What your cousins-friends-bosss wife WONT tell you about your resume

What your cousins-friends-bosss wife WONT tell you about your resume Every once in a full moon a client will say to me, I love this. I love how it sounds. I am so happy with this resume, I would hire me! and then, I told my brother-in-laws friends bosss wife that I would let her look at my resume when you finished it. She manages Applebees and she has seen a lot of resumes in her time. Okay. I get that people want to show off their resume and hear what others say. I do. If a person tells me that someone they know is in HR and they want to send it to them, I understand. You want to show your friends. You want to hear their take on your resume. But not all friendly advice is good advice. Case in point: I had a person call me up and ask me questions about my process and my resumes. She was referred to me by a senior level client of mine. This person was in IT (network analyst) and had 5 pages of experience and technical jargon as her current resume. She said, I dont see any objective statements on your sample resumes. I said, True. You wont. I use a career summary and branding statements. I then started to explain career summaries to her when she stopped me dead in my tracks and said, I dont want a career summary. I need an objective. I asked her why she thought she needed an objective and she said because her friends aunt worked as an HR person for a small manufacturing company and she said that a resume was no good to her unless it had an objective. I had heard of this company, so I was surprised that the HR person had such strict, outdated, and ineffective rules regarding the types of resumes she wanted to see. As I was trying to educate her about the power of branding and career summaries vs. objectives, she was pretty adamant that she wanted the objective statement. So we moved on to a couple of other things and I was surprised at her demands which werent really demands, just antiquated resume rules. I absolutely CANNOT have 2 pages and I have to list every application, hardware, device, etc (even though most she said she hadnt used in 10 years), and It HAS to have the little references upon request thingy at the bottom, etc. because her friends aunt said so, and so on. I think you get the gist of the conversation. Finally, I gently asked her, Why dont you have your friends aunt write your resume? Or at least you write it and have her add her two cents? and she said, But I was referred to YOU and I want YOU to write it!! I politely declined the job and vaguely suggested a few other sites that might appeal more to what she wanted. Im sure she will find someone who will give her an objective and keep her 15 yrs IT experience to 1 page. So my point is this your friends/colleagues may have great intentions to help steer you in the right direction, but may not be doing it effectively. Their advice might actually hinder your efforts, not help. Better to leave it to those of us who are trained and have built careers around writing dynamic and effective resumes. Do your homework. Call around and talk to different writers until you find someone who you are comfortable with. Let them know what your expectations are and listen to what they have to say. Your friends aunt might be trying to help, but her help might stop you from getting the job.