“What do you guys charge for a new resume?” is the first question that many callers ask. I get it – most of us are on a budget, so I understand why you don’t want to waste time discussing my service if it’s above your price range. But that leads to the question, “what does (or should) a professional resume cost?
Here’s why it’s a meaningless question. Some resumes take me 45 minutes to write (okay, that’s rare); some take 5 – 6 hours stretched over weeks while clients mull over changes. Shouldn’t a professional resume cost be relative to the time it takes to craft?
Some people misunderstand what a professional resume writer does; these people assume that I’m just going to type in updates to their current resumes. But that’s not what a professional resume writer does.
I create your unique value proposition – which is the language that describes to your target employer who you are and what you do. That takes considerable skill. Now, if your value proposition is a fairly easy one to articulate, then your resume won’t take as much time to develop as it might for a mid-career director who has risen up to increasingly responsible and complicated roles. Those resumes can take hours of back and forth between my clients and me until we’re both satisfied that the resume represents them well.
So, the professional resume cost is really a function of time. Corporate professionals need a searchable LinkedIn profile should expect to pay between $500 – $1,000. And for those of you who fall somewhere in the middle, let’s talk, and I’ll quote you a price based on the time my experience tells me it will take to develop YOUR value proposition into a great professional resume.
Read more about what goes into the cost of a professional resume. And to learn about my pricing and my process for working with clients, click here.
Joe Longley
Lynda Spiegel