Three Milestones and a Punch to the Gut

Three important milestones happened today:

1. Today is my 1st son's 4th birthday. Happy Birthday Linc!
2. Today marks exactly 2 weeks of unemployment.
3. Today marks the date of the first sign of life from a potential employer. Apparently, they really are out there.

Milestones shared. Let's talk about that gut punch I mentioned in the blog title.

A little background first. I've spent the past two weeks of unemployment deeply evaluating my knowledge, skills, recommendations, and other assets and crafting what I felt was a pretty darn good resume. I always got A grades on my resumes in college business and writing classes. I have helped several friends, and even my wife build resumes based on that knowledge. So I've have generally felt fairly confident in my resume writing skills. All that said, up until this morning at about 8:47am, I felt like my own resume was in good order; that it concisely presented my strengths, my accomplishments, and the overall benefit I could be to an organization.

8:47am however is when I opened an email that contained a built-in gut punch from Jessica C. Jessica C. is a resume reviewer at Jobfox.com, one of the "fastest growing" job search companies on the web that help you with a "smarter approach" to interviewing, landing your ideal career, etc. In my preparations last week, I received a "free" offer from Jobfox to review my resume. I decided to accept that offer and agreed knowing full well that the report I would receive would basically be a customized sales brochure touting the reasons why my resume was horrible and how it absolutely needed Jobfox's resume writers to revamp it. Yet, I'm all about constructive criticism so I accepted . . . and was pleasantly surprised!

I expected my free analysis to be a simple form letter with less than helpful resume writing tips straight out of a high school English textbook. However, this really was a thorough review of my actual resume in which Jessica C expertly critiqued each section and offered valuable advice.

She started with one or two points about the strength of my qualifications and assets. Specifically, she said: "My first impression of you is that you have an impressive array of skills and experiences. You're a qualified Training and Professional Development Specialist with a lot to offer an employer."

That was nice to hear from a complete stranger and objective reviewer of my resume. Of course, she was also going to try to sell me something in a minute so it could just have been a bit of sweet talk.

Jessica C then went over some of the less effective points of my resume, which, apparently, were many. Now, to be absolutely fair to Jessica C, she was clear at the beginning of her report that her style was "direct and to the point" and to not be offended by her analysis. Point taken; see my previous comment about constructive criticism.

Ok, ready for the gut punch? Jessica C's overall analysis of my resume was: "Your resume is effectively sabotaging your job search. . .selling you short"

She outlined approximately 7 major problems with my resume related to the visual presentation and content. As expected, Jessica C's next action was to "recommend" that I purchase Jobfox.com resume re-writing services for $500. If I act now though, I can get 30% off and make payments over 6 months, blah blah blah.

While it was a punch to the gut of my writing ego, I'm glad I signed up for my free resume analysis from Jobfox.com and commend Jessica C for her professional advice. Upon review of her comments, I now see some blaring issues with how I have presented myself to potential employers now have concrete ideas about how to make my resume better. I'm not ready to spend 500 bucks just yet.

So the lesson learned here is that no matter how good a writer you think you are, someone else's constructive critique is ALWAYS a good idea.

What I will do is take part in a 2-hour resume workshop tomorrow morning at the LDS Employment Services Center here in Mesa. The LDS ESC has also partnered with a professional resume writing service called Optimal Resume. The services are highly recommended so I'll start there and report on it later.

And finally back to milestone #3. All this being said about my resume, I was contacted today by a company regarding a training and development specialist position I applied to last week. I have have an initial phone screening interview tomorrow. Hoo rah!

And onward I go!