FAQ

Impressability is not a résumé writing company – we are a boutique career development business that focuses on supporting our clients throughout their careers. Résumé and cover letter writing is a part of this service, as is career coaching, career counselling, training, workshops and outplacement support. As such, you will benefit from the counselling and coaching skills of our writers throughout the process - when we produce career documents for our clients, we aren't providing a secretarial service, we go deeper than that. We work closely with our clients to ensure that their document is personalised and reflects their professional brand.

Every order comes with a one-on-one session face-to-face,online via Zoom or over the phone to unpack your skills, tools and achievements, and we coach you through the process to ensure we have all the information that we need to be able to proceed with your document. There are no online forms to fill out - this isn't a secretarial service. We also offer unlimited editing revisions until the document is finalised. The drafting process is a collaborative one, to ensure that your voice is heard within the words and the language use is an appropriate representation of you.

In addition to this, we offer ongoing email support in the event that you have any questions about your job search journey, so you know that you aren’t going it alone. We teach you how to tailor your document to new job applications and we offer the opportunity to send us your self-tailored document to ensure you are on the right track. Once you have your résumé in hand, we show you how to use it and adapt it to suit your needs moving forward (including some basic tech support in the event that you have trouble with maintaining the format and layout). We are  always here to edit and support you for a small fee if you wish us to maintain your document for you and we can even apply for jobs on your behalf (contact us for a quote as prices vary from $30+ depending on the level of data entry involved and the level of editing needed to ensure your résumé and cover letter suit the application).

Professionally written résumés are becoming an essential tool in everyone’s career kit. The labour market is increasingly competitive and we all need a way to stand out from the crowd – for the right reasons. Some of the advantages of a professionally written document include:
♦ Quality writing, ensuring that your professionalism is well-represented.
♦ Knowledge of current résumé writing practices to give you an edge.
♦ Tailored approach to customise your application for the job that you are applying for.
♦ Knowledge of key industry standards across a broad spectrum of sectors to ensure your document is tailored appropriately to meet the needs of the hirer.
♦ A professional career practitioner worth their salt will also work with you to unpack your skills and achievements which will not only give your document an edge, but will also help to build your interviewing skills.

Essentially, you get what you pay for.  A simple Google search will show you that the cost of a résumé varies greatly – from as little as $70 up to well over $1000. The cheaper end of the scale tends to tout the promise of speedy turn around times and they often ask you to fill out an online questionnaire which is then copied in to a template with a little tidying up and sometimes they even use writing software to fill out the document with pre-written phrases that are not necessarily relevant to you. Résumé mills are known for this approach and rarely deliver the level of detail and personal collaboration that a professional career practitioner will offer. This is not to say that a price tag of $75 is a sure fire way to identify a writer who won’t deliver a promising document, but I would caution you to be aware of the risks involved.

At the top end of the scale, many of the metro résumé writing companies will charge in excess of $1000 for an executive level document (especially for mining or executive level documents). They are usually written by specialist writers with a strong history of success, but the excessive price tag does not ensure the delivery of an interview. If you are looking to spend this much on a document, then make sure you know exactly what qualifications your writer has, what the inclusions are and ask them how many editing rounds are available for your money.

Well obviously, we think so! Career coaching and counselling has its own benefits related to unpacking skills, working through work stress, resolving conflict and setting goals. Working with a professional career counsellor and coach can be incredibly valuable to help individuals navigate their careers, however there seems to be some discord over the benefit of engaging professional career support for the development of career related documents such as résumés, cover letters, and selection criteria responses. 

Writing career documents, is a learned skill – we aren’t all born just ‘knowing’ how to do do this. It is a common misconception that writing your own résumé is something that can be achieved with a polished, professional outcome without any training or experience, but it simply isn’t the case. Can you learn how to do it yourself? Absolutely! In fact, you will learn how to tailor and tweak your document as part of the process with us here at Impressability. However, for many of us, turning to a career professional is the best option. Once you have decided to seek professional support, who to choose becomes the next question!