how you present yourself – from formatting through the way that you phrase your resume. You can control what you post on social media (and what’s posted about you). In fact, 68 percent of potential employers will find you on Facebook and one in three will reject a candidate for something they find about the candidate online. You can control your professional tone. You can control whether you submit a comprehensive package. And you can control what you submit.
Truth be told, typos are all too easy. And, sometimes, being too close to your own experience gives you bias (duh), not to mention a limited ability to summarize efficiently while effectively conveying your own experience – succinctly – to an unfamiliar party. This is where a qualified resume writing service can help.
Is a Resume Writing Service Worth It?
Yes, point blank – a resume writing service will cost you money. But you’ll get that money back in dividends after you land that job.
For starters, fresh eyes are always a good thing – anytime you read content over and over, you become desensitized to the actual product and it becomes easier and easier to make mistakes and miss errors.
Also, a professional resume writing service has writers who have industry knowledge, many of those writers having worked as HR team members, recruiters, or hiring managers. Their experience in the industry arms them with the ins and outs of the resume “do’s” and “do not’s.”
Everyone will have formatting preferences, but a professional resume writing service will be able to mitigate any potential conflicts as much as possible, using preferred – or at least generally not off-putting – fonts, colors, type sizes, alignments, bullets styles … the list goes on.
But the real value of a resume writing service goes beyond the styling and even beyond the proofreading – it has to do with what you’re actually saying (and how you say it).
Recent statistics show that more than half (53 percent) of all resumes contain falsified information – that’s crazy! It’s true that a resume writing service won’t know whether the information you have provided is true – however, it will highlight your assets and strengths appropriately without turning out absurd statements that border on falsification. For example, you were a fry cook at McDonald’s? You were not a chef at a leading United States-based restaurant. A clerk at Macy’s? I’m sure you were great – but you were not a Financial.
Transaction Manager. People have a tendency to overwork their resumes and, as a result, fudge a bit – whether intentional or unintentional. Either way, those “over-twists” will hurt you in the end, rather than help. And if that resume does get you in the door, it’s just as likely to get you blacklisted from further opportunities with that organization.
Instead, a professional resume writing organization will be able to highlight your experiences appropriately, calling out the between-the-lines opportunities to make your true experience relevant to the position at hand. And that will not only get you in the door, but help you once you arrive at that interview.
The bottom line: Your resume has just a 17 percent chance of getting read, but with the help of a resume writing service, you can increase that percentage – plus the likelihood of that five- to seven-second scan leading to an interview.