7 Factors When Choosing Services for Your Career Success

Career Success Factors

Sometimes people tell me they’re not going to purchase our career success services because they can get the same ones cheaper elsewhere. But this is not true. While you can get a resume, LinkedIn profile, or interview coaching elsewhere, the product, service, and—most importantly—results for you vary widely from one career success company to another. I’m Katherine Akbar, the president of YES Career Coaching & Resume Writing Services. In this video, I will give you seven ways to choose the best career success service for results, Tonight Show style.

Career Success Way Number 7: Make sure the professional resume writing company you engage with takes the time to understand your expectations, goals, and needs and is realistic about the results you can expect. Some career help companies will make promises they cannot keep, like “This resume will get employers calling you!” even if you are trying to make a career transition. The hard reality is that, when making a career change, even a great resume may not get employers calling you in your new field. You will need a number of different tools and strategies—effective networking in particular—to ensure your success if you are changing careers.

Career Success Way Number 6: Make sure your resume writer is a native speaker of American English. Many companies try to save money by outsourcing resume drafting to eager beavers with resume writing certifications who are from countries where labor is cheaper. I recently got a message from one such Certified Professional Resume Writer wanting to work for me. On his LinkedIn profile, he recommended you get an “ATS Complaint Resume”—meaning to write “Compliant.” If you get such a writer, you will be vulnerable to having awkward mistakes like this appear in your documents. You will also dealing with someone who does not understand the economic trends, news context, and industries you need to show mastery in like someone closer to home.

Career Success Way Number 5: Make sure at least two different people are working on your resume. People could be a brilliant resume writers, but they are still limited to their own experience, brain type, and point of view. Someone of a different age, experience set, and/or gender is going to see things differently. Having both of them work on your documents means more opportunities to shape the content in a way that is likely to appeal to your target employer type. Not only that, but having two to four people work on your documents greatly diminishes the likelihood of typos, formatting errors, and missing keywords.

Some people choose not to work with us, because they want to meet with their resume writer, and that’s not how we work. While I understand the emotional desire for this, I would argue that it sets people up for sub-par work, because they are only getting one person’s point of view on how to sell them best. And while you may love their work, you may not know the difference until you see how it plays with your target employers.

Career Success Way Number 4: Make sure you have a satisfaction, interview, or offer guarantee that makes sense considering not only money you’re going to invest but also the earning potential of your time. Some companies say that if you are not satisfied or don’t get an offer in three months, you will get a free rewrite. But the cost of remaining unemployed or even at your same job for three months or more is extremely high, given that our average client gets a 14% pay increase at the new job. A long, frustrating job search also costs you emotionally, big time. Some companies offer up to two rounds of edits, but two rounds of edits may not be enough, especially if the initial writer or editor is inept.

Career Success Way Number 3: Make sure the company is going to help you improve the content—that is, show the impact of what you did. Even a well-written list of duties you have done is not going to put you at the top of the pack for most medium- to highly paid jobs. You need quantified accomplishments to show the employer the return on investment they can expect from employing you. As creating quantified accomplishments is challenging for most job seekers—and you don’t want your resume writer to invent them either—you’ll want to work with a company that will collaborate with you on that.

Career Success Way Number 2: Make sure the company has a track record of success. Do they survey their clients for results? What are their average results, and how big is the sample size? The last 123 clients we have surveyed as of this taping got these results: The median/average client got a new job in 8 weeks from resume finalization after receiving 1.5 offers, being contacted by 11 recruiters (for those who got our LinkedIn profile), and interviewing with 5 organizations. The average client got a 14% salary increase at the new job.

Career Success Way Number 1: Make sure the career services company is highly rated. Most people don’t go out of their way to write a positive review unless they feel the company really earned it. And also consider that some people cannot be pleased, but look at how the company responds to negative reviews. Check the ratings and reviews on Google, Yelp (though these are skewed to favor the ratings of their most active users and people who write long rants), Angie’s List, and the Better Business Bureau.

Some people feel like they need references to trust resume providers. This is not smart, because people only provide references to happy customers. It’s wiser to read the good and the bad reviews and draw your own conclusions. YES is the top-rated company nationally for USAJobs-style federal resumes and the top-rated Washington metro company on Google, Angie’s List, and the Better Business Bureau.

If you want top-rated professional help with career development services so that you get more interviews and receive more offers, you can get a free Career Success Consultation at YESwriting.com.

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