Chances are, if you are unemployed, you can't afford a thousand dollar resume writer. There is a great amount of frustration you are feeling, that if you could only afford that, you might be able to get a new job. Don't buy into this thought process. Getting another job is as simple as understanding what these high priced 'consultants' are selling and doing it yourself.

From my experience, most people who call themselves 'resume writers' are actually just people who are really good at writing copy. That is, they write sales and advertising documents well, and in theory this should mean they are good at writing resumes. The premise is resumes sell you to the employer.

Once upon a time, this was a true statement, when resumes were actually being read first. But your resume is being assaulted long before you ever have a resume writer work on it. These 'resume writers' are great writers who can make your resume look shiny and new and fancy, but what are they really offering you?

I am a former Wall Street recruiter. I can tell you, your resume has less than thirty seconds before a decision is made as to whether you move on or not. If you don't know what you are doing wrong, beware these fake professionals and their advice. If you aren't careful, their advice is going to get your resume a one way ticket to the trash can.

I recently read an article written by a 'resume writing guru' who recommended 'thinking outside the box' when writing your resume. Simply as a public service, I had to write this article to refute what he was saying.

Your resume above all else is a business document. So you should treat it as such. This isn't a time to get cute and try things that are 'out of the box.' Sure the news story about the guy who decided to take his family on a road trip while he was looking for a job is interesting and out of the box. But then you find out, he's paid over five thousand dollars to drive around the country for a month looking for a job. Yes, that's out of the box, it's also not reasonable.

So, in this article I read, the first couple of suggestions this supposed guru was offering was to put hyperlinks into your resume, linking back to your past companies as well as to your Linkedin.com page. If you do this, your resume is going to get trashed.

Adding hyperlinks to a resume makes your resume look like spam mail, not a resume. If your resume is caught in a company's spam filter because it detects outgoing links, it will never make it to wherever you sent it. It will get deleted before it's ever looked at. Strike one for the guru.

Next on the outside the box suggestions, widen the margins and use an original font. Again, as a former recruiter, I'm still trying to figure out how this helps your cause. By widening the margins, it makes everything smaller. Then using a fancy font, are you kidding? If you have Microsoft Word and you click the drop down buttons for your fonts, you can see all the different styles out there. By picking one that is fancy, you aren't going to get noticed, you are going to get trashed.

If you make your resume hard to read, it is simply easier for the reader to trash your resume then to try and figure out what you wrote. Picking a 'unique' font is akin to sending your resume in a foreign language. It doesn't mean the person on the other end of the line is going to read it. Chances are they are going to trash it. Strike two for the Guru.

Finally, the out of the box thinking this guru suggested was to put a border around your resume. Now, if you are a graphic artist and your specialty is doing things like this, then absolutely, you should put a frilly, interesting border around your information.

Chances are you aren't a graphic artist. This guru's suggestion is going to make the reader of your resume think you are a 12 year old, doodling on your paper, while you were bored. It short, unprofessional. Which means your resume just earned a trip to the circular file bin on the floor. Strike three for the guru.

Resume writing now isn't about hiring someone for five hundred or even a thousand dollars, to rewrite your resume. First, if you are unemployed, you don't have that kind of money to spend. Second, you know you better than they do. So, don't be so quick to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars paying a professional to write a resume for you.

It would be better to seek out professionals offering information for a small fee that can point you in the right direction. At the very least, if you spend less than $10 for information and that information helps you, you just saved yourself $490 to $990 in the process.

Jarred Talmadge, MBA is a professional writer and consultant. For more tips on resume writing, check out his website: http://www.SuperchargeYourJobSearch.com. For more information on Jarred, check out his other informational product and articles, check out his website: http://www.JarredTalmadgeMBA.com. Jarred is available for writing and consulting contracts.