The key to any resume’s consistency is targeting. The more your resume writer focuses your skill set to the reader’s needs, the easier it will be for the reader to see a match to the available position. When you are considering submitting your resume for various types of positions, the question presented to the resume writer is usually “Do I really need a second resume for my secondary target?”
Of course, this is a very legitimate question. More often than not, the cost is something to consider (although for clients of The Resume Clinic, the cost of a second resume is deeply discounted), so you want to be sure before you incur that extra expense. The determining factor is the closeness of the positions in terms of experience and skill set needed. The farther apart the type of skills sought, the more the need for another re-targeted resume.
Consider it in these terms:
Let’s think of your resume as a hand full of rocks, and the jobs of interest as targets. Now, you getting only one throw (the one resume), you are attempting to hit as many targets as you can. As you can see, the closer the targets, the more likely you will hit them all. Conversely, the farther apart the target, the more likely your need for a second hand full of rocks (the second resume).
It is good to know what it is you should consider when making this decision because an unscrupulous resume writer may try to sell you a product you don’t need. With that said, multi-focused versions of the same resume can never hurt. If your resume writer has written for you an excellent first targeted document, then you may be able to handle retargeting for similar positions.
Just remember that the more rocks you throw, the more likely you will hit something, provided your “rocks” are high quality and properly targeted.
William Mitchell, CPRW
www.theresumeclinic.com
