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• Group: US Federal Recruitment, Talent Management & HR Professionals

Bryan Hochstein has started a discussion: The Resume Place...

"To the delight of many, it's been over 3 months since my last post. Back in late June, OPM advertised an SES position for the Assistant Director, Integrated Hiring Solutions (Click to view Announcement 11-SES-324-LEK).

It opened June 28th and closed on July 11th. It was the perfect role for me and I had to apply. Only one problem; I needed an SES federal resume that addressed 5 Executive Core Qualifications: Leading Change, Leading People, Results Driven, Business Acumen, and Building Coalitions.

If you look at my LinkedIn profile, you'll notice a bunch of bullet points in the rough form of a resume. Nothing special and certainly not awe inspiring for an SES position within the federal government. Ironically, when I created QuickHire, my vision was to rid the world of resumes. More or less, I failed.

Fortunate for me (and the reason I don't burn bridges, ha ha), I knew someone who's business is built around federal resumes and the SES format is their specialty.

So I made a call to Kathryn Troutman, founder of The Resume Place (www.resume-place.com). I've known Kathryn for over a decade. While we hunted for business in the same sector we never competed against one another.

The Resume Place has been in operation for almost 40 years and now has over 20 employees most of which are resume writers. Starting out, The Resume Place helped law students write their resumes for Corporate America. Soon after inception, The Resume Place began helping people fill out the KSA's for the SF 171. Over the years, Kathryn & Associates have written several books on the federal hiring process, created numerous training classes for applicants, Hiring managers and HR alike.

Kathryn's first book "The Federal Resume Guidebook" is now in its 5th edition (I have a signed copy). Kathryn has written 6 books (20 editions) on federal hiring cover military, students, etc. The most surprising thing to me is that The Resume Place has reinvented the federal resume format several times. It's like an ever evolving science and it works! Kathryn was excited about the OPM vacancy announcement too and matched me up with Diane Hudson Burns. Kathryn and Diane had just completed a new book and training course on SES Hiring, so the timing couldn't have been better.

While we never met face to face, Diane, who lives in Idaho was excellent at guiding me through the process of developing an federal SES resume. She is organized, experienced, knows federal hiring and is easy to work with. She started with the requirements of the position and why I felt it was for me.

She interviewed me at least 4 times and numerous emails eliciting my work experience and anecdotes. She had a process and guided me through it. In the end we had to cut out some really good material to meet the 5 page limit. The best part was that working with Diane was like going down memory lane. I have accomplished a lot in my career and it was good to document."