As you are getting yourself ready for a new client, it’s important to structure your resume / portfolio services accurately so they’ll know what to expect and how to respond. One of the reasons coaches choose ProductHired is the flexibility in services you can offer. It becomes even more important to provide a great first time experience to your client, so they’ll continue to come back to you for your experience in a particular area.
With that in mind, offering resume review sessions are a great way to make introductions and provide value up front before establishing a stronger relationship with the client. We recommend offering these sessions for free or a fraction of the cost initially, so you’ll be able to provide a bite sized learning. That way, if they are interested in longer term coaching, they’ll reach out to you again.
Back to the topic on structuring these sessions, resumes are like the entrance test to a company. Clients are really trying to understand if you pass their bar to join the ProductHired club. It’s really about relating and nailing the content on the resume to the opportunity being presented. This renewed information is critical for your client so they know how to go about their resume.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into how you should assess a resume before you can provide value as a coach. Then, we’ll want to engage with the client so they’ll know what to improve in their resume/portfolio. Lastly, it’ll become apparent soon enough that the resume will be able to address certain interview questions so we’ll explore how to address those questions with the newly improved resume advice you just shared. Let’s dig in.
Table of Contents
- Run through the clients resume before the call
- Review the resume with the client during the call
- Measure success of the client’s resume – Tips and Next Steps
REVIEW THE RESUME BEFORE TALKING WITH THE CLIENT
Once the session is booked, make sure to review the resume before the call to understand requirements. Some candidates do not have appropriate level-up resumes and use the same old structured sentences written a long time ago.
Every resume must equate to what professionals of a certain level are expected to showcase. Any missing or misleading parts must be identified with the help of samples depending on the industry need of the client. For example, if you are a product manager at a well known corporate company, be sure to include specific results you drove in the role like achieving 7% revenue growth from the referral program I launched.
Structure, content, meaningfulness seem like your top highlights of the discussion and keep this info handy during the discussion. Critique and highlight edits and missing components as required, so you can discuss and provide recommendations as needed.
The truth is that we know resumes show off candidates. We should showcase accomplishments as a brand, and language needs to be exactly what matters the most to the potential employers. One needs to show results oriented approach to quantify the work administered and avoid generic and vague statements. Let’s look at an example snippet from the resume of Product Manager:
Generic, vague statement:
- Led a product team of 2 engineers, 1 designers to launch an iOS app (Feedback – This is expected of the role, interviewers will want to know your effort to launching this product)
Strong, descriptive, quantified statement:
- Led an iOS product launch that added 50K active users per month during the first 3 weeks. (Feedback – Specific, measurable stats show the value of your work to the company. Interviewers will like this.)
REVIEW THE RESUME WITH THE CLIENT
To review the resume with the client, you must review keyword acronyms from the industry in general and specific employers of choice should be well researched to be included. Some considerations include not to use personal pronouns, age, gender, religion, political affiliation, ethnicity, marital status, social security number, references or salary expectations/history.
Include areas of improvement/importance
Scale your client’s resume as required by changing sections which are unrelated or repetitive. Make sure that the resume is targeting the right audience through tacky product positioning, creative product vision and adaptive description.
Pros and Cons
We know that resumes tell a story, but this story should not be too customized or time consuming. Focus should highlight the client’s skills and make the candidate standout with results and accomplishments in every structured sentence. After all, it makes sense that customers should present themselves to get noticed through matching exact job requirements with results so candidates can showcase real authentic skills.
How to handle providing feedback to the client
From first impression to appearance including design, font and appearance, make sure even labelling is correctly formatted. Contrary to one size fits all, resume should be targeted with quantified accomplishments e.g. strong varied actions verbs starting every sentence. Resume should employ first person voice with logical flow and typo errors are definitely a big no.
When it can be overwhelming for some clients, it is important to hit the mark to create the first impression required to have a recurring session with similar clients. Feedback should be practical and focus on what hits a mark with recruiters generally.
Results-oriented
Be honest to show how results sell and words are merely fleeting – resumes should quantify results when possible.
Examples:
- Led a product that added 50K active users per month during the first 3 weeks.
- Redesign release achieved 70% increase in mobile traffic, 100% increase in user logins, and 18% increase in new conversations within X months.
- Pared down feature list by 40% to enable rapid development leading to one of the fastest shipped products in Adobe history in 5 months
Data-Driven
Where results are not meant to be quantifiable, data must be customized to showcase scenarios and authenticity.
Example: Completed usability studies with over 7 customers/users to understand the hiring problem at company X.
This example shows how the candidate was able to quantify his effort and use qualitative data to solve the company’s problem.
MEASURE SUCCESS OF THRE CLIENT’S RESUME
Ask your client to create an excel sheet or other means to measure if the resume is getting traction or not, depending on the jobs applied for versus recruiters reaching out. Ask the client to make parallel statements or change sections of the resume as needed to relate to the job they are applying for and see how this correlation works. Candidates can make one industry standard resume and track if it works best in hitting the mark.
In upcoming sessions, you should explain ways to use renewed resumes to build structured responses for required skills, for example ask candidates to think about their strengths and ways how they can be used to demonstrate abilities during an interview. Also highlight the importance of keeping track of interviews they receive and practice answering questions from their resume by understanding language and body language to talk about themselves. Some key questions should always be structured for any interview, like:
- Tell me about yourself?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- How do you measure success for any ABC skills?
- Any experience where you excelled expectations?
Interviews require a lot of time to be prepared and technical interviews are always formatted differently by various employers. Booking in a new session for a particular employer is mandatory for successful results. Ask your clients to come back to you as needed and book another session when required.
Attention is the key to a good resume
Reviewing resumes before connecting to a client is critical for the best outcomes. Pinpoint practical changes, give examples to assist needs analysis for these changes. Be prepared to talk about differences of tailored and a standard resume. Realistic feedback successfully understood by the client and keeping track of interviews for the client is the key to your success. Once you guide clients through the hiring process over time and showcase as to how these changes in the resume impacted the resume being picked up, you know your advice works well based on market experiences.
Personalize your coaching profile by completing your summary and perfecting your Bio. Connecting your social profiles will make it easy for clients to connect and find out more about you.
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Ambreen Salman is a freelance writer, specializing in writing clear marketing copy to promote products/services. She has been preparing well-structured content using various Content Management Systems. Her marketing research has focused on various industries including recruitment, coaching and IT as a Content Manager / Copywriter.