Thursday, December 08, 2005
Resume PIA clients
Okay, the pains-in-the-ass aren't more than 1% of my clients, but when I do get them, they sure are fun.
Paraphrased e-mail conversation from recently:
Client: "I don't like the resume you wrote. I want you to add this job I had as a bartender, I want the paragraph about my job duties to be all in bullet point form, and I want only one duty per sentence so no one gets confused. I also want you to go over this new page of duties I wrote up about my last job and didn't include on either my old resume or in the questionnaire form I sent at the beginning of this process."
Me: "You aren't looking for a bartending job, so it's not a good idea to include the fact that you were a bartender for 10 years. Putting everything into bullet points tends to minimize the impact of the key accomplishments we already have bulleted. Reading a long list where each sentence is exactly one duty in exactly the same format will get tedious for the reader very quickly. I strongly recommend against all these changes. We [the company I'm subcontracting for, not the royal we] trust that you're the expert at knowing what you did at your job, and we hope you trust us to be the experts at our job, which is making you look as good as possible on paper."
Client: "Well, okay. What about these new job duties I sent you?"
[Insert time for review]
Me: "What you've sent me is a very detailed account of everything I've just summarized on your resume--that is, you haven't given me any new duties, just a step-by-step account of every single thing you did to accomplish the duties already listed. Adding this material will push your resume to two pages, which isn't a good idea for someone who has only one relevant job and four years of relevant experience in the field the resume is targeting. However, if you feel any of these items are particularly critical to convey on the resume, please let me know which specific items, and I'll happily add them. I just feel we should avoid making the same mistakes that were made on your previous resume, which presumably wasn't working, or you wouldn't have had any reason to come to us in the first place."
Client: "Don't waste my time responding to my messages instead of making the changes I want. I'm a busy professional. I'm not going to tell you what I want to add because I'm not going to write the resume myself. You're the resume writer. I paid $300 for this resume. And why haven't you added that bartender job? I had management duties!"
Me: [Refers client to parent company.]
The ones with funny follow-up from the company are the best. In this case, the company response included this sentence: "As a rule, once we educate a client, if they ask us to go counter to our guidelines we should attempt to meet their needs." Translation: "Just do the stupid thing the client wants instead of giving them the best resume. You know that!" Sadly, I do indeed know that.
Some other day I'll tell you the one about the client who threatened to sue me and who later demanded that the writer to whom my company reassigned his resume watch a video he had on resumes, because he used to run a national executive recruiting company (he managed to misspell both "executive" and "national" at various points).
Paraphrased e-mail conversation from recently:
Client: "I don't like the resume you wrote. I want you to add this job I had as a bartender, I want the paragraph about my job duties to be all in bullet point form, and I want only one duty per sentence so no one gets confused. I also want you to go over this new page of duties I wrote up about my last job and didn't include on either my old resume or in the questionnaire form I sent at the beginning of this process."
Me: "You aren't looking for a bartending job, so it's not a good idea to include the fact that you were a bartender for 10 years. Putting everything into bullet points tends to minimize the impact of the key accomplishments we already have bulleted. Reading a long list where each sentence is exactly one duty in exactly the same format will get tedious for the reader very quickly. I strongly recommend against all these changes. We [the company I'm subcontracting for, not the royal we] trust that you're the expert at knowing what you did at your job, and we hope you trust us to be the experts at our job, which is making you look as good as possible on paper."
Client: "Well, okay. What about these new job duties I sent you?"
[Insert time for review]
Me: "What you've sent me is a very detailed account of everything I've just summarized on your resume--that is, you haven't given me any new duties, just a step-by-step account of every single thing you did to accomplish the duties already listed. Adding this material will push your resume to two pages, which isn't a good idea for someone who has only one relevant job and four years of relevant experience in the field the resume is targeting. However, if you feel any of these items are particularly critical to convey on the resume, please let me know which specific items, and I'll happily add them. I just feel we should avoid making the same mistakes that were made on your previous resume, which presumably wasn't working, or you wouldn't have had any reason to come to us in the first place."
Client: "Don't waste my time responding to my messages instead of making the changes I want. I'm a busy professional. I'm not going to tell you what I want to add because I'm not going to write the resume myself. You're the resume writer. I paid $300 for this resume. And why haven't you added that bartender job? I had management duties!"
Me: [Refers client to parent company.]
The ones with funny follow-up from the company are the best. In this case, the company response included this sentence: "As a rule, once we educate a client, if they ask us to go counter to our guidelines we should attempt to meet their needs." Translation: "Just do the stupid thing the client wants instead of giving them the best resume. You know that!" Sadly, I do indeed know that.
Some other day I'll tell you the one about the client who threatened to sue me and who later demanded that the writer to whom my company reassigned his resume watch a video he had on resumes, because he used to run a national executive recruiting company (he managed to misspell both "executive" and "national" at various points).
Comments:
<< Home
Years back I worked for a little while as a typesetter for a couple of companies. In the typesetting world, which is very involved with how things look on a page, it's common for customers to supply samples of how they want the finished product to appear -- typeface samples, layout samples, size samples, etc.
A customer once called up complaining to one of the account reps at the place where I was working at the time. The customer didn't like how the proof version of a particular job had turned out. The account rep pointed out to the customer that the proof matched the sample the customer had provided.
The customer said, "Well, just because I sent you a sample, that doesn't mean that's what I wanted it to look like."
A customer once called up complaining to one of the account reps at the place where I was working at the time. The customer didn't like how the proof version of a particular job had turned out. The account rep pointed out to the customer that the proof matched the sample the customer had provided.
The customer said, "Well, just because I sent you a sample, that doesn't mean that's what I wanted it to look like."
After that, I would totally include his 10-year stint as a bartender. Let him look like the jackass he is.
Haha, during my last period of unemployment I had a friend who was doing recruiting for a banking firm. He let me read the resumes—absolutely hilarious. These were all college-educated individuals, etc. While being a writer seemingly didn't qualify me for many jobs, I definitely feel that it made me qualified to laugh my ass off.
Word verification: gyrytree
Post a Comment
Word verification: gyrytree
<< Home
