Tim Cunningham spent over a decade as a financial supervisor in a stock brokerage, a purchasing agent in an Engineering firm and a database salesman before having to use a resume to find a job.
When he did, he found that what he was taught in school about resumes didn’t work in the real world.
After finding out what he needed to know to make his resume work, the phone started to ring.
But during this process, he learned that the overwhelming majority of jobseekers were writing the same kinds of useless resumes he’d used at first. So now, his mission is to help these folks find the jobs they deserve.
1. What led you to writing resumes?
Tim: Being out of work and discovering that the kind of resumes I was taught to write in school didn’t work.
2. Do you have a background that made you an ideal fit for the industry?
Tim:
Yes, my background is ideal. I worked for over a decade in various operating departments of three different kinds of businesses and learned many of the differences between what job ads say managers look for and what they really need to see in prospective employees.
Now that you’ve been in the industry for a while, would you recommend it to others? Why?
I would recommend the industry to someone who has the right qualifications, the most important of which is having the skill to help people remember their accomplishments.
3. What is the single best tool you recommend for building client relations?
Tim: Underpromising and overdelivering.
Building your business? SEO and LinkedIn optimization, networking, rewarding clients and others for referrals, and reaching out to local employers.
Improve efficiency? Keeping things simple.
4. If you could share one learning experience/great lesson, what would it be?
Tim: I once asked an engineer if he’d ever had something go wrong on a major project.
This taught me to ask about my client’s crisis experiences and to start thinking about designing resumes to answer the questions employers want to know but can’t mention in the job ads (i.e., managers will want to know that an accounting applicant is trustworthy around large sums of money but asking the question outright won’t work.
But if I can tell a story about how a junior accountant picked up the payroll in cash each month then distributed it to 700 men in five work camps, that manager learns something about the candidate.
5. Looking back, what would you have done differently?
Tim:
Done differently? Moved to SEO and networking sooner.
Done the same? Used the same referral policy.
6. What advice would you give someone just entering the resume-writing industry?
Tim: Work hard, underpromise and overdeliver.
7. How do you see our industry transforming over the next 12 months? 5 years?
Tim: The trend toward increased conciseness in resumes will soon hit a wall if it hasn’t already.
I hope the next trend will be in the direction of further developing interviewing techniques.
8. What do think resume writers need to know in order to survive?
Tim: We need an insatiable curiosity about what managers in every field need to know about prospective employees skills and accomplishments.
We need to the interview skills of a professional psychiatrist to uncover this knowledge in our clients and the presentation skills of top-flight copywriters to sell hiring managers on interviewing our clients
