Should you invest in professional resume design? This is what you can get from it

During the hard times to get a job, I was multiple times tempted to invest in professional CV design.

My fantasy was that with professional help, I would create a resume that recruiters couldn’t help but hire me (maybe even without an interview). Of course, this is not how it works, but I honestly think a professional resume has advantages over that CV you created in a few hours and uploaded to every job post you found. However, the biggest gains from professional services have less to do with the layout or format, and more to do with the content.

So, the person you hire should guide you through the creation process so you can provide them with great input to create an excellent resume.

An excellent resume

The only way to create an excellent resume is by understanding its goal.

We think our CV is a document to talk about us, which is entirely wrong. Your CV is a document to tell your potential employer how you can contribute to the team and the organization. You may not believe it, but that slight shift makes a tremendous difference when deciding what to include and how to express it.

If you’ve ever taken someone’s CV and, while reading it, thought: “What all these words have to do with the position we are offering?”, then you know what I’m talking about.

Keeping that in mind, your CV should bridge your skills and experience on one side and the company’s needs on the other.

For example, let’s say you are detail-oriented and have worked on a support project for 3 years. Instead of mentioning both skills as independent, you can state that due to your ability to pay attention to details, you contributed to reducing the incidents your support team received during those 3 years. Stated that way, the hiring manager quickly understands how your skills will benefit them.

Everything begins with a shift from talking about your skills to telling how your skills will help the company.

Difficulties in creating our resume

You may be thinking: “Yes, I get that. But it’s still too hard for me to know what to write.”

Honestly, I feel you. Even after understanding the theory of what you should write, you can’t do it. We all experience these difficulties when creating our CV:

• It’s hard to talk about ourselves
• We think there is nothing we know or do worth mentioning. Anyone can do it.
• Companies’ job postings are too vague and don’t make their needs clear.
• We don’t know how to summarize our experiences to make each one clear and concise.
• We don’t want to leave anything out because that skill may be our door to success.
• It’s too much information to organize persuasively.

Those are the most common obstacles we face when creating our CVs. Sometimes, professionals can help us overcome them.

Professional design benefits

The most significant benefits aren’t related to the design but to the content selection strategy.

Contrary to what many people think, hiring a professional to create our CV will make a more significant difference when defining the content rather than the format. They help us dig into our memories and positions to identify those characteristics that make us unique. I see that service more like a psychoanalyst than a designer.

Some tools and exercises you can expect from a professional are:

• List of prompts to reflect on your skills.
• Inquire about moments and triggers that make you feel powerful, topics for which people seek your advice, difficulties you overcame, your comfort zone, etc.
• Role-playing exercises that make you talk without filter and identify those areas where you are excessively humble or diminishing yourself.

After collecting enough information about your skills, experience, and goals, they will help you with the What and the How:

• What to include in the document and what to keep as back up information or for expansion during the interview.
• How to frame and format that information to make it clear, concise, and entertaining.

The most crucial benefit is learning to replicate it for multiple positions.

Conclusion

Hiring a professional to design your CV doesn’t mean that you will sit down and wait.

They will help you to get the information and decide the best way to create the document.

Actively participating in the process is excellent for 2 reasons:

• Your CV will be more accurate and authentic.
• You will learn the process and be able to do it again.

What do you think? Would you give it a try?