Unpacking the Resume Writing Profession

“This is why people get so brain-constipated when they try to choose a career, and why they often pick the wrong one: they don’t understand the craziness that they have to offer, nor the craziness that will be demanded of them, and so they spend their lives jamming their square-peg selves into round-hole jobs.” ~ Adam Mastroianni

One reason our industry is so diverse is that we all transferred in from different schools. I came from the school of journalism and creative writing; others come from the school of engineering, the school of HR, the school of English, and even the school of IT. As a profession, résumé writing accepts all transfer credits and says, “No matter where you’ve been, there is a place for you here.”

As attractive as that is from a career planning standpoint, anyone on the fence should probably know a few things about how résumé writers actually spend their time. In real life, it’s closer to investigative journalism mixed with therapy and applied linguistics. These things might not be included in the brochure.

1. Client intake is a big time sink. You will spend a lot of time on intake forms and discovery calls before you ever write a word. Writing is the last step. First, you’ll be probing vague statements, reconstructing timelines, and translating experience into business outcomes. If you dislike interviews, ambiguity, or gentle interrogation, this work will exhaust you.
2. Clients don’t speak in bullet points. They rarely say, “I reduced churn by 18% through lifecycle redesign.” They say: “I answered emails.” Your job is to extract impact without inventing it, which requires patience, pattern recognition, and restraint. As a career archaeologist and translator, you thrive on this process.
3. Writing Is the easy part. The hard parts are deciding what not to include, choosing the right level of assertiveness, balancing the overselling v. underselling scale, and navigating human readability with ATS logic. This is judgment-heavy work. No formula or algorithm replaces that experience.
4. Marketing and sales never really stop. Independent writers spend significant time generating leads through networking, content, referrals, or platforms. Consult calls are also sales calls. You learn to explain your process, handle objections, and close packages at a price that makes sense. Or you don’t.
5. You provide emotional labor. Clients are often anxious, laid off, or burned out. Listening and reframing their stories is a big part of the work. You need boundaries and resilience so their stress does not become your constant stress. If you don’t like people’s feelings showing up uninvited, proceed with caution.
6. It’s a business, not just a craft. Juggling multiple active projects means tracking deadlines, drafts, calls, and payments like a project manager. Profitability depends on how well you scope projects, manage time, and control revisions, not just on how good your writing is.
7. You must understand many industries. You don’t need to be an expert, but you need to recognize how success is measured in different roles. Bouncing between the worlds of healthcare, tech, trades, education, nonprofit, and finance is routine. A healthy dose of curiosity is not optional.
8. Results are often indirect. You don’t control hiring managers, timing, internal candidates, ghosting, budget freezes, or algorithms. A brilliant résumé may still not produce interviews immediately. You must be able to separate work quality from outcomes. Seasoned writers obsess over process, not guarantees.
9. Tools matter…but less than thinking. ATS scanners and AI tools are useful. But the great résumé writers understand things like pattern recognition, ethical framing, strategic omission, audience awareness, and narrative control. If you’re looking for a plug-and-play skill, this isn’t it.

Did I leave out anything important? Let me know at [email protected]. Résumé writing is intellectually demanding, emotionally-involved, ethically nuanced, quietly high-impact, and weirdly addictive if it fits your brain. If you love meaning-making, precision, people, language, and problem-solving, you can do great things here. If you want fast wins, applause, or tidy inputs, prepare to be humbled daily.