Directing Your Clients to Career Fairs

About.com Live Job Fair Listing
http://jobsearch.about.com/cs/jobfairs/

Includes links for hundreds of U.S. and international job fairs, plus articles on how to incorporate job fairs into a successful job search. (Note: some links are outdated).

Online Job Boards

Looking for links to industry-specific job boards? Look no further:
http://www.jobboardinfo.com/industryboards.cfm

Profile of Resume Writers - 2001-2002

For several years, I conducted an industry survey through Resume Writers' Digest. I thought you might be interested in seeing the profile of the industry back in 2001/2002.

Here are some of the survey trends I revealed in the November/December 2001 issue:

• 75% of the resume writers surveyed are self-employed
• The average resume sale ranges from $40 to nearly $6,000, with most falling in the $150 to $400 range.
• There are approximately 900 to 1300 professional resume writers, with up to 6,000 firms nationwide offering resume writing services (including companies such as Kinkos and Copymax, which offer mostly resume typesetting). [I had about 2,400 of these firms in my database at that time; as of 8/2007, I have more than 3,600.]
• The average survey respondent is a self-employed sole proprietor who works full-time (35 to 50 hours per week) from a home office. She (the respondents were overwhelmingly female), has been in business for nearly nine years.

• The top challenges faced by resume writers (according to the survey):

• Sales and Marketing Issues
• Client Management (working with difficult clients, educating clients on job search strategy, putting up with impatient clients, handling no-shows, collecting on outstanding balances)
• Managing time effectively
• Handling the "craft" of resume writing (research, creativity, proofreading, formatting issues)
• "Wearing the many hats required of a small business owner" (bookkeeping, accounting, tax compliance, etc.)

• January is generally the busiest month
• December is the least busy.
• Most survey respondents offer at least one other service --- most often career coaching (66 percent) or desktop publishing or secretarial services of some sort.

Sound like you?

Co-opetition

In addition to editing Résumé Writers' Digest, I'm a practicing résumé writer in Omaha, Nebraska.

I don't have any competitors.

That's not to say there aren't other résumé writers in Omaha -- to the contrary, there are a handful -- but I don't consider them my competitors. I consider them my "co-opetitors."

I can't claim credit for coining the phrase -- I picked it up at a résumé writing conference -- but I can take credit for putting the principle into practice. In my 14+ years of résumé writing experience (the last 11 years in my own business), I've found there are certain kinds of clients I like -- and some that I don't. For example, despite the proximity of Offutt Air Force Base to Omaha -- and, consequently, the large number of "separating" Air Force personnel -- I don't particularly enjoy writing military transition résumés. So one of the smartest things I ever did was to call the other résumé services in the phone book, introduce myself and ask if they did military transition résumés. After speaking with several, I found one who I felt comfortable recommending. Since then, I have referred these clients to her.

My co-opetition is also useful for when I get busy (to refer overflow work) and for increasing the profile of résumé writing as an industry here in Omaha (with a population of 600,000 in a 30-mile radius, there's plenty of work to keep us all busy!) by mentioning the importance of choosing a professional résumé writer when seeking publicity.

As Chris Miller, CEO of 6FigureJobs.com mentioned at the CMI conference in San Diego a couple of years back, one of the biggest challenges facing résumé writers and career coaches is lack of recognition -- if people don't know that our services exist, they won't seek us out. The more professionals there are, the bigger voice we will have.

I'm working to educate my fellow Omaha résumé writers about the importance of professional association membership and certification … think about doing the same in YOUR community. Believe me, it will benefit us all.