As I finished my resume prep session, I looked over at the time on the lower right-hand corner of my computer and I realized over 2 hours had passed since I began to plan/write my latest resume. Yet, if you were to look over my shoulder at my computer screen, you would not believe me. I have the contact information laid out, the color scheme has been carefully selected and harmonized, the skeleton of what will eventually be a bountiful and masterpiece of a resume is carefully outlined with ideas I need to convey. The personal branding is so far composed of a few trigger words. Yet, not one sentence has been fully written. What was I doing? Daydreaming? No. I was dancing.

You see, when you are an expert and a passionate resume writer, you set out to deep-dive into your clients’ career life. If you are committed to capturing your client’s true unique value, meeting the needs of the future employer, and igniting interest over other candidates, you will introspect and embark on a writing journey that is time-consuming, challenging, and time transcendent. I am not kidding.

Before I begin to communicate my client’s career triumphs on paper, and after our deep interview session, you will discover me ‘dancing’ with the ideas that are floating in my mind and fixed on identifying a unique brand; cavorting with phrases, concepts, and cancelling out similarities; playing the role of employer and analyzing for possible negative conclusions, contriving to avert any doubts. I envision my target audience (employer) and strategize how I am to captivate, provoke, flirt, enthrall, intoxicate if I must; but do everything I can short of grabbing the phone myself and holding it up to the ear of the hiring authority and shouting “call my client for an interview, now!”

Reflecting on this prep/writing process of mine inspired this post. I wondered how many of my colleagues were at that very moment ‘time travelling’ and ‘dancing’ with, through, and over the details they have garnered during an interview session. How many are targeting, outweighing, distilling, repositioning, evaluating, pondering, crafting, and rewriting in order to create a masterful dossier UNLIKE those they have written before? (Solidarity my friends!)

Resume dancers (expert resume writers) are hard at work, submerging into their clients’ past, forecasting employer needs, transcending time by analytically predicting whom their clients are becoming and plotting a story around why the employer should care. That is the difference between those that build a resume as an art form and those that merely rehash a work history that fails to neither make anyone FEEL excited nor believe that this client’s work life merits further exploration.

Here is to my elite resume-writing colleagues (you know who you are) who with the goal of positioning their clients for success, plunge into their client’s work life as incisively as some ravish the latest Oprah Book Club selection. You are a credit to this industry and I do dare dance along with you!

To you job seeker, if you are trying to go at it alone, I hope you rethink this plan; because, if a blank document on your computer screen with the cursor blinking doesn’t excite you, the end result won’t  induce a more favorable emotion from your employer either. Leave it up to us ‘geeks’ who love to write, dance with words and ideas, and who will skillfully and passionately communicate your differentiating value, winning you the interview you dream of. Then, it is your turn to dance.

 By Rosa Elizabeth Vargas