Starting a Resume Editing Service

Hey guys,

So I've been working for a fairly large resume editing company for about a month now. The majority of the work we do is reformatting the resume itself and editing sentence structure. I have access to templates, I understand the industry, and I can easily train others to edit resumes. Truthfully, I am more efficient than my boss. He doesn't use tables or the ruler tool in word, so it takes him twice as long to plug a resume into our template before the editing process even begins. I'm a fairly proficient web designer and I've learned a lot about SEO in the last month, but I feel like it would be best to have this work done professionally. I'm ready to take action and make some serious money.

Do you guys have any recommendations/advice?

What type of research should I do?

Would creating multiple sites with different marketing concepts drive the most traffic?

Thanks guys,
Jesse

Jesse,

I would focus on one site and one brand in the beginning so that you don't overwhelm yourself. Having multiple sites is only going to mean that all are not as good as they could be.
I would suggest researching your target market and creating some buyer personas. Running a business is a little trickier than it looks. Your boss may suck at using Word but is he a good business person? You should also learn how to manage capital and build a budget. Learning about paying taxes as a business probably also wouldn't hurt.

Hope that helps,

Shawn

Resume writing and editing is a competitive niche. There are companies and individual writers that have been doing this for years. Along with certifications, industry rep, etc. Do NOT go the multiple website route as Shawn already suggested. My advice would be to niche your service. That way, all your marketing is targeted to a specific group of people. Your research should uncover most of what you need to market to them effectively.

Good Luck!

Focus on one niche/slant first and put your passion into it. You will probably already have an idea what industry keywords your former employer optimised for, so go after medium-competition until you get some custom, then you can add brands and upscale later. If you try to do 100 different things at once, it will be harder to succeed in just 1 of them. Good luck.

I have several sites for resumes and cover letters. Most of traffic come from long tail keywords. From begin focus on 1-2 similar professions: nurses, doctors, etc. You can create posts/pages for this long tail keywords: Nurse resume example, Surgeon doctor resume example, etc.

Search in indeed.com forums. This is ideal place to make profile of your potential buyer. For ideas also look on about.com(Alison Doyle). They get lot a traffic for long tail keywords for professions.

If you have questions post here. Good luck.

Thanks for all the help guys. I've narrowed my idea down substantially since I first posted. I've been very successful branding and marketing myself in the entertainment industry, so I'm going to offer that same service to others in similar positions. I'm excited because instead of pretending that I have a mastery over something that I don't, I'm creating a legitimate service where I can help other people. The only problem I can think of is that creative types probably have more capability to create their own resume than, let's say, doctors or lawyers. But, we'll see how it goes!

I would start off with fiverr and branch off with that. In the past two months, I used three different gigs on there which ranged from 10 to 40 bucks. I noticed that in terms of service, you do get what you pay for. I can honestly say that my resume looked pretty pathetic in terms of appearance, and I lack the knowledge to keep up with current trends and what would catch an employer's eye. However the 40 dollar gig I used towards two jobs last week, I just got offered an interview for both and of that, one offered me the available position.

Like you said you are trying to differentiate your service and branding. Perhaps you can just focus on doing the express 24 hours turn around gigs, or offer other services, like a follow up thank you letter as a bonus, and eventually when your business picks up, actually charge for it

Its an expensive service everyone cannot afford it I guess, Its like academic writing.

hey whats ur service....message me id love to try it out...im looking for a new job at the moment...the company i am working for is merging. i think my resume is pretty tight wouldnt mind a professional looking at it

thisthatandthemba said:

hey whats ur service....message me id love to try it out...im looking for a new job at the moment...the company i am working for is merging. i think my resume is pretty tight wouldnt mind a professional looking at it

Click to expand...

If you PM me your email, I'll send you over an example.