It may seem like common sense for everyone to write their own resume. However, plenty of job seekers hand over their personal information to professional resume writers in order to have a finely tailored resume that is not only detailed but also polished and crisply formatted. Furthermore, perhaps the primary reason career hunters seek out this service, is that professional resume writers can be objective.

What’s the big deal about being objective? Who cares. Getting a job is all about marketing yourself, subjectively describing your abilities and talents so that employers salivate over what they’re hearing. While this does hold some salt in certain arguments, objectivity is key when crafting a resume.

Objectivity allows you to present yourself in very black and white terms. An employer only wants to know what you bring to the table. That means quantifiable results. None of this ‘team player’ nonsense or ‘good communicator’ malarkey. A potential boss wants to know, very objectively and passionlessly, what it is that you can do. This means presenting yourself solely in numbers and cents type terms. Instead of saying something ephemeral like you’re a ‘hard worker’, nail down that description and say that you did X for company Y that achieved Z. Simple as that, right?

Sadly, so many people who craft their own resume have a tendency to drift into this field of irrelevancy. It’s a hard habit to break. Being objective about yourself is difficult because we don’t live our lives objectively. Everything we see, everything we feel, is through our own point of view. We interpret and examine our life experiences through a subjective lens.

Nevertheless, a third party can act as an objective outsider that can discern your abilities and prowess. While professional resume writing services do exist, they are often expense and can take time that you may not have. Plus, these services often have a tendency to produce resumes that are very well formatted and polished looking but have a template feel to them that can make employers a bit suspicious about who really wrote this document.

Still, writing your resume in tandem with someone else can produce objective results. You can invest the passion and life experience you have accrued into this piece of paper while someone else can groom and cut through a lot of the fluff people put into their resumes. Try working out your resume with a friend or family member. Ideally, aim for a professional contact that can be a bit more objective than someone close. This will hopefully allow you to strike a balance that provides concrete, objective information while also making things a bit more personalized and individualized.

How did you write your resume? Tips for beginners? For experts? Sounds off and let everyone know.

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Writing a professional resume isn’t as difficult as most people think.  There are tons of resources out there geared at helping you format a professional resume that works for you and lots of tips for how to polish it up to make it shine.

But when you think about it, researching how to write a professional resume just turns up a lot of the same old, same old BS.  Seriously, how many times can you hear to “Keep it this long, Make it sound like this, Don’t Do This, Make Sure You Do That,” before your head just starts to hurt?

Creating a professional resume doesn’t have to be difficult, but you need to make sure you avoid those BS clichés that are all over the place because sometimes being afraid to be different or go against the grain can cost you the opportunity of a lifetime.  Kind of like that time in high school or college when you didn’t ask that girl or guy out and then found out years later that they had a thing back then for you too.

Don’t have regrets- and don’t fall for BS professional resume tips that will prevent you from having a unique and personalized professional resume.

Here are some of the most common BS facts about writing a professional resume that you can choose to follow if you want… but you’ll probably reap more rewards if you don’t!

Don’t put a lot of different jobs on your resume- you need to show you’re specialized in a particular field. This is complete BS!  Of course you don’t want to show that you switch jobs every three months (and hopefully you don’t because that’s a lot of BS on your part too!) but showing that you have a wide range of skills helps, not hurts you when it comes to building a professional resume.  Who wants to hire someone who only knows how to do one thing?

Use an overly creative resume template. I’m going to be honest with you, here.  Sometimes it really does pay to have a professional resume on an off-white colored paper or that uses a unique format.  But other times, it’s complete BS to go “over the top” because an employer isn’t going to be impressed by how flashy your resume is.  They care about what it says and what you have to offer while doing it in a classy yet professional way.  How professional is it to have a hot pink resume anyway?

Cramming too many keywords throughout a professional resume. If you spend all of your time stuffing too many keywords into your resume, what kind of “meat” and overall quality are you contributing to your document?  Remember, the “keywords” are for the computers and if you have too many, you’re going to alienate your human readers.  If you don’t keep both of these things in mind, your document likely won’t get read, no matter how many pretty keywords you throw onto your professional resume.

Have a specific professional resume for specific types of jobs.  Don’t use the same resume for every job. I know a lot of people might disagree that this professional resume tip is BS.  But this is like saying don’t drive the same car every day- tailor it to where you’re going.  Since we’re not all millionaires, this is obviously impossible for most and it’s really not necessary to change it up when you’re applying for different types of jobs with your professional resume either.  You probably already have experience in a few different fields so the broader your resume is, the better.  Just make sure it’s not too off track.  I mean making your Circus Clown experience the focal point of your professional resume for an executive office job isn’t really a great idea.

These tips are some of the most common and most basic tips for professional resume writing… we’ve all probably heard them before and we’ve probably even used most of them… but do they actually work?  Maybe.  But they’re not essential to writing a professional resume that sells you to an employer.

Writing a professional resume is sometimes just about going with what feels right…  so no matter what kind of BS tips you keep receiving, you ultimately should do whatever works best for you or suits your personality or particular skill set.

What do you think?  Leave me a comment to tell me what you thought about this article or what you think is truly important in a professional resume!

Tags: professional resume

Tags: professional resume
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