One of my writers lives out in the country in a big farmhouse that is surrounded by orchards and horse farms. This week when doing some work in the basement, she discovered a snake had found his way into the basement, probably to escape the torturing heat that had been plaguing the area for almost two weeks. While she could sympathize with the snake for liking a nice, dark, quiet and cool location to take up residence, she didn’t want to share her basement with a snake, especially since her laundry room is in her basement and she is down there on a daily basis.
Being a country-person, she was familiar with different snakes but was not anxious to confront one in a dark, confined space. She didn’t know if it was poisonous and wasn’t sure how to go about catching it without killing it outright. So what did she do? She called in a specialist – a snake wrangler. A snake wrangler is someone who specializes in relocating snakes to non-populated areas. The snake wrangler came in, caught the snake and removed it to another area away from her farm. He charged her a fee to cover his time and expertise but what she received was peace of mind that she could go into her basement without fear. He also educated her on snakes and how to prevent them from taking up residence in her basement in the future.
This is an interesting little story but what does it have to do with careers or resumes? Simple. When faced with a task for which you are not qualified, call in a specialist. A resume writer is a specialist in career marketing. This lady could have attempted to catch the snake herself, just as someone can attempt to write their own resume; however, she was not a specialist. She did not know what type of snake it was nor did she know how to go about safely confining it. You might could argue that no one knows her basement better than her, ergo she would be the one most qualified to locate the snake. The same argument could be argued about a resume – the “no one knows your career history better than you, so you should write your own resume” argument.
Writing a resume is a task best left to the experts. A qualified professional resume writer knows how to identify the gems in your career history that are most marketable and how to present those gems to the employer. Most people who do not write resumes for a living are not up-to-date on the most current hiring trends, most in-demand skills, the latest resume formats, or how to compose words that showcase a persons qualifications. Most people do not know what should and should not be included in a resume nor why. Most people aren’t quite clear on the differences between active voice and passive voice in a document. A professional resume writer knows all this – that is why he or she is a specialist and more qualified than you to write your resume.
