What It’s Like to Work With a Resume Consultant or Career Coach

Job seeking can be challenging at many stages. Good resumes and cover letters are notoriously difficult to write, and then there’s the infamous interview process. The truth is, working with a resume consultant or interview coach can be helpful for anyone, but especially for people who:

• Are hoping to improve their first impression with a stronger resume and cover letter
• Deal with anxiety or fear of speaking related to job interviews
• Want to improve their ability to navigate the job market with confidence and purpose

If you’ve never worked with a professional career consultant before, you probably have many questions. Here’s what you can expect.

What Can a Career Consultant Help Me With?

We focus on solutions for the three major steps that almost every successful job applicant must navigate:

Job search: Whether you’ve been out of the job hunting market for 10 years, or you’re looking for your first job ever, the job landscape is difficult to navigate. Our comprehensive approach helps you develop as a person and put your best foot forward at every stage. We can also work with you on the little details (like properly formatting documents) that make a big difference to employers.

Resume development: You have a unique set of amazing skills and valuable experiences, but are they being fully communicated through your resume and cover letters? We know what employers are looking for, such as skills and specific accomplishments, and we’ll help you develop a keyword-targeted resume that’s specially crafted for the specific job or industry you’re interested in.

Interviewing: The interview is understandably the most anxiety-producing part of a job search for most people. With the right training and preparation, you can ace even the most grueling interviews, so you can talk about your accomplishments and qualifications with ease and stand out in a crowded pool of applicants. “Behavioral interviewing” is a current interview style companies are using more often. It is essential to have your “stories” prepared and practiced, which a career consultant can help with!

The bottom line is that a great career and resume consultant will equip you with the tools, resources, and skills you need to be self-sufficient, confident, and ultimately successful in your job search.

What Are Resume Consultations Like?

At Rush Recruiting, we offer all in-person career services at our offices in Tualatin, Oregon. We also conduct meetings by phone or via Skype.

Crafting an amazing resume and cover letter is a collaborative process. We never simply hand you documents and send you out on your own again. We learn about your personal values and specific goals and tailor our approach to help you reach them. Here’s how it works:

1. We’ll learn about your skills and experience through conversations with you and specially crafted questionnaires and “homework” assignments.
2. Once we know exactly what to highlight on your resume, our team will present it in a clear, concise way that employers will understand.
3. Your resume will be keyword targeted, giving employers a much higher probability of finding you online. (It’s estimated that more than half of candidates are rejected by applicant tracking systems, which scan resumes for the right keywords — often before a real person even reads them.)
4. Because each resume is specific to you, your industry, and the position you want, the process of writing your resume can take 2-3 weeks.

The end result is a master resume that you’ll know how to tweak and customize for each job application you submit.

How Can I Get Better at Interviewing?

Believe it or not, some of the best interviewees out there have struggled with crippling interview anxiety, but you’d never know it because they’ve utilized specific training methods and interviewing techniques in order to overcome their fear — or at least perform well in spite of it.

Whether you’re preparing for one specific interview, or you just want to improve in general, we use interview coaching techniques with proven results, including:

• Mock interviews
• Anticipating and preparing for likely questions
• Developing strong answers to behavioral questions and story-based questions
• Tips and recommendations for you based on your relevant experience

Your career consultant will also give you constructive feedback and helpful advice about every aspect of the interview process. This may include advice about what to wear, when to arrive, and how to follow up.

Don’t hesitate to ask any questions you have. Want feedback on your posture and body language? Not sure if your handshake is firm enough? Ask away. This is exactly what we’re here for.

Are you ready to find a job you love?

At Rush Recruiting, we’ve helped people land their dream jobs in a wide variety of industries and a huge number of organizations, including small businesses, large public companies, and everything in between.

Whatever your situation, whatever your goals, we will help you recognize and highlight the unique strengths that only you have, so that you can get the job you’ve always wanted.

Call us today at (503) 481-1285 to get started.