The Landscape: Understanding the Challenges and Opportunities

The current climate within the federal government presents a unique set of challenges; however, it may open unexpected opportunities. The push for resignations – coupled with programs like the OPM’s deferred resignation option – has created a sense of uncertainty for many federal employees. They’re grappling with questions about job security, retirement benefits, and their long-term career paths. This is where you step in as a service provider.

Your Role: Providing Clarity and Support

Career services professionals are uniquely positioned to provide the support and guidance these individuals need. You are the navigators, helping them chart a course through this period of change. Here’s how you can empower them:

Key Areas of Focus for Your Counseling:

• Acknowledge and Validate – Start by acknowledging the uncertainty and stress your clients may be experiencing. Validate their feelings and reassure them that they are not alone. Your first and most crucial job is to create a safe and supportive space.
• Needs Assessment – Conduct a thorough needs assessment to understand each individual’s unique situation, goals, and concerns. What are their career aspirations? What are their financial considerations? What are their transferable skills?
• Skills Translation – Federal employees possess a wealth of valuable skills, but they may struggle to articulate how those skills translate to the civilian workforce. Help them identify their transferable skills and frame them in a way that resonates with potential employers in different sectors. Focus on accomplishments and quantifiable results.
• Career Exploration – Encourage your clients to explore a wide range of career options. Encourage them to research different industries, job roles, and required qualifications. Provide resources for labor market information and job search platforms. Don’t limit their thinking, but encourage them to consider possibilities they may not have considered before.
• Networking Strategies – Career transitions are made easier with the help of meaningful relationships. Teach your clients to develop effective networking strategies, including how to leverage LinkedIn, attend industry events, and connect with professionals in their fields of interest. Offer workshops or seminars on in-person and virtual networking etiquette and building professional relationships.
• Résumé and Cover Letter Support – Provide guidance on crafting compelling résumé and cover letter content that highlights transferable skills and accomplishments. Work with them to tailor their application materials to specific job openings in the civilian sector. Offer résumé review services followed by instructions on how to customize the résumé and cover letter for individual roles. This is where PARWCC members truly shine: leveraging expertise in résumé writing for these transitioning professionals.
• Interview Preparation – Conduct mock interviews and provide constructive feedback on each client’s interviewing skills. Help them anticipate common interview questions and develop strong responses that showcase their qualifications. Incorporate ideas from effective interview coaching frameworks such as the Organizational Message Chart (OMC) from PARWCC’s Certified Interview Coach program. 
• Emotional Support – Career transitions can be emotionally challenging. Offer emotional support and encouragement throughout the process. Build your clients’ confidence and resilience, boosting their motivation and empowering them to tackle the challenges of a job search. 
• Resource Navigation – Be a central point of contact for relevant resources, including government agencies, professional organizations, and career development websites. PARWCC can be a valuable partner in this effort too. We can provide you with up-to-date information and resources to share with your clients.

Collaboration is Key

This situation requires a collaborative approach. PARWCC is committed to supporting career services professionals walking through such a massive shift in the federal job market. We encourage you to connect with us, share best practices, and leverage our resources. Together, we can give federal employees the tools they need to navigate this potentially fear-inducing transition and build successful careers. We also encourage you to highlight your PARWCC membership and credentials to build trust with clients based on your expertise and training in résumé writing and career coaching.

The post Empowering Federal Employees in a Time of Transition: A Guide for Career Services Professionals appeared first on PARWCC.

Company policy requires him to stay in his current position for six months before looking around for other internal opportunities. April 2025 will be his sixth month. His father, a former client, recommended me to help him with this résumé. What they don’t know is that this is really a two-pronged branding challenge.

The first branding challenge is getting his experience framed the right way. This is a mental exercise.

The second branding challenge is capturing that framework on paper. This is a writing exercise.

The First Challenge

He is NOT a mailroom clerk who specializes in running errands, as his LinkedIn profile would have you believe. He is NOT an MFA grad whose contributions are limited to student-level assignments. He is, in fact, a talented script and production development professional with obvious writing talent who happens to have an MFA and work in the mailroom of a major studio. Big difference. The mailroom job defines what he does, not who he is.

The Second Challenge

Screenwriting has its own peculiar formatting rules. Since it is a writing medium, it makes sense to mimic some of those rules without coming across as too gimmicky. Space that is dedicated to articulating his real talent and career direction is space that does not have to account for the entry-level nature of the internships he held. The whole focus of the writing exercise is to boost his credibility as an industry talent. Fetching coffee for the production team does not qualify as a credibility booster. Notice the mailroom clerk job title is missing.

In other words, he is a writing professional NOW, not when the industry decides to give him a commensurate title. No studio in the country would consider him for even a minor project without seeing samples of his work, so a portfolio link is provided to give the reader a path for further exploration.

And the reason I’m sharing this with you is because many times a client will approach you to solve one problem (a résumé), when the real issue is actually something that has to be addressed first (branding). Anyone can write down a reverse-chronological job history, but is that really what we’re hired to do?

Along with a sample of the résumé I created for this client, here is a list of questions to help you apply a branding mindset to any future projects you might have. Reflecting on these questions will help you think critically about how to approach branding and résumé writing in a way that transcends job titles and focuses on true professional identity and goals.

1. Reframing Identity
   • How can you (or your client) reframe your current job or role to reflect your long-term career goals and true professional identity?
   • Are you letting a temporary position define who you are, rather than what you bring to the table?
2. Core Strengths
   • What are the unique skills and accomplishments that differentiate your client from others in similar roles?
   • How can you highlight things outside the current job to align with your career aspirations?
3. Brand Perception
   • Does your branding (e.g., LinkedIn profile, résumé) tell the story of who you are professionally, or is it focused solely on where you are right now?
4. Positioning for Credibility
   • How can you minimize space dedicated to tasks that don’t enhance your credibility (e.g., administrative or clerical duties) and emphasize your core talents?
   • Are you using industry-specific language to show your understanding of the field?
5. Tailoring to the Industry
   • How can the formatting or tone of your résumé reflect the unique requirements and expectations of your industry, without becoming gimmicky?
   • Are you showcasing relevant creative work, such as linking to a portfolio or providing project examples?
6. Defining the Narrative
   • What narrative are you creating about your career journey, and does it align with your ultimate goals?
   • Are you focusing on how your current experiences are preparing you for the future rather than emphasizing entry-level or unrelated duties?
7. Presenting Work Samples
   • How can you provide access to your work (e.g., portfolios, links, or case studies) in a way that strengthens your professional story?
8. Overcoming Misaligned Perceptions
   • What steps can you take to ensure that employers and decision-makers see your potential and not just your current job title?
9. Understanding the Client’s Real Needs
   • How often do you dig deeper to uncover the true branding challenges behind a client’s request?
   • Do you approach résumé writing as merely compiling job history, or as crafting a persuasive story about a candidate’s future potential?
10. Ongoing Career Development
    • What additional steps (e.g., networking, portfolio building, personal branding) are needed to support the career narrative you’ve developed?

The post Writing with a Branding Mindset appeared first on PARWCC.

Originally, LinkedIn offered a very powerful brand. They promised its members an efficient and effective way to use genuine networking to move their careers forward. For the first time job seekers could reach out authentically and directly to people and organizations who might need their skill sets on their teams.

But LinkedIn didn’t carefully consider the power of the words they use and the product they delivered. Consider the major headings. It should have been no surprise when members saw a portion marked “About,” they took that word literally. They filled up the space with information about their background. But what hiring officials want to know is how someone is going to make them money. Said another way, the “About” section should be a concise and commanding statement of a brand.

Let me use my own “About” section as an example:

“Rising, senior, and very senior executives worldwide who work with me rise above the frustrating business of applying for jobs. The best jobs seek them. I invite you to leverage my coaching and writing skills to win the career you’ve always deserved, get paid what you’re worth, and reduce career stress. We will go far beyond powerful résumés and cover letters. Think of me as your professional career advocate and confidant—the only one who understands your career needs at every level, the only one you can talk to with complete candor. Since actions are stronger than words I never send you to some faceless website…”

As you know so well, a brand is more than a set of specific actions readers will see that prove the author will add value to their organizations. A brand must also identify the market your clients are targeting. Because most readers have very short attention spans, I recommend your clients identify their market right at the beginning of their “About” sections. Since I work exclusively with senior executives, my first sentence is designed to let them know what they will read applies to them directly.

Your well-written “About” sections then expand upon the promises your clients make to future employers. Here’s an example from a client whose specialty is business development for companies supporting the government’s space programs:

“I cultivate a unique blend of leadership expertise, technical systems proficiency, and problem-solving skills at the intersection of federal processes and commercial technologies. These capabilities allow me to address and solve pain-points faced by companies leveraging future space technologies. Those often bring human and operational complexities. I own those challenges: making your vision irresistible to internal and external stakeholders. I lead your people to action – creating excitement and meaningful relationships that further propel your vision. It is my personal mission to advance our organizational goals while cultivating thoughtful relationships with those around me. When that happens, the greatest and most enduring benefit will go to those we serve and the people that make our organization great. I encourage you to email me any hour of any day or night at johnsmith@gmail.com. I promise a prompt reply.” 

LinkedIn continued their missteps by calling the next section “Experience.”

It should not have been a surprise that virtually every member copied and pasted a stripped down version of their usually ineffective résumé here. 

But experience isn’t a laundry list of companies and dates. There are people who don’t have ten years’ experience; they have one year’s experience ten times!

Useful experience shows our clients growing professionally over the years. While their employers’ names and the years they were with them provides context, success stories document how well our clients’ adapt—a vital capability in today’s world. Consider this example from the same client:

“In this position the challenge was as thrilling as the eventual rewards. Senior leadership tasked me to reassign portions of a key satellite program to new, external agencies amid a struggle for how we should grow and increase our resiliency. Of course, doubts arose from all sides. Would engineers lose key contracts? Would the Department of Defense lose services they relied upon? I listened—really listened—to their concerns. I made time to truly understand the goals…I found agencies made assumptions that weren’t solid. I carefully leveraged those missteps into advantages.…I promised every agency I would get them every critical resource they needed…they saw those new resources as the path to successful futures. …By leveraging the strength of each agency partner we formed a coalition. The program, stalled for two years, was soon back on track because I led us to focus on value, not obstacles.”

Your more powerful “About” and “Experience” sections make writing a commanding “Headline” (the text below your clients’ names) easier.

The “Headline” is your clients’ compact brand statement.

Thanks to you, your clients now have a powerful networking tool. You’ve told them networking cannot be hoping potential hiring officials will somehow stumble across their profile. Reinforce that with numbers: LinkedIn has more than 1,000,000,000 members! If only one one-hundredth of them are looking for positions your clients are seeking, the odds they will be found are one in a million!

Your clients’ networking will start to pay off powerfully when their brand is seen by people who find it useful and respond positively. They are found in LinkedIn Special Groups. Guide your clients to sift through the many thousands of such groups to find the few that will work best for them.

Here’s how it’s done.

Your clients can use appropriate keywords to find the best groups. Because the search function is not very precise, the number of hits will be large. These guidelines will help clients find the best groups for them.

• Older is better. The best groups have been around a long time because they consistently offer networking value to their members.
• Bigger is better. You want as many group members to learn about your clients brand as possible. That’s not very likely in a group that consists of fewer than 1,000 people.
• More focus is better. The best groups have posts that are truly useful. Off topic texts never show up.

Because your clients need to be visible in these groups, it’s best to limit their participation to two or three at the most. Trying to produce content for lots of groups every week will be a distraction, not an advantage.

Have your clients apply online to help both them and the group. When they ask to join a group, a manager or administrator will usually respond. Your clients can show their skill at networking by promising to be a valuable member of the group. To do that well, they can ask the administrator or manager what the key issues are now.

Those ideas will drive the content that your clients post. And they can use the same content to post to their entire LinkedIn network as well as the members of groups.

Guide your clients to produce engaging content. Have them ask questions to start building relationships. Consider this post to a group supporting marketing executives:

“I suspect we’re all struggling to find ways to make AI tools as useful and powerful as possible. Given that AI relies so much on the large language model, I’m searching for ways to make our marketing messages truly authentic. In other words, I want our content to sound like people speaking to people—not like some distillation of text posted on websites. I’ve come up with some tentative ideas. But I’d love to bounce them off of other group members to see what their approaches are. That’s too important to be left to a series of posts. If this issue concerns you as much as it does to me, let’s talk about it. If you can suggest days and times I’ll work hard to align my schedule with yours.”

Once your clients have established strong relationships with other LinkedIn members, ask them to consider the next step: requesting recommendations. This has nothing to do with the idea of “selling oneself” many clients find uncomfortable. Consider this example:

“May I ask a favor please? Would you consider writing a LI recommendation for me? This has nothing to do with ego or vanity. Recommendations help me serve others. If you’re willing, once you’ve written your testimonial, please e-mail it to me. Be as specific as possible. I’ve included a brief guide to make the process easy. With many thanks for your time and consideration,”

I hope this article will help you deliver what so many clients really appreciate: you supporting them with value they never anticipated. Before you mentored them, many clients thought LI a useless time waster. After all, the networking invitations and emails  they saw every day were little more than sales pitches. 

Your guidance does more than introduce clients to new approaches. You’ll equip them to make networking easier, more productive, and a great deal more fun than they ever thought possible.

The post LinkedIn’s Flawed Brand Can Boost Your Clients’ Profiles appeared first on PARWCC.

The better news is asking that question is a great way to open up powerful, new opportunities. In this article I’ll offer a rock solid plan to have your practice be the very best it can be.

It all begins with your brand. Is your brand really working for you and your clients? It will, but only if it contains two important elements. The first is a clear definition of your market. The second is your promise of the specific value you pledge to deliver to every client.

Those two elements are tied to your clients’ career fields. If your brand isn’t aligned with those fields, you’ll produce a general résumé—a near useless document.

Let me offer my own brand as an example of folding in both elements: 

“I help rising, senior, and very senior executives win the careers they’ve always deserved, get paid with their worth, and reduce the stress of the job search.”

My market is clear. And I know precisely what I’ve signed up for. I will only work with people who hold senior leadership positions in any career field. I’m also committed to support people in all three economic sectors: private, non-profit, and public. Finally I am committed to assist clients worldwide.

Let’s look at what I promised item by item. Since I pledged to help my clients win the career they’ve always deserved, I must qualify them very carefully. That’s easy when I see people who don’t qualify. Those would include job seekers who have slacked off or have unrealistic expectations.

I promise my clients they would get paid what they are worth. “Paid” is shorthand for the entire compensation package. Said another way I’m going to help them win a reasonable salary (or commissions), perks, benefits, bonuses, and severance. Beyond that I pledge to help them find and thrive in a supportive corporate climate. 

I also pledged to reduce the stress of their job search. Almost all our clients are influenced by two major stress-producing factors. First is not understanding the serious limitations of artificial intelligence (AI). The second is what I call “folklore.” Let’s examine each one.

AI uses the large language model. It searches millions and millions of résumés to find what it considers the best. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those documents were never successful. The result is predictable. AI will guide people to produce résumés that look like too many others. The frustration builds because those job seekers don’t know why they aren’t moving forward. In addition, AI has no sense of empathy, no code of conduct. Users are on their own. No wonder they soon become disenchanted. (What a great opportunity for your marketing campaign!)

“Folklore” produces the same results. The trap is endless searching for so-called “key words.” Those are collections of nice sounding adjectives, traits, or responsibilities. All they really define are the minimum standards. No one would hire somebody who wasn’t… 

“An executive with an exceptional record of success…turning around underperforming organizations…delivering strategies to facilitate growth…excels at leading enterprise-level change…and streamlining processes to increase efficiency.…”

Your advantage is offering clients your wisdom. When we apply advanced techniques we replace uncertainty with confidence.

So let’s use the same techniques that serve your clients so well to bolster your practice. Using your brand as a guideline, describe what your practice would look like if it were the very best it could be. Be as specific as you can. 

Your brand must meet your needs as well your clients’. That’s why you include your preferences in the expanded version of your brand. Theoretically, doing everything for every client might serve them well, but if that required working 70 hours every week, the cost may be too high.

Now compare what your practice looks like today with your ideal model. You’re seeking deficits between the two. Your next steps are now very clear: what must you do to fill those wisdom and knowledge shortfalls?

Formal training and certification programs often meet the need. But before you invest time and money in any of them, ask the provider this key question: “If I completed your training or earned your certification, what would I be able to do at the end of that effort I couldn’t do at the beginning?” You are looking for solid answers. If you get generalities, you’re seeing a program that’s not well put together, not worth your time or money.

PARWCC offers a huge variety of articles, tools, and exercises to help you gain the knowledge you need. One of the most powerful resources is our annual conference. If you haven’t yet looked at what Thrive25! offers (https://www.thrive.show/) do so, keeping the knowledge you need uppermost in your mind.

Now your brand adds real coherence to your plan. It tells you how you are going to benefit your clients with new wisdom. And it is all measured against the market included in your brand statement.

Even if you can’t serve a potential client because they aren’t in your brand, you can still provide value. Refer that jobseeker to a colleague. Your win is the 15% referral fee for very little work. The colleague to whom you referred gets a new client. The client wins because you arranged a great match between their needs and your colleague’s capability.

To make this article valuable please consider this homework. Write out your brand. Are you serving the best market as you define “best?” What’s keeping your practice from being the best it could ever be? Which resources do you need to close the gaps?

Improving your practice is much like what you do for your clients and offers the same kind of returns on investments. Let me illustrate.

Why should my clients pay me $1,200 for a résumé and cover letter? Because I know my brand so well, I know most clients make about $200,000 a year. Every week they aren’t employed at that level costs them the $3,800 they didn’t earn. If I can cut their job search by just two days they will have made up their investment before their first day in the new job.

Suppose you’re research shows it will cost you $5,000 to get the capabilities you need. And suppose you charge $500 for a résumé. You will have made up your investment once you’ve sold ten such documents. Do you write two résumés a week? You’ll recoup your investment in just five weeks, about a tenth of a year.

If you think $5,000 is too much, wait till you do the math if you don’t spend that money. You’ll continue to lose potential earnings every day from now on.

So, I suppose your practice could have a greatest weakness after all. 

That would be not having your brand deliver all the value it can to you, to your clients, and to our industry.

The post What is Your Practice’s Greatest Weakness? appeared first on PARWCC.

Q1 — January/February/March 2025

You have all your P&L totals from 2024, and a few months before taxes are due. But you don’t need precise year-end data to know where your revenue drivers are, where the skill gaps exist, and where the boat is leaking. The beginning of the new year is the right time to DO something different, and it doesn’t have to be a major overhaul. It just has to be something that puts your personal or professional development more in line with your #1 priority, whatever that is.

Power Question: When it comes to résumé writing or career coaching, what is your #1 priority for 2025?

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier

Q2 — April/May/June 2025

This is likely to be your busiest quarter of the year. Yet you’re still going to attend Thrive in Chicago and fill your head with a bunch of new personal and/or business development ideas. This is a good thing; you can’t sell from an empty wagon. But don’t let the buffet line distract you from focusing on that one aspect of your business or development that feeds the reason you pursued this line of work in the first place.

Power Question: What is the most impactful action you can take right now to align your efforts with your core purpose?

“Where your focus goes, your energy flows.” – Tony Robbins

Q3 — July/August/September 2025

Mental health check. What’s working? What’s not working? What parts of your life/work bring you the most joy? What parts of your life/work drain you the most? You can’t be so focused on making a living that you forget to make a life. Before you plan any next steps, conduct an honest assessment of where things stand at this precise moment in time. 

Power Question: Are you living in a way that balances your personal well-being with your professional ambitions, and what adjustments can you make to enhance both?

“Balance is not something you find; it’s something you create.” – Jana Kingsford

Q4 — October/November/December 2025

As you move toward the end of 2025, you’ll have a pretty good sense of your success stories and your shortcomings. Before you enter final grades on your report card, challenge yourself to honor the grace and neutrality of positive and negative outcomes. Both are inevitable; change is optional. Ending the year in a state of gratitude is the fuel for sustaining a healthy and productive path moving forward.

Power Question: What lessons have you learned from your successes and setbacks this year, and how can you carry them forward with gratitude and purpose?

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

The post Power Questions for Quarterly Planning appeared first on PARWCC.

Two were immediately disqualified for targeting the wrong position in their cover letters.

Of the nine résumés that remained:

• 8 were not professionally written. This is a guess, of course, but an educated one. The most visually appealing résumé included one with a two-column format and a photo. It was not selected.
• 6 were two pages; 2 were three pages long.
• All of them included a customized cover letter, as requested in the job ad.
• In general, my fellow committee members were much more critical of the cover letters than they were of the résumés. 
• 4 were selected for interviews. I agreed with three of those choices.

That’s where it stands as of this writing. By the time you read this, there is a good chance that an official offer has been extended and accepted. One person is going to have an even happier holiday season.

Eight will not…at least not as a SWIC employee.

Some of them will perhaps start a position at one of the 10 other jobs they applied for using the exact same résumé. Some of them will postpone their job search until after the new year. Some of them will go to holiday parties and tell their friends how tough the job market is right now.

And a large percentage of the unchosen will never suspect that NOT A SINGLE APPLICANT appeared to customize their résumé for the position. Some had professional experience that was more aligned with the job requirements, but clearly it was up to the reader to make that connection.

For some of them, it might not have made a difference.

But for those of you who serve clients in competitive job search situations, think of targeting the résumé as a bare minimum, drop-dead, gotta-do checklist item that is sure to help them stand out among a pool of DIY résumé writers.

Marketing guru Seth Godin said it this way:

“It’s so tempting to write for everyone. But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is….Name the people you’re writing for. Ignore everyone else.”

In the case of the new SWIC Recruiting Coordinator, someone who ignored that advice is still going to get a job offer. But the candidates who ignored that advice and were not interviewed could have increased their chances tremendously by thinking about the mindset of the people they were writing for.

I expect to see more of this dynamic as AI empowers people to try writing their own résumé or cover letter with a few simple prompts. In the wrong hands, AI is hardly an equalizer. It ensures we’ll have more work in the future. Strategic and authentic writing are both in high demand, still the byproduct of critical thinking.

I look at it this way. I see all these fancy video clips and recipes for the most appetizing meals and desserts, so simple even a non-cooking fool like me could do it. Except even if it turns out good, it’s an accident at best.

Stay in your lane, amateurs! Don’t you know that we’re trained for this?

The post Who Are You Writing For? appeared first on PARWCC.

More recently, Alvin has been in consulting roles and wants to continue along those same lines. Reverse chronology is definitely in play…infinite chronology is not. 

In essence, he’s saying “I’ve done a lot of stuff all over the world, and because of that I have a lot to offer a stateside company who needs someone who knows how to walk that line between hands-on project management and strategic consulting.” 

The nature of project work gives the writer two distinct considerations to navigate:

Redundant types of assignments can be implied to the client’s advantage. Simply provide enough content for the reader to think through…then stop. As if to say “And I did similar work with this company and with this company and with this company.” The power lies in what you don’t say.

In Alvin’s case, this decision was pretty simple. If you want the reader to focus on “2015 to Present” or whatever time frame you choose, then the supporting material — or in this case, the lack thereof — needs to reflect that. You can help the reader focus on RIGHT NOW by taking away the kind of job-by-job analysis that comes with traditional handling of the reverse-chronological format.

Projects are researchable. You can go into detail about each one if you want to, or you can even provide a link on the page that allows the reader to opt for any deep-dive background information. But each one of the Notable Projects listed is a Google-able entity, with details that would let the reader know everything they wanted to know about its size and scope.

His project list spans a wide range of companies and countries. Is it essential for the reader to know his job title and the year he worked on each of them? Perhaps at some point, those details will become more relevant. But to do the kind of work he wants to do now, and to present all that in an easily digestible form without getting lost in the details…the answer is “no”.

A client who walks in the door with pride, experience, a solid reputation, and pages and pages of source information is often shocked by taking this kind of approach. I get that. It doesn’t have to be done my way to be effective. 

But I think where we sometimes go astray is when we assume that a second or even third page — by sheer volume alone — will carry the value we hope to convey. Given the shrinking nature of an average reader’s attention span, that can be a dangerous assumption to make.

Can implied value be equal to or greater than value that is overtly stated? Co-creating value in the mind of a résumé reader is a collaborative mental process, facilitated by a written process, that relies on a delicate balance between the known and the unknown. 

Keep in mind that, in this case, the decision to go with a one-page format was NOT pre-meditated. The goal was to showcase the most recent 10-year period, and then ask “Does the remaining content support or distract from seeing the client as a solution to the reader’s problem?” 

If I really wanted to drive that message home, would saying it louder help? If you believe it would, keep writing. If you believe the volume is sufficient, stop. Trust the process. Based on the quality of the content you present — as opposed to the amount of content you choose NOT to present — did you get the volume right?

The post Turn Down the Volume appeared first on PARWCC.

 — New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language

résumé n. a powerful, nearly magical document endowed with special powers that got someone else a job but is governed by arcane rules about which everyone has different opinions.

—The lexicon of the layman, too many job posting websites,

and an army of uninformed résumé writers

résumé n. a document offering easily grasped value…to employers, clients, professional résumé writers, career coaches, and our industry.

—The careers professional’s lexicon

The first definition seems right to the harried lexicographer who must sort 230,000 words. The second seems right to most job seekers and many potential clients. This is becoming even more true with the advent of AI. The last should be right to professional résumé writers—once they reflect on the precise, powerful roles we should demand of every résumé we write.

I’ll start by describing the stress affecting hiring decision makers. Then I’ll lay out three roles you can use to judge if your next draft résumé is good enough for the client to see. Last, I’ll show you how to use our definition to build your practice.

Context counts: why the interviewer is more nervous than our clients:

A harried executive is shorthanded; he needs another sales representative. His boss’ office is his first stop. There he must get his boss’ permission to spend company money and risk bringing on a new person. He is appealing to the person who writes his performance review. There’s only one argument our potential hiring manager can muster: the new employee must make the company more money than it costs to find, hire, and keep him. 

It’s quite a gamble. In a recent LinkedIn discussion, the “best answer” to the question “is it still hard to find good help?” included these words: “Yes.… We’re still having a problem finding highly qualified candidates that are not currently employed or who are seeking to make a career move,” wrote an IT recruiter. 

Our harried executive has seen people who aren’t good on the job. He knows someone, just like him, chose those deadbeats as the best of a field of eligibles. If others can make that mistake, so can our hiring manager.

When someone hires the wrong person, he does more than break the ROI promise he made to his boss; he lets down his entire company. 

Nevertheless, the work must be done. So he turns to his best employee. He explains how the new guy needs help and asks his top performer if she will assist. She probably will…for a little while. After all, she’s already overworked (that’s why they hired the new guy). Now her boss wants her to continue to do her work while also doing part of the new guy’s work, all without getting part of the new guy’s salary. If that keeps up, the company suffers three body blows.

The top performer, now disgruntled, goes to the competition with all the proprietary information and customer databases. (Body blow one.) Then she recruits her friends, also valued employees. (Body blow two.) Meanwhile, Mr. Incompetent has been fired, thus costing the company money they invested his training. (Body blow three.)

To put yet more hyperactive butterflies in the interviewer’s stomach, he knows he isn’t trained for the task. It’s surrounded by folklore, comical if it weren’t so corrosive. For example, precisely why did the following question turn up on a job site’s top ten list: “If you were an animal, what kind of an animal would you be?”

If the résumé you write is the first to ease the employers’ burden, your client gets job offers. Let’s make it as easy for you as you made it for the employer.

Three roles every résumé must fill:

A document that lets the hiring decision maker to deliver on the promise he made to his boss and his entire company. Each résumé must exceed hiring decision makers’ expectations, proving your client understands the target company’s key problems and has a track record of success transferable to the new organization. In short, organizations must grasp how your client plans to make them more money than it costs to bring him or her on board. The previous sentence should be read again.

“Summaries of Qualifications” rarely meet that standard. (“An Obituary for the Summary of Qualifications,” The Spotlight, August 2023, pp. 9+) They are usually a collection of buzzwords or traits that unintentionally describe mediocrity. (Would anybody hire anybody who isn’t a “top-notch problem solver?”) Responsibilities, too, have little place in the résumé. (“Where Quality Resides,” The Spotlight, May 2023, pp. 8+) If the reader recognizes the list of responsibilities, she still has no idea how well the applicant performed. If the reader doesn’t recognize the responsibilities, she may draw the wrong conclusion: our client isn’t qualified.

Why not let organizations see how our client intends to act as the best in his field? Since invitations go to individuals, why not include the company’s name in that pledge? Here’s an example:

What I offer Arista as your newest HR Manager

• A proven leader whose teams get cost-saving results that last,
• An expert at turning compliance requirements into opportunities that build production and save money,
• A respected professional who designs and administers affirmative action and diversity programs that contribute to corporate success, and
• A capable project manager who delivers results on time and on, or under, cost estimates.

Yes, I know all about the fixation of “key words” and ATS. We all also know that the success rate for posting a résumé on line is small. So let’s cover both bases.

Write your ATS résumé just as you always do. Then offer the advanced résumé described below. It and the cover letter go directly to the actual hiring decision maker (who will rarely be HR). In the cover letter, tell the reader your client has already applied on line. But your client is writing because he knows the reader has the biggest stake in the outcome. Thanks to mail merge, you don’t have to “tailor” each copy of the advanced résumé or cover letter.  Of course, you charge for both versions. 

In the end, it’s transferable performance that counts. The Challenge-Action-Response-Transferability model is very well known. But why not make the value stand out? Here’s a typical example:

  Transforming Compliance into Productivity   

Payoffs: When the leader of a $20B organization asked me to streamline the complex ISO 9001 audit program, I improved the policy so all 16 offices would respond to SMEs’ suggestions. Got every player training and certifications they needed. Delivered two months early and $100K under budget. My approach now the corporate standard. Saved $600K in manpower costs.

As templates for outstanding interviews, our résumés must “sound” like our clients, so they look as good on paper as they do in person. And we have to entice the interviewer to ask questions our clients want them to ask. Therefore, our documents should pass these tests:

• Did we, inadvertently, give our client too much or too little credit for what they’ve done? You and the client must stand behind the integrity of what you write.
• Did we capture all the client’s relevant success stories? Our client deserves credit for all she does. Showing what the client did isn’t good enough. We must also tell how the client performed in ways the target company values. 
• Does the philosophy and word choice sound like our client? The words we use must show our client’s passion and thought process clearly. If we used jargon, did we do so correctly?

As levers to negotiate salary, benefits, perks, bonuses, and severance, what we write should protect our client from a lowball salary offer. When we quantify results, particularly revenue made or dollars saved, the interviewer stops thinking of our client as a cost and sees him as a good investment. 

If the applicant saves the company a single turnover, if he can rescue one $25K contract, no well-run company will quibble over a $5K gap between what they planned to offer and what your client needs to reflect the return on investment he delivers.

Now you have three solid criteria to judge a résumé before you start to write. Use them in your initial consultation with potential clients. Do they understand what it takes to be the best? Does their track record reflect that understanding? Are they thinking like the next employer? If you sense the answer is “no” to any of these questions, you may not want to take on this job seeker. No one can—and no professional should—try to portray a lack of performance as a benefit.

Use the same criteria to help build your brand. Once you demystify the process, you’ll attract better clients and find it easier to work with them. Also, your in-depth knowledge will reflect well on our industry. It also will make this key point: AI can only go so far in helping people win great jobs. 

When your documents meet their required roles, clients win the jobs, companies win great employees, you win more money, and our industry wins the stature it has always deserved.

The post Beyond the Basics: Crafting Resumes that Truly Stand Out appeared first on PARWCC.

Just like that first email from your last client, my project came at a very busy time. And, just like your last client, the general officer who asked for my help had a large personal stake in the outcome. And perhaps like your last client, I had never done precisely this kind of project before. And perhaps just like you, I signed up enthusiastically and agreed to a deadline I should have thought about twice.

When it was all done, my mentor took me aside. “Next time,” he said, “try using this.” He handed me his business card. Puzzled, I just stared at him. “Turn it over,” he said.

There, on the back of the card, was a single column of three boxes. This is what it looked like:

For a moment, I didn’t get it. Then it became very clear: If you want it good and fast, it won’t be cheap; if you want it cheap and fast, it won’t be good. You get the idea. Now I want you and your clients to get the idea too by adapting the model that has served me so well. 

If I had the same thing on the back of my business card, I would print it with the word “Good” already checked. And I would say: “Check any one of the remaining two boxes.” Good is not negotiable. 

I know you’re tempted sometimes to take on a project you know you shouldn’t, but you need a little extra money. That extra money costs way too much. Whatever you write may have your client’s name at the top, but it is your work. It will always help define your brand. Because your work is excellent, those in the know will want to hire you. 

But when you charge low rates, you’re not making enough to grow your business. Because your prices are low, those who don’t know you may go elsewhere; they think they get what they pay for. Those who have little to offer will seek you out, but you can’t do much to help them. And they may blame you for their failures.

Consider the résumé writer (usually not a member of a professional organization) who churns out “cookie cutter” résumés at very low cost. they charge less because his labor is less. 

But his brand is defined for him—by his clients (whose “cookie cutter” résumés keep them from the best jobs) and by perspective employers (who recognize hackneyed writing when they see it). His brand is: cheap. They are the Spirit Airlines of résumé writers. 

It only gets worse. Others in our industry would never refer a client to him. Because they have no new ideas, they never contribute to the literature, you never see them at professional conferences. If their work didn’t reflect so poorly on our industry, they would be irrelevant. That is why greatness in what you do is never negotiable.

While “cheap” isn’t something we want to be associated with either, it does remind us about levels of investment we set and the value we deliver. There are two important ideas referenced in that previous sentence.

First, I never refer to “price.” I like neither the denotation nor the connotation. Webster’s definition: “…that which must be done, sacrificed, suffered, etc. in return for something…a price on someone’s head…to have one’s price, to be willing to be bribed if the bribe is big enough.” 

Also, prices are associated with commodities. Because commodities are always identical, those who sell them usually compete on price. No matter where you buy, that refrigerator you’re thinking about will always be precisely the same thing.

No one—not career professionals, not job seekers, not recruiters—can afford a “one-size-fits-nobody” résumé, bio, or LinkedIn profile.

“Invest,” on the other hand, is much closer to the mark: “to expect a yield, profit or income.” Even the secondary meaning is positive, “to confer an office or rank upon.” In short, our clients should make or save more money than it costs to engage us. That’s a grand thing for us to believe. But it counts for nothing if our clients don’t believe it.

We want our clients to see a return on their investment. The greater the investment, the greater the likelihood of a big return. That reminds us to tailor the products and services we offer to the level of investment our clients can make. And we’re talking about more than money. 

Consider two clients. Both are senior. Both have great track records. Both need about the same services. One is very busily employed; the other is between jobs. Should the levels of investment—can the levels of investment—be the same?

My unemployed client can make a much greater investment in time. That means I have to do less work. His level of investment is appropriately lower. On the other hand, my working client’s days are not her own. I must do more of the work. Her investment is correspondingly higher. The same reasoning is behind all the services we offer.

People pay me more when I prepare Federal applications. Why? Because Federal applications are arduous. Time is money. 

Even when there are no forms, the difficulty of the task raises the amount I charge. Those who have written Executive Core Qualifications as part of a Senior Executive Service application know exactly what I mean. The writing standards are very high indeed. Quality costs money.

Time is money in another way as well. That’s where “fast” comes in. You can usually spot potential clients who want to know, right up front, how much you charge for a résumé. What they probably want is your price for doing a résumé overnight or over the weekend. 

If they could see the back of your “improved” business card, the only word that would blare out at them is “FAST.” If you agree to this arrangement, you both paid too high a price. 

Naturally, you charged the client more for night or weekend work. And you incurred the cost of time away from your family and the extra fatigue that comes from working two weeks straight. We avoid such waste by remembering the first standard: “Good.”

Good defeats most arbitrarily imposed deadlines. Your client may think he needs a résumé right now, but what he really wants is a job. Guide him to see the difference in terms that serve you, your client and his next boss. Let’s listen in:

Caller: “How much do you charge for a résumé? I need mine updated right away.”

Coach: “Are you trying to meet a very tight deadline? I ask because I like my clients to help set the level of investment, so they get top value.”

Caller: “Yes, they said they needed a résumé by tomorrow morning.”

Coach: “I can see the pressure they’ve put you under. Let’s see how we can help them and still get the best value for you. People who want your résumé need your help to fill a job right away. Someone thinks you are a good candidate. He’s putting his credibility on the line when he forwards your résumé. Does that make sense?”

Caller: “I think so. But if I don’t get the résumé to them by COB tomorrow, I may not get the job.”

Coach: “So let’s offer that person an alternative. Tell him you understand his problem. And your first thought was to give him the résumé you have now. But you want him to get the credit for helping hire the right person. So, if he can trade a little time for a lot of quality, wouldn’t he prefer a document tailored right to his company’s needs? 

Rather than being dismissed for not meeting some arbitrary deadline, I think you’ll be seen as ready to do something extra to fill the company’s needs. There are very few jobs that can’t go unfilled for a few days.” 

I have lost a few sales with that approach. What if the caller persists in his unreasonable deadline? You could update his résumé, but you need information from him after normal business hours today. Of course, you want to be sure your client has time to review the draft. Since the company wants the résumé in the morning, that means the client must work with you late today and before normal business hours tomorrow to complete the review. It’s going to be a long night for him. 

However, it will be an even longer night for you. You must give your undivided attention to this project. Specifically, you may work until midnight and then come in early. All these things you are happy to do, but there is an express charge.

How much should the express charge be? Large enough to meet your needs. I hate working weekends or through the night. So I kept doubling the express charge until I knew no one could afford it. Today, a client would have to pay me an additional $1,000 to work under those conditions. 

The reason I know that is a ridiculous amount is simple: I haven’t worked through the night or over a weekend in more than five years! And if I ever get a client who will pay $1,000 above the normal investment, I will do two things. First, I will admit my plan failed. Second, I will raise the express charge to $2,000!

It is up to us to maximize our efficiency. Simply put, we must write truly exceptional job search documents quickly. We can speed up our writing in several ways.

Put Word to work. It’s amazing how much time you save when you exploit automated templates, AutoText and AutoCorrect, high speed desktop search engines, unattended backups and security scans. If any of those terms are new to you, pick just one and master it. 

Proofing slow you down? Word can read what you wrote aloud. That helps me find the typos I miss if I am just scanning the file.

Each time you use a software trick, you save only a few seconds. Each time you use several software tricks, you are saving a minute or more. How many documents do you produce in a year? If your answer is around 160, then you might save 240 minutes each year. That’s four hours of your time!

Put your self-discipline to work. Because time management fills many books, I won’t dwell on it. But I offer this suggestion: treat yourself as you would your best client. When you commit to writing anything, commit to scheduling yourself uninterrupted time to complete the task. You’ll be amazed at what a lack of distractions can do for you. Promising yourself time to write the documents means you can promise your client a fixed review date, something that gives her peace of mind.

Put your professional development to work. You’re already doing some of that now as you read this issue of The Spotlight. But I’m going to suggest a better approach. Decide which skills you need to master, then pick just one and follow through. 

Do you want to expand your coaching skills, then consider the CPCC coaching program like the one offered by Diane Hudson. Do you want to tap into the huge veteran market? Sign up for the CVCS certification, the first and only one of its kind in the nation. 

But there is another, irreplaceable opportunity. Thrive!2025 is 208 days away. Check https://www.thrive.show/ regularly to learn which topics will be covered. One or more are bound to fit your needs. 

I know. April 27 seems a long way into the future. But it takes time and effort to get the most from attending. 

If you master just one skill, your practice will continue to grow and prosper.

My mentor’s “magic business card” was something new. It introduced me to the difference between value and features. 

Our brands must be promises of value, never a collection of features. That value rests on greatness. What remains is how quickly and at what level of investment we’ll deliver that greatness. When we do that well, our clients win…and so do we.

The post Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick 2! The Secret to a Thriving Business and Life appeared first on PARWCC.

“In both lab-controlled experiments and real-world trials, headlines that used common words with fewer syllables attracted more reader engagement. More analytic and complex headlines got fewer clicks, and some readers didn’t even remember them just minutes after seeing them.”

What are the implications for résumé writers?

For one, it is a reminder that résumé reading is often done in a competitive online environment where people are “economical with their attention.” No surprise there. But perhaps more importantly, the study revealed a gap between writers and readers, a “disconnect between what journalists think audiences will read and what they actually do.”

I believe that same gap is abundant across our industry. It applies to my work, your work, and anyone else who uses the written word to address a decision-making audience. And it applies to more than just headlines.

Our Fundamentals team recently explored one of the ways this might creep into your own work. A common concept among résumé writers is to “match the language of the job description” because the ATS will use that language as the basis for scanning résumé content to identify qualified candidates.

We looked at a randomly selected job description that included this phrase: 

“Set strategy for data governance work streams to ensure integrity and quality of large data sets that inform business decisions and optimize operations, influencing 3rd party vendors and internal analytics partners to manage timelines and deliverables.”

It might be grammatically correct, but that sentence received a negative score on more than one readability tool. It is a collection of syllables not worthy of being copied and pasted as is. It SOUNDS very corporate, but that’s about it. If it’s important enough to be included, it’s important enough to be included more simply.

A simplified version of that phrase might look like this: 

“Create plans to ensure important data is correct and useful, enabling better business decisions and work efficiency. Partner with outside companies and internal teams to track progress and meet deadlines.”

That’s much better from a readability standpoint because it has fewer words and syllables, but it comes at a price. If you regurgitate what was originally written, theoretically you stand a better chance of satisfying the ATS gods…but readability is compromised. If you revise what was originally written, you risk that ATS alignment…but stand a better chance of connecting with a human reader. Now imagine making that decision 25-50 times within the same document. The potential upside is huge.

To anyone studying for the CPRW credential or looking to improve the way their work resonates with readers, I wholeheartedly support the conclusion that researchers have once again affirmed: “When all else is equal, and you are on the fence…simpler language is better.”

[HINT: CPRW test submissions are graded by certified WRITERS, not electronic tools or certified readers. Play your hand accordingly.]

The post The Science of Simple appeared first on PARWCC.