Maybe you have already purchased a professionally written rsum, but you have some doubts about the document you received. Unfortunately, the rsum-writing industry gets a bad rap sometimes simply because there is a lot of misinformation out there. And, truthfully, sometimes rsum writers don't do the best job of explaining their strategy to the client. Not to mention, all the different opinions that seem to prevail out there, from our friends, online resources, recruiters, coworker, etc.

In an attempt to rectify that, I have listed here some of the main areas of confusion and the real deal behind them:

1. There are a lot of rules to writing a rsum.

WRONG!

Writing a rsum is part science and part art. Although there are some general guidelines, honestly, there is a lot of wiggle room too. Often people get all caught up in worrying about the fine points that they miss the overall target and strategy. Big mistake! There is no one path to landing an interview, and you don't want to either confine your rsum to one way of thinking (i.e., yours) or work with a writer who only has one way of doing things.

2. The main goal of the rsum is to get you a job.

WRONG!

A rsum is a tool that you use to present your background to a specific audience, which will help you to secure interviews. Nothing more. The only thing that gets you a job is you.

Think of it this way. If you build a box out of wood, when it is finished, you don't say "the saw made it." Instead, you say that "I made it using a good saw." The same is true for the rsum. It is important to get a good one, but it is equally as important to use it well.

3. A rsum is all about the job seeker.

DEFINITELY WRONG!

Here is where the rsum writer-client relationship can go south fast. Clients typically want documents that appeal to them, thinking that if it appeals to them, it will appeal to an employer. However, that is not necessarily true. Although rsum writers want their clients to be happy with what they see, they mostly want their rsums to be effective, to meet that goal we outlined in #3. Therefore, to serve the client the best, the writer is really thinking about the potential employer, the reader of the rsum.

That is why writing your own rsum can be a disaster. Sometimes we think because we have been in a hiring position before that we best know how to market ourselves on paper. After all, we know what we liked to see. The problem is that it is very difficult to look at yourself objectively and to think of you as a hiring manager would.

4. Rsums should be colorful and flashy OR rsums should be traditional and conservative.

REALLY? SAYS WHO?

Somewhere along the line, rumors have seriously distorted people's perceptions of what a rsum should look like. Many job seekers (and even some rsum writers) lean one way or another. They either want graphics, color, and flash, or they want chronological obituaries.

By and large, flashy rsums have not really proven to be anymore effective than traditional obits. Both can seriously hurt a candidate's chances.

So does this mean you can't use color or get creative with a two-column masterpiece?

No, but a solid rsum must accomplish 3 things: (1) Utilize strong writing skills with solid action verbs, (2) organize the candidate's information in such a way that a clear picture of the candidate is revealed (scope of knowledge and responsibility), and (3) be attractive without being offensive.

We all like things that look nice, but color isn't what sells a candidate. Let the "wow" factor be in the strategy employed and the quality of the writing.

On the other side of things, however, don't be so rigid that you force the writer to prepare a cookie-cutter rsum (Times New Roman, 10-pt, with lots of bullets!!). You'll just end up with something nondescript, that looks like it came from a Word rsum template, and is not much better than anyone with decent grammar skills could produce.

5. The rsum should be full of buzzwords.

SORT OF

In today's world of OCR scanning and online databases, job seekers are more aware than ever before that not having key terms embedded in their rsum could mean missing out on opportunities.

However, the problem with this issue is that rsums can quickly become nothing more than lists of terms and phrases. They don't really say much about the candidate other than that he or she claims to know what these terms and phrases mean (or at least should know what they mean). And if you are not careful, you end up with nothing that really distinguishes you.

6. Every accomplishment listed should be backed up by a metric.

THAT WOULD BE GREAT IF IT WERE REALLY POSSIBLE.

This theory has been floated and tossed around so much in the rsum writing industry that you can certainly find a wide variety of opinions on the subject. The bottom line, however, is that not all accomplishments realistically can be quantified. There is no doubt that numbers are a key ingredient to any rsum, but setting some kind of "rule" that you must have a number to go with every bullet point or something like that is kind of ridiculous.

Furthermore, although hiring managers definitely like to see quantifiable results, let's face it, numbers can be fudged and the data can be twisted so much that they say anything you want them to.

Our position at No Stone Unturned is that numbers should be used effectively and not just for the sake of using numbers. Hit 'em with a good, solid punch, but don't keep hitting 'em...too many percentages, too many dollar signs, and pretty soon you've lost the effect of the punch...

NOTE: The same can be said for bullet lists. The idea of a bulleted list is to show emphasis. A rsum that is nothing more than a long list of bullets doesn't emphasize anything. Just like you don't want a big block of text, you also don't want one bulleted list after another. So save your best for the bullets!

So who am I anyway? Why do I think my advice is so valuable?

My name is Stephen Van Vreede. My company is called No Stone Unturned, and I have been in the career consulting business since 2002 with 8 years of hiring experience prior to that. You can check out my website at http://www.nostoneunturnedllc.com

The short story is that I have a B.S. degree in Business Administration & Finance from the University of Maryland and an MBA in Marketing from Villanova University. I am a certified professional rsum writer (CPRW) and a member of the Professional Association of Rsum Writers and Career Coaches (PARW/CC). As I mentioned, I paid my dues in the corporate world eventually running a large-scale call center for a major truck rental company, and I have spent the past 6 years with No Stone Unturned, assisting job seekers in achieving their goals.

I know that my products will work for you because they are based on commonsense principles leveraged with good, solid expertise and knowledge of the job search process. After working with countless job seekers, I have become more and more convinced that most of them do not properly prepare for a job search and rely way too much on online sites and trendy articles to tell them what to do. Thus, they waste a lot of time, money, and energy.

If you still aren't sure whether our services are right for you, feel free to give me a call toll-free at 1-866-755-9800 or e-mail me at steve(at)nononsensejobsearch.com. Better yet, check out our Products page at http://sites.nononsensejobsearch.com/info to get started with us today!