"Can Scientists and Engineers Trust a Professional Resume Writer?"

The professional resume writing services' most reluctant customers are scientists and engineers. It's a bit hard to understand, until you analyze the trust factor. After all, movie reviewers are seldom filmmakers. Many book reviewers have never had a book published. You might expect that any resume writer could tackle any resume. Yet, engineers (not all of them) don't think anyone can describe what they do.

The entire engineering, IT and biotech job search and recruiting industry suffers, in part, because of poor communication among the participants in this process. Some changes are needed, including a different attitude on the part of the scientists and engineers. Companies find it difficult to assess job applicants, and recruiters are unable to distinguish good candidates from bad, in part because high tech resumes are inadequate.

Here's the truth: Resume writers require no expertise in C-BASIC or HTML to craft a software designer or engineer's resume. A professional resume writer needn't be a scientist to write a scientist's resume.

Yet many resume writers cannot do justice to a technical person's background because they cannot describe technical skills in plain English.

Consider high tech journalists: They spend years learning to write about technology and explain so the rest of us can understand. It's a learned skill. Bright, capable resume writers can tackle an engineer's resume, but it will require more effort than, say, a salesperson's resume. They need to be willing to make that effort.

This is no excuse for the biotech engineers who pay scant attention to their resumes. Perhaps they believe that employers will deduce their merits in the absence of evidence, or think the competition will be weak, or just dislike the effort of creating one. Almost always, they haven't thought the process out, for they are flying into heavy weather in a rickety biplane.

So if you won't hire a professional resume writing service, then you owe to yourself to understand some resume basics so you give yourself a fair chance.

A resume is important even if you think you don't need it and can get interviews through your connections. Why? You can't be sure when you might require one, and you don't want to toss it together overnight. A resume also helps you organize yourself and see the full picture of your accomplishments and abilities. Most people take them for granted and may not have them uppermost in their mind at an interview.

Your resume is a marketing device. It's a biography, but a very special one: brief and almost all highlights.

Think of it as an argument. Your point is: I am the person you want to hire. I'll give you the best payoff. The entire nature of the resume flows from that.

Tailor it to the audience. Don't develop your resume by simply adding new jobs and achievements on top of old, as trees add layers. Instead, shape the resume to the position you are applying for. Go back through past jobs, highlight accomplishments that are relevant to the employer you have targeted, and prune back ones that aren't. For instance, while you would normally omit the person you reported to, include it if you think it will interest the company. Be flexible.

Highlight your accomplishments, not your titles and duties. Why? Anyone can warm a chair. And many people can carry out a job in a perfectly respectable way. But you are competing and you must stand above others.

Think of the resume-and everything in the job search-from the employer's perspective.

Your most important accomplishments can have a dramatic quality: problem, action, resolution. You can describe the difficulty, what you did, why, how your action helped, and what it meant. It's one thing simply to say you increased operating profit 35%. It's another to say that the company was facing a crisis, revenues weren't increasing, and you solved the problem. You underscore the impact.

Stress your abilities. Think about what you are good at and emphasize it. If you want to stress intellectual problem-solving skills, think of a knotty problem that arose and spell out how you resolved it. If you are strong on leadership, show how you provided a vision or developed and motivated a team to make unusual accomplishments.

Emphasize recent accomplishments. Omit or briefly mention achievements from longer than 15 years ago, and focus most intensely on your most recent work. A resume is not a curriculum vitae, which lists everything you've ever done. It's a summary and a pitch.

Avoid jargon. Resist the temptation to flash expertise by using terms the reader may not understand. You risk beclouding your argument and turning off the resume screener. Ask yourself: Do you really have to use a potentially unclear word?

Avoid egotism. Bragging can sabotage your case. Describe yourself as a "genuine visionary" or "born leader" and you raise questions about your character. After all, what true leader goes around boasting about it? If you really possess these qualities, you can show them in your past achievements, to much greater effect. Don't hold back-make the most powerful case you can-but be careful about forcing conclusions down the employer's throat.

Granted that all of this advice may seem complex, for those not used to writing resumes. In that case, it may just make sense to swallow your pride and hire a professional resume writer.

Paul Freiberger is President of Shimmering Resumes, a resume-writing and career counseling service based in San Mateo, California. Paul is the author of several books and the winner of the Los Angeles Times book award. You can visit his website at http://www.shimmeringresumes.com.