So You Want To Be A Professional Resume Writer

Especially with the employment market experiencing such unstable times, and with literally thousands of jobs being lost, there could not be a better time to learn this valuable skill and start your own resume writing business.

In fact, there is never a bad time to learn how to write an interview-winning resume and gain strong, focused resume and cover letter writing skills as this is one skill always in demand whether just for yourself or for a host of others.

What Skills or Qualifications Do You Need?

While good spelling and grammatical skills and a solid understanding and feel for sentence construction are vitally important, and the ones that jump immediately to mind, other critical must haves include:

~ An eye for detail and layout

~ Persistence and the ability to see past the obvious and to keep on digging and delving until you have uncovered all the really important nuggets of information.

~ Strong people skills to the point you are able to see each client as a unique individual. When you write a resume and cover letter you are not dealing with tiresome sheets of lifeless paper, you are capturing an individuals skills and experience, their goals and dreams, their achievements and their strengths, alive and compelling on paper.

And that is the point you must always be coming from when you are a professional resume writer. You are dealing with peoples lives. This is how they pay their bills, go on holidays, feed and educate their children, find fulfilment in their daily activities. With each resume and cover letter you compile as a resume writer, you should never lose sight of the importance to the individual, and often to his or her family.

~ You need to have the desire to keep on learning and growing and the commitment to keep up with current trends.

~ And you need to have marketing skills. After all, how will anyone come to you to compile their documents if they do not know you exist.

Sounds like a lot? But all these areas can be learned over time with persistence and commitment, and of course through the Internet you can become involved in supportive small business organizations and forums, learn marketing skills, or tap into the expertise and support of business and marketing coaches and experts.

Deciding How You Will Work

Where once it was necessary to sit down with your client to extract all the relevant information, it can now be accomplished easily via email without any loss of information or even of personal service. With the right tools and systems it is possible to work with clients in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, India, the Maldives, and Australia and still provide a comfortable, friendly and personal service, without ever speaking with your client. You only need to be on the same language wave length.

So really, the choice is up to you whether to establish a shop front or work from home. If you decide to work from home, the choice is then yours whether you wish to meet with your clients, interview your clients over the phone, meet at a local coffee shop or serviced offices to conduct interviews, work solely online via a questionnaire or utilise a combination of approaches.

Just remember, if you are having people into your home there are issues of Personal Liability Insurance and the security issues of allowing strangers into your home. Always seek advice from a professional insurance provider to get the safest and best advice.

What Equipment Will You Need

It can be costly setting up a business, but you do not necessarily have to run out and purchase everything straight away. When working from home, at a minimum you will need a:

~ Reliable, up-to-date computer with the ability to produce documents in MS Word format, as the most commonly used program, and high quality, extremely reliable, virus protection

~ Reliable Internet connection with a professional email address

~ Business phone line or mobile, though it is possible to start with your home phone line as long as everyone in the family understands the need to answer the phone in a most professional method, and little ones not at all

~ Method of sending and receiving faxes, whether through your computer or stand-alone

~ Good quality, reliable printer, preferably laser

~ Good quality, professional business cards

~ Secure payment methods. PayPal is available to most countries and has proven to be a secure method of payment, or you could establish a method of accepting credit card and other payments. In Australia, companies such as StrataPay allow small business to accept payments via credit card, BPay, Australia Post BillPay and more. Search your region for a similar service provider.

A web site is not totally necessary in the early days. Once you have learnt solid resume writing skills, you can start your business economically by initially networking, networking and networking your local community.

~ Offer to give a talk and provide resume critiques at your local library

~ Give resume writing instruction and advice at the local high schools or colleges

~ Get to know the local recruitment agencies

~ Hand out business cards wherever you go

Once you have written a few resumes and secured testimonials from your happy clients you are in a much stronger position to put together a web site that has the presence of an experienced writer complete with reassuring testimonials, rather than someone who is just starting out.