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I thought I’d tell you about Mr. and Ms Resume know best. Thankfully it is pretty rare that I meet one these characters, but still, they definitely make their presence felt. Probably around 2 in 100 clients come from the know best family.
How can you identify Mr and Ms. Resume know best? Usually it happens once they see a first draft. Comments like this sort of thing:
"I have no doubt in your ability as a professional resume writer. But I noticed many small grammar mistakes…." (from a client whose English is their second language – when I asked what the exact grammar mistakes were she couldn’t tell me)
"Sorry Andrea it’s nothing personal but I don’t feel comfortable submitting this Selection Criteria. The structure of the sentences seem wrong, and I don’t think this will get me a job. It’s nothing personal. It’s just I review quite a few of these documents on a regular basis………" This client could give me nothing more exact than this general comment. I rewrote the document ever so slightly and the client was happy. Leaving me baffled, but who am I to reason why?
"I could have done a better job writing the resume myself…" So why didn’t you???!!!
Thankfully these know best characters are very rare, like I said, less than 2% of people have these characteristics. The problem is they are so negative that they cast a dark cloud over everything one does and thinks.
I remind myself, that 98% or more of my clients are happy as a lark!~ they give me the most wonderful feedback, gain interviews, jobs and are over the moon about my work. I guess it is human nature to focus more on the negative sometimes, these sorts of comments can be both surprising and disheartening.
In life, I have observed, these people crop up occasionally. They criticise you "as a friend" or to "help you out." Their intention is not to help or be a friend at all, but to suppress, crush, push down and invalidate.
So my strategy now is to not get into any of it, or take it up. If I receive an email such as one of the examples above, I "rise above it" do not take it up, and focus on the solution or positive outcome, which does eventuate. It has taken a few years in business to learn that these characters are encountered by all of us whether we run a resume business, work with them, see them at playgroup, or the local bank.
I guess the point of the story here is, if you think you know best in relation to resumes, selection criteria, or cover letters, you should write them yourself! Don’t ask me to rewrite them for you!! |
