When you’re not aiming at a staff position, a traditional résumé like those we talked about in our last column won’t be much help in competing for work. Few prospective employers have the patience to wade through your career chronology to figure out if you are a good bet to write that article, brochure or script. Yet many of us travel between the in-house and independent universes—occasionally or as a way of life—so we need a good way to market ourselves as freelancers. What to do?
Most experienced independents we know have somewhat adapted the résumé format to suit their purposes, but we can probably save you a lot of trial and error. That’s mostly because someone we know has done a lot of the organized thinking and come up with good guidelines for what is called a “functional” or “skills-based” résumé.
Our colleague’s name is Sheila Buff, and she’s a freelance writer specializing in health and nutrition. She’s also active in the Editorial Freelancers Association, and when working with the group’s job list service a while back, found herself the accidental recipient of many freelance résumés. “I was horrified by some of them,” she told us, “especially since I’ve been on the other side and hired a lot of freelancers.”
So Buff did some research on résumés and available books on the topic and quickly concluded that what works with a corporate human resources department doesn’t work when you’re pitching to an editor. The HR manager is scouting for chronology gaps and signs that you’ll make a good staff member. The editor, PR agency or publisher wants to know whether you have exactly the skills they need at the moment—though often, they don’t know that this is the information they want.
Buff found clues in advice given to mothers returning to the workforce with major gaps in their work history. Pull out what you can do, the books advised, rather than sticking to a chronology that makes you look chronically unemployed. The key for freelancers, she says, is to pull out your skills from the jobs you’ve had and sort them—e.g., copy editing, proofreading, project management and so on. “You plow through your experience instead of expecting the client to,” she says. “When you’re a freelancer, you’re looking for a one-time, one-shot deal the way any consultant would. Like the plumber is hired to fix the sink, you’re hired to fix the manuscript. You want the plumber to tell you that he knows how.”
And like the homeowner who needs a plumber, the editor wants to know quickly, because by the time he or she calls a freelancer, things are usually already weeks behind schedule.
Here is the résumé structure Buff recommends:
- A summary statement of your qualifications; snappy is best
- A list of selected clients/employers, which reassures your prospect that you are reliable and have satisfied customers
- Highlights—a bulleted catch-all category that lets you cover your own gamut of accomplishments from impressive-sounding assignments to awards, etc.
- Pro bono work (or call it “community service”; stay away from the tag “volunteer work”)
- Education
The first thing you’ll find is that it’s eminently possible to fit all this neatly onto one page. Second, it’s particularly easy to update this kind of résumé and customize it to your target of the day. You can adapt your opening statement and shuffle the order to emphasize feature writing at one time, for example, and scriptwriting on another occasion. The same is true with the highlights you choose and the order you put them in. The client list can also be rearranged to bring those that are closest to your current target to the top.
The functional résumé works really well whether you’re looking for project work or a part-time job. Buff wrote her advice up in a booklet called “Résumés for Freelancers,” distributed by the Editorial Freelancers Association (on their web site, click on Resources; or call +1 212.929.5400); an updated version will be available this month or next. She reports that many of those who followed her advice saw a dramatic difference in their response rate.
Profiles and opening statements
We asked some of our colleagues to share their functional résumés. Here are a few examples to demonstrate how you can vary the content to show off your own skills and aim for the work you want.
Opening profile, Leila Zogby:
A versatile business communicator who develops key organizational messages and translates them into concise and persuasive writing for public relations, marketing, sales promotion, investor relations and employee communications. Attentive to details and deadlines. A team player. Experienced in working with CEOs and high-level executives. An independent writer since 1984.
Zogby follows up with:
- Representative Freelance Assignments
- In-House Work History
- Honors
- Education
Here’s an opening profile for Adina Genn, whose background and interests are quite different.
An award-winning journalist with 20 years of expertise in media and communications, including newspapers, magazines, books, and web site content, with a strong background in small business and entrepreneurship. Published in The New York Times, Long Island Business News, Long Island Magazine, Canvas and Long Island Press.
Genn then presents short sections with some details of her journalism work and books, followed by awards and recognition, and then backs up her credentials with sections on her earlier in-house jobs as an editor, and her education. This takes two pages. (There’s nothing carved in stone that says you’ve got to stick to one page, says Buff, but make the first page comprehensive enough so that readers who don’t flip to the second page will still get the gist of your message.)
These two profiles show how, as with all your writing, it’s productive to first think about your audience and goal—the work you want to get—and select the presentation and details that support your case.
What if you are an unregenerate generalist casting a wide net? Here’s what one of us (Natalie) often uses:
No opening profile, just an identifying statement—
“Business Writer and Communication Consultant.”
Then sections on:
- Work for Nonprofit and Corporate Clients
- Writing for Publication
- Communication Consulting and Workshops
- Highlights (including IABC activities and other community service, awards and significant work experience that would otherwise be uncovered)
- Recent Clients
Include your technology skills
A bit more advice from Sheila Buff: It’s important to keep up with the changing landscape, and these days it’s very desirable to additionally pull out your technology skills—design programs, video editing, HTML and the like can make you much more marketable. “Freelancers should invest in being up to date with hardware and software as well as skills,” she says. “But don’t try to master your skills on a client. Then you’re in trouble.”
Do you feel that neither the traditional résumé nor the functional résumé works for you? Yes, there are other alternatives. One is the short one-page biography, sometimes sent as a PDF and perhaps containing embedded links, which can be a really good tool not just for getting consulting work, but for posting on your own or a company web site, submitting to all those award competitions you’re going to win, and more.
But that’s another story. If you’d like some ideas on how to do your short bio, let us know. Or if you have a good one yourself, share it with us and we’ll tell the IABC world about it.
