Attaining Your Career Goals in 2023: How Professional Resume Writing Services Can Help You Land Your Dream Job

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Finding a new job is hard work. You need to determine what type of role you’re looking for, prepare your resume and cover letter, and send out applications. Hopefully, you’ll hear back from a few employers and start the interviewing process.

You can handle the resume writing process yourself, but working with professional resume writing services often yields better results. Professional resume writers know how to showcase your experience so it catches the eye of recruiters and sails through applicant tracking systems (ATS).

With the help of a resume consultant—or better yet, a team—you’ll improve your chances of landing interviews with top employers.

What Are Professional Resume Writing Services?

Professional resume writing services like YES work directly with you to understand your experience, education, and target jobs. After a consultation, we’ll create a resume highlighting your skills and qualifications.

Our writers handle resume creation from end to end, including interviewing you, writing, editing, and formatting. They’re well versed in the ins and outs of ATS, so they’ll ensure your resume is readable and contains the keywords likely to move your resume into the hands of a recruiter or hiring manager.

When you use resume writing services, you can feel confident knowing your resume is being prepared by experts. Use your extra time to find suitable roles or prepare for your next interview!

Why You Should Use Resume Writing Services

Think of your resume as a mirror of yourself—just on paper.

You’ll likely dress in your best suit when you go on a job interview. You won’t show up in your pajamas, which would give hiring managers a poor impression of you.

Similarly, your resume should reflect you and your experience positively. It’s the initial “suit” that HR and your future employer see. A poorly written resume full of grammatical errors makes hiring managers less likely to take you seriously—even if you’re highly qualified for the role.

When you work with professional resume writers, you ensure that your resume presents you favorably. You’ll have a resume you can feel comfortable with when applying for jobs.

Some roles are highly competitive, so having a well-written resume helps you stand out. For instance, someone looking for a CEO or CFO position will need an executive resume. An executive resume can benefit from the experienced hand of a resume writer who knows how to highlight the attributes you can bring to a C-level role.

Resume writing services can also benefit career changers. When you’re wondering how to change your career, a career coach and resume consultant can both help. They’ll help you identify your preferred job and transferable skills that are advantageous for jobs in your newly chosen career path.

How to Make Your Resume Employer-Friendly

When you’re seeking to land your dream job, you want to use your resume to your advantage. A poorly written resume will likely land you in the discard pile—something you want to avoid at all costs. Here are a few ways resume writing services put you on a solid path for your next role:

Start with a Tailored Professional Summary

Every resume begins with a short profile that illustrates your experience and other qualifications. Your profile should be just a short paragraph; in those few sentences, it will demonstrate exactly why you should be a top candidate for the position.

You should personalize your summary for every job you apply to and use relevant keywords to help you pass an ATS’s criteria.

Highlight Skills that Illustrate Your Capabilities

A list of skills should follow your summary. The skills you include should be representative of your experience but also applicable to the role that you’re applying for. Generally, a list of 10 to 20 skills in a succinct bullet list is appropriate.

You should include a mix of soft and hard skills in your list. For instance, if you’re applying for an accounting manager role, you might highlight your aptitude for conflict management, a soft skill. You’ll also want to list generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), both of which are hard skills.

Include Your Work History

Your work history will fill the bulk of your resume. You should list all your jobs for the past 10 years in reverse chronological order. You’ll start with your most recent role and end with your oldest. In some cases, including additional work experience is helpful—but only if it’s highly relevant to the job you’re applying for and you can keep your resume to 2 pages total.

You should list the primary responsibilities of each role. Your duties should begin with active verbs. A few examples of active verbs:

• Spearheaded
• Resolved
• Strengthened
• Contributed

There are hundreds of active verbs that can help you emphasize the importance of your tasks. Resume writing services will implement strong verbs into your work experience, allowing you to illustrate your professional story to hiring managers.

For each task, indicate how your employer or clients benefitted from your action—its impact. In addition, you’ll also want to list any accomplishments you achieved in your prior roles. For instance, if you implemented a new sales initiative that led to 10% revenue growth within your region, include it.

Impact and accomplishments demonstrate that you understand why you do what you do at work and that you always add value to your company or your department.

Include the Right Keywords

When drafting your resume, consider the job you’re applying for. Read the job description carefully and identify any critical keywords. For instance, if you’re applying for a software developer role, include terms that appear in the job posting, like “efficient code,” “full stack experience,” or “SQL.”

These keywords should appear naturally throughout your resume. Professional resume writers can optimize your resume for keywords relevant to the jobs you’re applying for.

Include Computer and Software Skills

Many jobs require you to work with various software programs, particularly in an office setting. You should include a list of all the software you feel comfortable working with that is relevant to the job. Review the job posting to ensure you include software that the position requires or prefers if you have experience with it.

If you’re applying for a tech, data analysis, or financial sector job, you’ll want to include any programming languages you’re familiar with, like Python or JavaScript.

Consider Your Formatting

Even if you have a 5-star resume that’s well written and entirely relevant to the job you’re applying for, an ATS system or HR professional may throw it out for lousy formatting.

Your resume should be easily skimmable and reader-friendly. Include lots of bullet points and ensure you don’t have lengthy, unappealing text blocks. Make sure to align everything, using consistent spacing and tabs.

Under your name and contact information, start your profile with a headline that describes who you are in an appealing manner. This makes the HR professional or hiring manager interested to read the summary below it.

Each section after that should begin with a header, such as Core Compentencies (or Skills). Headings make it easy for readers to skim through your resume.

Ideally, you’ll keep your font size between 11 and 12 points. A smaller font is difficult to read, and a larger font may appear unprofessional. Avoid non-traditional font types.

Select an Appropriate Template

While colorful resumes with lots of flair may be attractive, they may distract hiring managers and confuse ATS systems. Generally, a simple black-and-white resume format is best, especially if you’re applying for a job that’s not in the creative sector. This is true even if you have your resume professionally done. You want the “Wow!” factor to come from what you did and how beautifully you write (or appear to write, if you are using professional resume writers)—skills you will use on most jobs. Unless graphic design is a skill you’ll use on the job, that’s not how you want to impress people.

On the other hand, people working in marketing, advertising, art, or other industries where visual creativity is a plus may benefit from a resume emphasizing color and design. The professional resume writers at YES can help you choose a template that’s appropriate for your industry and career level.

Decide on Your Resume Length

Resume length is often a topic of discussion. Some professionals claim a one-page resume is best, while others extol the benefits of a two-page resume.

Usually, a one-page resume is suitable for someone with only one or two jobs in the last 10 years. Two-page resumes are appropriate for most mid-career managers and executives.

Be Careful with Grammar and Spelling

Spelling and grammar errors are a major turn-off for employers. Remember, you’re putting your best foot forward with your initial resume; mistakes will diminish your resume’s credibility to hiring managers.

While you can put your faith in Microsoft Word to catch most spelling mistakes, an experienced resume writer and editor will catch all your errors. A resume writer will ensure you use the appropriate punctuation, don’t have any grammatical mistakes, and write clearly, as well as impactfully.

Appropriate Use of White Space

Sometimes, job seekers try to cram too much information into their resumes. Including too many details is confusing to ATS systems and will likely discourage hiring managers from reading your resume.

Instead, you’ll need to include some white space that breaks apart different sections and adds visual balance to the resume’s appearance. Resume writing services can help you balance white space and text appropriately.

Landing Your Dream Job Starts with a Powerful Resume

On average, job announcements attract over 100 resumes. Following an ATS scan, the resume ends up in the hands of overworked and underpaid HR specialists who are typically unfamiliar with the open role. Usually, only 6 to 8 resumes end up in the hands of a hiring manager. But candidates often make the mistake of assuming that people can read between the lines to understand that X means about the same as Y, instead of explicitly including Y, where Y is a job post’s keyword.

You can increase your chances of landing an interview when you work with YES. We’ll optimize your resume for your desired role. If you’re wondering how to change your career, we can revamp your resume to align with your newly chosen target job. We can even help you with interview prep and salary negotiation!

 Book your free Career Success Consultation with YES today and land your dream job 3x as fast as the national average.