The Southern California Job Market : Making It Work : The Resume: Presenting the Unique and Irresistible You

The task at hand: Summarize everything there is to know about you in an enticingly brief manner to tempt someone who will pick you from the pack.

Sound like drafting an ad for the personals? No, this is worse. It’s called Writing the Resume. You know, boil your entire life down to one--or at the very most, two--neatly typed pages. It’s an arduous and daunting task for even the most seasoned job hunter.

Not to worry. A whole crop of professional resume writers stands ready to help you draft the resume of your dreams, the resume specifically designed to get you the job you want.

But be careful. Despite the growing acceptance and popularity of these services, the quality of these operations varies widely, and your resume is too important a document to trust to just anyone. Just as the recession has swelled the ranks of job-seekers, so has it flooded the market with folks willing to advise job-seekers for a price.

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of incompetent work out there, because talented writing is not a skill that everyone has,” said Yana Parker, author of “The Damn Good Resume Guide,” published by Ten Speed Press in Berkeley.

“A resume won’t get you a job, but the lack of a resume makes it hard to get an interview,” Parker said. “You need a really good one.”

Why should writing about such a familiar subject--oneself--be such an onerous task for so many of us?

The experts say we hate writing our own resumes partly because they are an exercise in self-examination. So we turn to books, computer programs, workshops and an increasing number of professional resume services.

Getting a professional to prepare your resume can be cheap--usually starting at about $25 a page, although a few advertise rates about half that--if all you need is a glorified typist with a stock of fancy paper.

But be prepared to pay more, perhaps as much as $100 per page, if you need someone to help you draft a resume from scratch. And for extras, such as cover letters and salary history, the price tag goes even higher.

“I’m not a typist,” said Mel Ginsberg, who for five years has owned Word Works, a Palmdale resume service. “I’m a writer and creator and publicist.

“A resume I consider professional advertising,” he said. “What my clients want from me is to optimize the skills they have . . . to convince the employer that my client is the only logical alternative.”

About two years ago, Jorge Arenado turned several years of personnel and training experience into his own resume business, Citi-Pro Resume.

“There are people out there doing this, and all they do is put together a resume that anybody could put out,” Arenado said. “You need to produce a document that markets a person effectively. A lot of times it takes a third eye, someone outside the loop . . . to pinpoint your abilities.”

But career counselor Kate Pope worries that professional resume writers lack the skills needed to help the truly lost.

“We believe really strongly that people should write it themselves, but we also believe you sometimes need some help to write it yourself. You’re not born knowing how to write a resume,” said Pope, director of counseling for Women at Work, a nonprofit job resource center in Pasadena. Women at Work offers counseling, evening resume workshops and individual resume critiques.

“The resume has got to bring out the uniqueness of the individual,” Pope said. “I believe the professionally written resume is easily identified.”

Still, one laid-off bank employee says a resume service made the difference last year.

Ross Berliner sent out 150 resumes but got in the door only twice for job interviews. His unemployment stretched to five months.

“I could not believe my rotten luck,” Berliner said. “Turns out it wasn’t rotten luck, just a rotten resume.”

Berliner hooked up with Arenado, who interviewed him about his abilities and accomplishments and then came up with a new resume. The interview ratio jumped to one interview for every three or four resumes sent, Berliner said. And he landed a job soon afterward.

“It just goes to show, if you don’t have an excellent resume to get your foot in the door, especially these days, you’re going to be out of a job for quite a while,” he said.

Parker advises sizing up potential resume writers and career counselors with a critical eye.

Ask a lot of questions and demand examples of their work, Parker said. “Especially ask, ‘What are you going to do for me and how do I know if you’re any good?’

“Tell them what your job objective is and what your problem is, why you can’t do this yourself, and find out what their strategies are for how they’re going to solve it.

“The ones to keep away from are the ones who spend a lot of time talking about their fine parchment paper and their fancy twofold executive thing,” Parker said. “That’s all hype.”