You're ready for a change...

So how's your resume working for you?

A recent poll showed that 79 percent of job seekers who wrote their own resume aren't happy with it. Experts say that actually fewer than 1 resume in 20 passes the "scan" test. You need a powerful resume to stand out in the crowd.

(And don't forget that you'll need a rock solid, "red flag"-free cover letter and LinkedIn Profile to get maximum impact.)

Dear Seattle Area Professional,

Many people can write a properly formatted resume or c.v. But few people can write powerful resumes that consistently get job interviews.

That's what we do very well. As your professional resume writer, we will work with you to ensure that your resume stands out from the crowd. Recruiters will see that you really are more qualified than the other 90% of the pack.

Hi... I'm Joe Perez, CPRW, CJSS. I am a Career Management Coach specializing in writing resumes (a.k.a. curricula vitae or CVs) and providing job search help for clients throughout the United States and Canada. Seattle Resume Writer is a service of Writing Wolf, my firm founded in 2004. Today, our services are not just editorial but oriented to becoming partners in our clients' career development process.

We offer a process specially designed for clients serious about gaining self-awareness about their life and work, articulating a powerful and authentic Personal Brand, and co-creating an impressive suite of career marketing documents. We really get to know you so your career marketing documents are as individual and unique as you are while adhering to the best practices of career service professionals.

Many of our clients are very good writers. But they're smart enough to know that their resume is probably the most important document they'll ever write in their career, and they know the value added by getting an experienced resume specialist's perspective.

Make Your First Impression Count

Let me speak frankly.

The past few years have been tough times for many clients.

With the economic recovery yet to fully restore millions of lost jobs, blue- and white-collar workers continue to struggle with fierce competition for good jobs.

It's more crucial then ever to invest wisely in your career. If you've never before felt the need to get professional resume help, then it's time to rethink your approach. What's worked in the past may not be enough in today's economic climate.

It's time to "jump in" to the job market with your very best, and there's no better investment than an exceptional resume.

Recruiters scan more resumes per job than before, and they can afford to be choosy. But there are always great opportunities out there... if only you can get past the "gatekeepers" and get a personal interview.

You only have one chance to make that critical first impression, and it's important to put your best foot forward.

A Lifetime of Knowledge

I've been committed to providing quality resume services since 2004, as demonstrated by my membership in the Professional Association of Resume Writers. I've earned the designation of Certified Professional Resume Writer, a credential you should definitely look for if you want to hire a real pro.

But that's not the only reason to choose us.

Few resume writers can honestly say that they're talented in both technical documentation and marketing communications. That's why my background really stands out. After developing my wordsmithing abilities as a liberal arts major at Harvard University, I worked in public relations and technical communications for over a decade before specializing in career documents.

I left a career as a Technical Writer because I enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing my work make an immediate difference in people's lives. As the Principal of Writing Wolf, I have written hundreds of resumes service since 2004. Our unemployed clients get more interviews, our underemployed clients re-enter the workforce, and our employed clients get pay raises.

Businesses have long known the importance of establishing a strong brand and hiring professional advertising agencies and public relations firms to communicate with their customers. Now individuals are discovering the value of having a personal advertising agency working on their behalf. If you're shy, we help you to toot your own horn. If you're overreaching, we help you to replace hype with fact-laden, employer-oriented resumes.

What Makes a Resume Great

Our goal is that the money you spend on your resume will be the best money you spend during your whole job search. And we'll also aim to inspire you to see your own career history in a more objective light ... giving you more confidence in your abilities and more clarity about your future.

Here's what we can do for you.

We will invite you to engage one-on-one with a Career Management Coach who will help you to better understand your distinctive career brand. The resumes we write emerge out of a holistic process of reflection on your values and how they translate into a long-term vision of a fulfilling career. Through an extensive questionnaire and one or more career coaching sessions, you will emerge with an ability to articulate your best and highest value proposition to employers or clients.

You will know strategies for using a portfolio of career branding documents and social media to convey your value confidently. And you will become more clear on your short-term, intermediate, and long-term career objectives ... so you will have the self-knowledge necessary to deftly navigate your job search.

We ask that you invest time up front into knowing your career goals and having a marketing strategy for achieving what you want. Most resume writers don't take the trouble to get to know you like we do. But we believe that if you're going through the time and expense of hiring a great professional writer, you deserve to know that your resume is the best it can be.

Then we'll put on our writing cap and get to work. We don't just tinker with a resume; we overhaul it. We'll break down your design and use one of our proprietary formats with a proven track record of impressing recruiters. We'll build on all the good copy you've already written and we'll make it better if at all possible. We'll employ every resume writing tip you're already doing well, and we may just pull a trick out of our sleeves that you've never seen before.

We'll start by correcting spelling, punctuation, and typographical errors, maximizing readability, editing for parallelism, reducing passive voice, standardizing numbers and abbreviations, ensuring proper use of jargon and slang, and more.

We'll optimize the organizational structure of your resume, and we'll reformat it using a new design template. We will also eliminate "red flags" that attract negative attention; enhance readability and persuasiveness, ensuring that data is given an adequate context; and make sure that style and diction clearly communicate employer-oriented benefits.

We strive to avoid boilerplate; we find a tone fitting your personality and your unique strengths. Essentially, we are ghostwriters. We collaborate with you and to bring out the best in your own style.

This isn't merely a resume typesetting service. Making your resume look "pretty" isn't the point. Making your resume persuasive and effective is.

This isn't merely a resume editing servixe. Our focus is on building your career management savvy, defining a personal branding plan with you, and arming you with an arsenal of powerful marketing tools so you can reach your goals faster and more skillfully.

Got a Technical Background? No Problem.

Our expertise builds on years of experience in high-tech. That's why I think you'll find that Seattle Resume Writer understands information technology (IT) better than the competition.

We have written resumes for techies including: aerospace, mechanical and industrial engineers; software engineers, analysts and developers; network and database administrators; IT managers, program managers and business executives; voice and data communications technicians and engineers; testing and quality assurance (QA) engineers; technical support, help desk, and product specialists; graphic designers, art directors, producers, and Web developers; technical writers, technical editors and usability engineers; and more.

Not every typist with a resume service (not even the certified pro) knows the difference between a UNIX and a dot matrix, an A+ certification and a C++ program, or between CRM and a CD-ROM. But you can count on us to decipher your acronyms and ask intelligent questions.

Every profession is technical in its own way, with a distinctive vocabulary and "inside baseball" sorts of information about what hiring managers are looking for. That's why we stay abreast of a wide variety of industry trends and technological advances, and keep our finger on the pulse of discussions of hiring preferences among human resources managers and executives.

Our Process Makes It Easy

The first step: Give us a call at (206) 568-2373 for a free telephone consultation and to get answers to any questions that you have after reading our website. You can also send us an electronic copy of your resume and cover letter (if you have them) by e-mail, and we'll give you an idea of how we can be of assistance. If you're already doing everything exactly right, we'll congratulate you and not try to sell you something you don't need. If we know of another service that's a better fit, we'll make a referral. Or, if you're ready to take a leap forward in your career marketing, we'll get the ball rolling.

The second step: We'll send you an extensive Career Development Questionnaire to get you engaged in the process of defining or refining your Personal Brand and career development strategy. We'll help you to assess your strengths and weaknesses and take a look at what's working or not working in your resume and social media profiles. Because not everyone works best by filling out forms, we make the questionnaire optional for some clients.

The third step: We meet in person or by telephone for one, two, or more sessions. Firstly, we get together for a Resume Development session where we learn about your work history and current objectives and job search strategy. Secondly, we have a Career Management session devoted to clearly defining your short-term and long-term career goals, discovering your Personal Brand, and ensuring that you have a deep understanding of your skills, strengths and weaknesses, and distinctive value proposition for employers.

The fourth step: We deliver a draft of your new resume, cover letter, and social media bio (i.e., LinkedIn Profile). The documents arise from a seamless vision of how you want your career to evolve and what it will take to get you there. We apply your Personal Brand in every document, stressing your best qualities with the right degree of elaboration for your audience. We provide detailed instructions on how to proofread and critique the drafts so that the final document will be as good as it can be.

The fifth step: We incorporate your revision requests and submit a final proof for approval, and then we meet again by telephone or in-person to wrap up any outstanding issues and formulate a strategy for moving forward with your job search. Some clients use the "cap" session to familiarize themselves with the ins-and-outs of distributing resumes, using LinkedIn for the job search, learning cutting-edge ways to research prospective employers, or creating/reviewing a detailed job search strategy plan.

Through the entire process, Seattle Resume Writer is committed to delivering an empowering experience of collaboration with a career services professional invested in your success. We engage you actively throughout the process so the documents reflect your unique personality, writing style, and level of self-awareness. We do this so you will have documents that you can truly "own" as very much your own creations, not simply collateral produced by an outside advertising agency.

Career Management: More Affordable Than You Might Think!

Perhaps you've looked into life coaching or career coaching services already but were discouraged by the price-tag. Outplacement firms and professional coaches can require months of coaching sessions and a commitment of $3,000 to $6,000 or more to get started, and they usually expect that you do the resume writing yourself or hire a resume writer separately.

Don't worry. Our process allows you to work hand-in-hand with a Career Management Coach in a tightly focused, results-oriented program to get remarkable insight and immediately useful documents ... without making a costly months-long commitment to ongoing coaching.

By the way, if you're already working with a counselor, career counselor, life coach, or career coach, you don't have to switch to work with us. Keep working with him or her, and let us take care of the resume and other career documents. Two heads are better than one.

Perhaps you've looked into resume writing services but been bewildered by the variability in pricing. TheLadders.com, one of the most popular nationally advertised resume services, starts its pricing at nearly $700 per resume, and that doesn't even include the cover letter or LinkedIn profile. Some experienced resume writers serving corporate executives charge $750 to $1,500 or more for a basic resume, and it may be hard to find one who will meet with you face-to-face.

According to the Career Management Alliance, you can expect to pay a minimum of $400 to $500 to work with a resume specialist with our level of experience. Indeed, we've designed our services to be priced competitively with the prevailing rates in our industry.

Our fee for a Professional Resume ranges from $500 to $700 depending on whether you request one, two, or three Resume Development meetings with your Career Management Coach. Comprehensive packages are available for $615 to $815. (See our Price Sheet for details.) We also offer a "Satisfaction Guarantee," so if the documents we produce don't meet your 100% satisfaction, we'll rewrite them for free.

With "big box" editorial services offered by the major Internet jobs boards, you may not get the same personal attention, demonstrated expertise, or depth of experience, but you'll pay a fee in the same ballpark as ours (or lower, if you're assigned a novice or less experienced resume writer). They are also unlikely to offer you the option of meeting in-person with a local resume writer for the information-gathering interview.

Maybe you've seen the "super cheap, one hour resume" services advertised by those omnipresent Google ads. Believe it or not, you can buy a cheap resume written by a foreign worker in a resume sweatshop. Don't feel bad if you've fallen for that mistake. We'll be happy to fix your resume.

Few professional services for individuals have the potential for such a high return on investment. If you are out of work and our resume helps you get back to work only one week faster, then we'll have saved you many hundreds or thousands of dollars.

One of our clients, an Executive Director of a non-profit organization, used his new resume to get hired for a larger NPO paying a salary of $20,000 more than his old job. Even happily employed clients can benefit from a new resume. If you are presently working and your new resume helps you land a job that pays 10% greater salary, your ROI will be substantial.

Don't make the disasterous mistake of replying to an ad for your dream job with a resume that screams, "I'll work for peanuts," when you could send one that reads like it was written by someone making thousands of dollars more than you're making right now.

If the resume gives you a competitive edge in applying for the graduate program of your dreams, you will not regret your investment for a second. If our career management guidance helps you to turn a dead-end job that makes you miserable into one that is enlivening, the value is priceless.

Ask for a Free Consultation Today

Do you have questions or want a free consultation? Please give Writing Wolf a call at (206) 568-2373 or send us an e-mail.

If you're writing, please tell us in just a few sentences about your current situation and why you are thinking of hiring a resume service. And if you're facing a tight deadline, let us know so we can determine how to best accommodate your schedule.

Here's the question you may be asking yourself:

I've composed my own resume before. Do I really need a professional's help in writing, editing, and proofreading my resume? 

Despite this awful economy, jobs are always out there for candidates who get interviews. If you're not getting as many interviews as you should, it may not be about YOU. it may be all about your resume.

The successful job candidates are no different from the unsuccessful. But they know that to keep advancing their career, they have to be willing to "up their game."

That's why we're here. We want you to not have to worry about your resume, so you can concentrate on the things you do best.

We want you to be confident that the next step in your career is the right one for you, and that you aren't selling yourself short with career marketing documents that miss the mark. After completing our process of resume development, career management coaching, and job search strategy consulting, you'll be confident and ready to move forward with enthusiasm.

So if you're at all interested, now's the time to act. You can call us at (206) 568-2373 for a free consultation with no obligation, or write us at info@writingwolf.com today.

We look forward to working with you -- and wish you success in everything you do.

Sincerely,

P.S.: Our office in located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. We meet with clients for in-person interviews at a co-working facility called Office Nomads at 1617 Boylston Ave., 2nd Floor. From this location, we offer services to professionals in Bellevue, Bellingham, British Columbia, Bothell, Everett, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kirkland, Lynnwood, Renton, Spokane, Tacoma, Tri-Cities, Vancouver, Wenatchee, Yakima, and throughout Puget Sound and the state of Washington.