Making a “Hire Me” Resume

Clients come to us with a variety of needs: they need a resume fast — like yesterday, they need a resume coach, they want a certified professional resume writer, etc. Our challenge is to understand each client’s uniqueness and create a “hire me resume” that relates their past experience to their future career goals. We aren’t looking to create a biography for clients, we create effective documents (resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn Profiles, etc.) that market candidates to hiring managers. Our goal is to create documents (resumes and cover letters) that get our clients interviews and ultimately get them hired with follow-on documents (thank you letters and follow-up letters).

1. Format Your Resume Wisely.

Make it easy for the Hiring Managers to quickly review. Generally, a resume gets scanned for 25 seconds or less. Scanning is more difficult if it is hard to read, poorly organized or exceeds proper length.

• Always use a logical format with wide margins, clean type and clear headings
• Appropriately apply bold and italic typeface that helps guide the reader’s eye
• Use bullets to call attention to important points (i.e. accomplishments)

As a professional resume writing service that reviews thousands of resumes annually, this first point, which is easiest, is usually not done well. Resume designs for Best Price Resume were originally created by a graphic designer. We use good design principles to get as much as possible on a page while still maintaining readability.

2. Responsibilities versus Accomplishments

You should avoid listing just duties you had in your previous jobs. As certified professional resume writers, we look to blend duties that are keyword rich and supplement them with uniqueness of your accomplishments.

• Focus on what you did (accomplishments) in the job, NOT what your job was
• Include a few keyword-rich job duty bullets first, then list your accomplishments
• For each point ask yourself, what was the benefit of having done what I did? Did it increase sales, reduce cost, improve morale, etc. How can you use the accomplishment to highlight your experience towards the new position(s) you are seeking
• Accomplishments should be unique to you, District Employee of the Year, etc.
• Avoid using the generic descriptions of the jobs you originally applied for or held. Instead, transform your descriptions into keyword-rich content that gets flagged by computer systems and/or aligns with the new positions you are seeking.

3. Be Selective

It’s tempting to list every job, accomplishment, volunteer assignment, skill, and degree you’ve ever had. But don’t. A resume is a very selective body of content. It’s not meant to be comprehensive. Details are not helpful, if they doesn’t contribute to convincing the hiring manager to talk to you. As a professional resume writing service, we know the task of trimming your resume to a few pages can be challenging. Many of our clients, have discovered, they really don’t like to cut anything. When they realize their resumes are running long, they will try to force content in the existing format rather than making cuts. This all defeats the whole purpose of putting together a resume, which is to get an interview.

Editing for length is never easy. It takes a certain ruthlessness and a degree of confidence. But as resume writers, we know it is necessary. Often, it is easier to have another person assess what is the best mix of content for your resume.

4. Use a Summary instead of an Objective

A Summary is designed to give a brief overview of who you are and what you do for the company. Whereas, the Objective is very dated and the reverse. It is all about what you want the company to do for you.

• Grab a hiring manager’s attention right from the beginning, remembering you only have a few seconds to make a good impression
• Spend time developing a summary that immediately gets attention. Write a summary that accurately and powerfully describes you as a solution to their problems. Finally, and we realize as resume creators, it is important to align your past experience to your future career goals.

If you do the above, you will quickly increase the number of invitations for interviews. It is a lot of work. If you consider paying someone to write your resume, please contact us Best Price Resume at 888-215-1159.

Common Resume Mistakes

1. Typos & Grammatical Errors

Probably the most obvious of all resume writing tips: It needs to be grammatically perfect. It seems almost too easy, but these errors can really reduce your prospects with a hiring manager. You know how to spell just fine, but you’ve stared at your resume for so many hours and know it front to back, so it’s easy to miss a spelling typo or grammatical error. You’re not a professional resume writer; the easiest way to combat simple errors is to have someone else give your resume the once-over by proofreading it again for you. Keep in mind the resume is one of your most important financial documents.

2. Lack of Specifics

You need to put real, quantitative tasks and accomplishments on your professional resume. It’s one thing to put descriptions about your former positions on your resume, but you need to be specific when detailing what you accomplished.

Vague job descriptions simply sound like you cut and pasted from a job listing. Think like a resume specialist, put content in terms of what you accomplished and how. It will sound better than simply listing just your title and everyday tasks.

3. Attempting One Size Fits All

Employers want you to write a resume specifically for them. But, you’re not a professional resume service. It is not feasible or practical to pay someone to write a new resume for each job you seek. Group your experience with job descriptions you are applying for. For example, for a customer service resume, group that experience and align to jobs you will be applying for.

If you’re not willing to read the job descriptions and tailor your resume for those jobs, they may think you don’t care enough about the job, they may think you aren’t qualified, and they won’t think it’s worth their time to meet with you. Hiring managers expect you to clearly show how and why you fit the position.

4. Going on too long or cutting things too short

There are no real rules governing resume length because people who will be reading it have different preferences and expectations where resumes are concerned. Note: as a professional resume writing service, we know that often times the first review (filtering) of a resume is done by a computer system. The more keywords in your resume the better chance you have of passing through computer systems and having a human reviewing your resume. It is all a balance to acceptable norms. As certified professional resume writers, we help clients navigation the proper optimization of content that is keyword-rich as well as being easily scan able by humans to ensure our clients get interviews.

That doesn’t mean you should start sending out five-page resumes, of course. In general, you usually need to limit yourself to a maximum of two pages. But don’t feel you have to use two pages if one will do. Conversely, don’t cut the meat out of your resume simply to make it conform to an arbitrary one-page standard. There are several things to consider. It is not a one size fits all. Each client is unique. As a professional resume service, having reviewed tens of thousands of resumes, we can quickly make an appropriate recommendation upon reviewing you resume or information.

5. Bad summary

Employers do read your summary section. This is your headline! Give employers something specific and, more importantly, something that focuses on their needs as well as your own. As a resume writing service, we think of it as what you can do for the employer.

But wait, you’re not done yet! Now that you’ve made sure your resume is error-free, get another pair of eyes (we recommend asking a resume service) to double-check it and review for you. Let’s be clear, crafting a resume is not an easy job. Creating an error-free resume is almost impossible. Sometimes, in resume writing, you just need a reminder of what’s important to add to it or leave out.

Why Hire a Professional Resume Writer?

1. Writing isn’t your forte.

As professional resume writers we know how to write resumes. We have completed tens of thousands of resumes over the years. You are likely a pro in your industry, but that doesn’t mean you know how to market your career expertise in a way that will entice prospective employers to invite you in for an interview.

2. You have emotional ties.

A professional resume writer can easily assess each piece of your information objectively from experience of reviewing thousands of resumes and from a hiring manager perspective. For example, an accomplishment that holds personal significance to you may not add value to your resume. If you list a sales accomplishment from decades ago prior to your career in nursing, it probably isn’t relevant and only serves to confuse the reader. Your professional resume writer can help sort through the details that they may feel are important to the client but are unimportant to a hiring manager.

3. You don’t know what to include.

How far back should your employment history go? How long should the resume be? What will recruiters care most about? If you don’t know where to start, consider getting some help from a professional. It’s the resume writer’s job to know what recruiters are looking for and how to best highlight that information. You might find it difficult to describe your experience in clear and simple terms. A resume writer can serve as your resume coach and provide guidance though the entire process.

4. You take too long to write.

Professional resume writers are faster. For example, for our clients at Best Price Resume, we have all resume documents back to our clients within 24 hours. Often times the same day. We have clients who have spent weeks or months writing their resume and they still can’t create the quality we do in a very timely and affordable manner. Hiring a professional can accelerate your job search by rapidly increasing your response rate and number of interviews. Again, at Best Price Resume we have your completed resume documents available within 24 hours.

Best Price Resume (888.215.1159) will help you develop an effective resume and can help you gain a competitive advantage over your competition. It is worth considering paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be more efficient to just send all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.

Fatal Resume Mistakes

1. Including an objective statement

Use a Summary of Qualifications instead. Summarize your experience and qualifications for the reader. Briefly explain what you’re great at, most interested in, and how you can provide value to a prospective employer. Make this about what you can do for the employer. The dated Objective Statement is about what the company can do for you, and it should be left back in the 20th century.

2. A cover letter is not necessary

Yes, you need a cover letter! There is little downside in using a well-developed cover letter and tremendous upside to distance yourself from your competition. As professional resume writers, we know the cover letter is the best place to introduce yourself, identify your goals, and briefly describe why you are a good fit for the position. At Best Price Resume we create cover letters at an affordable price while balancing your experience to positions by being strong, but flexible for multiple opportunities.

3. Using an inappropriate email address

Cute email addresses you used in college are not the best choice to represent your professional brand today. The same goes for shared family accounts and email addresses that are from last century (you’ve got mail and no job offers). Consider signing up for a free email account through say Gmail and use it exclusively for job search-related activities and LinkedIn.

4. Using free resume-generation programs

Avoid using free resume builders. We see these all the time – our first impression is like it looks good and then we remember the format looks familiar to the dozens of others we have seen with the same formatting. Hiring managers will spot them in an instant too. Then the devil is in the details, we start to read and errors everywhere and we stop. For us, a professionally written resume has a great design, but it is also error free and unique to the client to get them above their competition.

5. Your resume is unfocused

Don’t think that a resume is one-size-fits-all. Not only is each individual unique, you want content that has competitive differentiation to get you to the top of the hiring manager’s pile of resumes. Your resume should clearly state what you do, what you are good at, and what you have accomplished. If you need help, consider paying someone to write your resume.

Best Price Resume (888.215.1159) can write you an effective resume to help you gain a competitive advantage over your competition. It is worth considering paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be more efficient to just send all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.

Is a professionally written resume really an investment?

With the large number of applicants vying for jobs, catching the attention of hiring managers with a strong resume and cover letter is a must. An impressive, professionally prepared resume could help you land a higher percentage of interviews, resulting in more job offers for higher paying jobs. Then add that up over a 40-year career and it is clear – a professionally written resume is one of your most important financial documents and can literally be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There are numerous advantages of professional resume writing.

1. Stop agonizing over what to include and how to present yourself. Get an outside perspective on your experience and qualifications on what to include. Get help identifying and quantifying achievements that will make your resume more effective.
2. Ensure that your resume is error-free.
3. Get to hiring managers faster via Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), which are widely used by employers by injecting appropriate keywords. Not having keywords, can work against you (even eliminate you) before your resume even reaches a hiring manager’s desk. Our professional resume writers at Best Price Resume can create an effective resume in line with ATS programs.
4. Ensure that your resume is well-written, increasing the chances of hiring managers actually reading and understanding it. A professional resume writer is a trained expert and truly knows what employers are really looking for in a resume.
5. The resume writing investment often pays off VERY quickly. Although some are reluctant to spend the money, hiring a professional resume writer is affordable and will actually save you money in the long run. We, at Best Price Resume, provide clients with outstanding value and in a timely manner (24 hours).

Best Price Resume (888.215.1159) can develop an effective resume and can help you gain a competitive advantage over your competition. It is worth considering paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be more efficient to just send all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.

Best Resume Writing Practices

1. Proofread. Always.

The first thing to keep in mind is that you must proofread your resume several times to check for typos or to edit details and information. Spelling and grammar errors can make an applicant seem inattentive to details. You should also ask a friend or a professional resume writer to review your resume. It is important to get a fresh set of eyes on the resume document to ensure you don’t miss any errors or areas in need of improving.

2. Use Summary of Qualifications

Make sure that your job titles, duties, and responsibilities clearly justify the skills that you list on the resume. This section works best when included at the top of the resume before the professional experience section. Consider this your headline section to align your past experience to future career goals. It’s important not to include extraneous information that distracts hiring managers — you don’t want recruiters to stop reading your resume before getting to your experience. A professionally written resume should focus on the skills and attributes that align your experience to career goals.

3. Use Professional Structure and Headings

Keep it simple and professional with the use of formatting that allows hiring managers to quickly scan your document with headings that require no explanation. Similar to a well-written book with chapter titles, your headings should deliver as promised. Professional resumes need to have consistent formatting. For instance, if you use bullet points to describe your responsibilities and achievements at one position, be sure to use bullet points on all other positions as well.

4. Seek Professional Help

Writing a resume is hard work and it’s important to get help. It is generally more efficient to have a professional create the resume for you. The small investment will pay off in time saved and increases in compensation from a new position. Consider using a career counselor or professional resume service to help you make sure your resume is professional and polished. Treat your resume, for what it is, one of your most important financial documents.

Finally, a best practice that often is overlooked is to make sure to use quality resume paper and have at least 3-5 updated resumes handy and available during interviews. Don’t assume the hiring managers have printed out your resume ahead of time.

Best Price Resume (888.215.1159) can help you develop an effective resume to gain a competitive advantage over your competition. It is worth considering paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be more efficient to just send all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.

Do You Need a Cover Letter?

1. A cover letter can set you apart

Sending a cover letter along with a resume helps job seekers build their brand, the same way an advertising company promotes a product’s brand. Think of your cover letter as a tool to get you ahead of competition while aligning your resume to the job opportunity. As a resume writing service ,we understand the importance of the cover letter and how to create on that excites hiring managers and gets them to turn the page to fully review our client’s resumes.

2. A cover letter lets you tell a story

A cover letter also gives you an opportunity to include information and explanations that your resume does not allow. A good example is gaps in employment with reasonable explanations can also be addressed in your letter. A brief explanation…… “After several years of raising a family…. “. By providing an cover letter, you can set the stage in the hiring manager’s mind. Where as, without the cover letter and unexplained gap of employment may be considered a period of unemployment. The hiring manager may wonder why no one else has hired the candidate if they have been unemployed for so long.

3. A cover letter lets you build rapport

Resumes are always fact-based and somewhat formal, but a cover letter can be infused with personality. It is an introduction, and it reveal your core skills and accomplishments so hiring managers give your resume the appropriate attention it deserves.

Candidates who don’t take the time to compose a letter are often viewed as less motivated or interested in the job. Often we serve as a resume coach for clients, and we alert our clients that employers won’t even look at a job application that doesn’t contain a cover letter. Having a well constructed cover letter is ALWAYS better than not having one.

A well-composed cover letter serves as a sample of your writing ability but, unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If you don’t have time to write a strong cover letter that pitches your skills for the job, consider having a professional resume writing service create on for you. We can be contacted at Best Price Resume at 888-215-1159.

Reasons to Hire a Professional Resume Writer

Not getting interviews on your own?

Your work experience is impressive, and your skills are impeccable but you’re still not getting any calls. It might be that you have a sub-par resume. At Best Price Resume, we review thousands of resumes each year. We know a professionally written resume can open doors for you that could lead to a great job. We are experts who can tweak your resume and make it relevant to the position you’re applying for. These are advanced nuances that a professional resume writer can assist you with.

Too Shy?

If you’re not the bragging type, you might need an expert to help you through the writing process if you have a hard time talking about yourself, much less writing it all down on paper. There’s no shame in getting help. As a matter of fact, it is likely to be your best investment of the year. At Best Price Resume we take the hassle out of writing the resume and provide our clients back documents within 24 hours. They save time and we provide solutions that are timely and affordable. Writing can be time consuming and one of the toughest assignments as perfection is expected and you’re often your own worst critic.

If all this is too much, consider paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be a good idea to simply compile all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.

A professional resume writer will know how to highlight your accomplishments because they’re looking at them with objectively. Let your resume writer turn your resume into something that’s personable and professional.

Knowledgeable about hiring practices?

If you’ve been out of the job market for a while, it’s hard to know what the current hiring practices are without a lot of time-consuming research.

We have been in business for nearly a decade and we have created over 10,000 resume documents. We are very familiar with industry trends and resume writing best practices. Further, our resume writers are trained in creating effective documents in a timely manner. Our resume makers have amassed a vast amount of Insider knowledge, which is an extra bonus of using a resume writing service.

Writing Your Resume

1. List your Personal Details

These will be on the header of your resume. This should include your name, address with zip code, phone number and email address (avoid using an unprofessional e-mail address). If you are having a writer complete the resume for you make sure to provide your resume writer with all your information. Let the resume writer decide what is the appropriate information to highlight.

2. List Your Experiences and Skills

List your current or most recent job first, and work backwards in time. Include your job title, your employer’s name, and the city and state in which it is located. Also, the start and end dates (month and year) of your employment. For each position, add a summary of your responsibilities and accomplishments. Don’t worry if there are gaps in the timeline, but keep everything in chronological order, with most recent jobs at the top. Always start each achievement with an accomplishment verb. If you’re not familiar with this, your resume writer can take of it for you. Have your resume writer decide what is the appropriate information to highlight.

3. List Your Education

List the schools you’ve attended, starting with the most recent one. Include details such as GPA, class rank or special awards. Also, include your training programs, community college or summer courses, and seminars. Again, let the resume writer decide what is the appropriate information to highlight.

4. List Your Activities

This is where to list your membership or leadership positions in clubs, organizations of any kind, athletic teams, community organizations and so on. If you’ve had an interesting job unrelated to the field you’re pursuing, add it here. If you are unsure which ones should be included, your professional resume writer will filter it for you.

Generally, don’t waste space including references on your resume. Employers assume that you can provide them with these. You should be proactive and provide a printed list of references during an interview.

Listing the raw data you want included in your resume will ensure that your professional resume writer will not miss any important details. Let the resume writer review the details and decide what is important and how to structure and organize. Experienced resume writers recognize each client is unique and there are no one size fits all or templates to create an effective resume. At Best Price Resume all of our writers are experienced in the different fields from having completed thousands of resumes. The resume writing process remains the same, but each completed resume is handcrafted and unique to the client, providing clients with an effective resume in a fast and affordable manner.

Best Price Resume (888.215.1159) develops for clients effective resumes and can help you gain a competitive advantage over your competition. It is worth considering paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be more efficient to just send all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.

Top Resume Writing Tips from Professional Resume Writers

1. Keep It Error Free

A company won’t be impressed by your resume if it contains spelling and grammar errors. Even a single spelling error demonstrates your inability to pay attention to details. When building your resume, do a thorough edit to ensure that there are no careless mistakes on your resume. It’s also wise to have at least two other people proofread your resume and give you recommendations. Consider hiring a certified professional resume writer to review as well.

It’s not only the grammatical error that kills your chance to land your dream job. We see this more often than seems possible. This happens when you incorrectly list a phone number or email address and obviously, the hiring team cannot contact, this seriously limits and even kills your chances of getting hired.

2. Keep it Professional

A resume is a serious document, and you need to write it with a professional tone. Humor is highly discouraged (what about your email partytime@aolz.com. Companies are looking at hundreds of resumes and want documents that showcase your skills, experience and education, and most of the time, not your fun and quirky personality. With a serious and professional resume, you will be taken seriously.

3. Keep It Polished & Organized

Make it as simple as possible. Don’t use a wide variety of fonts and don’t use quirky, creative fonts. Use fonts that are crisp, clean and easy to read. Resume designs for Best Price Resume were originally created by a graphic designer. We use good design principles to get as much as possible on a page while still maintaining readability.

Remember it is the content that truly counts. If you are applying for a creative position, you might be asked to submit examples of your work. Let the work speak for itself and keep the resume professional.

Keep your resume organize by using sections. You will want a Summary section that introduces you and provides contact information, A Professional Experience section that details work experience, and sections that detail specific skills, a section for education, certifications, references, etc. Use the same font and style for each header and the same format for each bullet point under the headers. Keeping the same style throughout the document makes it easier to read and more pleasing to the eye.

Make it easy for hiring managers to quickly review. Generally, a resume gets scanned for 25 seconds or less. Scanning is more difficult if it is hard to read, poorly organized or exceeds proper length.

4. Keep It Dynamic

Anyone can list a bunch of information on a resume, it’s the way you write it that counts. For instance, we see resumes that states things like “worked on a wide variety of projects.” Instead of this weak type of resume writing, you might state this more powerfully and with keywords you “created and implemented sales strategies and marketing strategies for more than 100 clients that rapidly increased account leads.” This explains the types of projects and showcases your ability to work for many different companies. When we are resume writing we will take a list of tasks for which you were responsible at previous jobs and rank them toward your future career goals. Then we write them in such a way that they truly showcase your unique skills, abilities and qualifications.

5. Keep It Short?

In general, the best resumes are those that are short and to the point. So they say. If this would be true last century. Nowadays with advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, even small firms have access to Application Tracking Systems (ATS) that are used to filter out candidates well before a human starts reviewing the finalist. So in the 21st century, you also have feed the computer review your resume. It needs to be keyword rich such that is gets flagged for review by a human. When you keep it short for a computer, you are dramatically reducing your chances for review by a human. You may have great experience and expressed concisely, but today if you don’t write your resume to get passed the ATS you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.

It can be tricky to write keyword-rich resume content. Our writers here at Best Price Resume do it all the time. It is a skill to get flagged by computer systems while still be easily read by hiring manager. This is not a one or the other it is both. Need to be effective to get past ATS and needs to be readable for hiring manager.

If all this is too much, consider paying someone to write your resume. Resume writing is a bit of an art, and it can be a good idea to simply compile all of your information and hand it off to a professional resume writing service.