I needed resume help but I was in denial.
I was really too smart, I thought, to have to pay someone to write a resume for me.
I really thought I would be paying for someone to type it up and make it look nice, which is something I could have done.
I thought I would be paying for someone to write sentences and phrases and make sure I didn’t make any 101 mistakes, like not putting certain types of words in certain parts of my resume.
I could figure out how to write sentences and phrases. It’s not rocket science, right?
So I wrote my own resume. Actually, I took my dad’s resume and made a bunch of edits… that way I got to keep the super cool formatting that he paid for.
I didn’t get resume help, and that became a problem.
I didn’t realize I had a problem at the time, because I didn’t recognize that the purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. My resume wasn’t getting me interviews, but because I didn’t understand the purpose, I didn’t realize it was a problem.
A few months into my DIY job search I learned that my resume was keeping me out of interviews.
And I realized a professional resume writer’s job is not to be a typist, a formatter or a sentence creator. The job of a professional resume writer is to help me optimize my resume as a personal marketing document and get me into job interviews.
Never again will I make that mistake. Will you?
