The Truth About Resume Writing Services From a Career Coach

Hello Everyone & Happy Tuesday!

Welcome to the new Work It DAILY newsletter! We’re so glad to have you here. As some of you might know, we moved our newsletter to a new platform. But nothing else has changed; you’ll still see us in your inbox every Tuesday with the best career and job search advice around. Enjoy!

In Today’s Newsletter:

• The Truth About Resume Writing Services - From the perspective of a career coach.

• In The News - Employee engagement has hit a low & an in-demand job that doesn’t require a college degree.

• Just Ask JT - The #1 technique that can get you a job right now.

• PRO VOICE Podcast - AI is changing how companies hire. Here’s how to tell who’s doing it right.

PRO VOICE Podcast

AI Is Changing How Companies Hire. Here's How to Tell Who's Doing It Right.

There are 1,400+ AI recruiting tools in the world right now, and the numbers keep growing. Every time a recruiter picks one to use, it changes your chances of getting seen.

Most job seekers have no idea which tools are reading their resume, or how those tools decide who moves forward.

This week, J.T. O’Donnell is sitting down with Stephen McGrath, Creator of TA Tech Finder and Head of Product Experience at Poetry - the AI workspace for experienced hire talent acquisition teams. Stephen spent years in the recruiting seat. Then he moved to the vendor side. Now he runs a free site that helps recruiters pick hiring tech based on the problem they need to solve, not on who has the best sales pitch.

His team checks every vendor on the site every 45 days. No vendor can pay to rank. That means a five-person start-up gets the same shot as a big brand. And when his team doesn't know something, they say so.

That's rare in hiring tech right now. Every week a new start-up says it will kill Workday. Some of them might. Lots of them won't.

Here's what we'll cover:

- The hiring tech start-ups making big claims, and how to tell hype from real
- How Stephen's platform grades vendors, and why "pay to play" isn't allowed
- Why so many recruiting teams buy tools they barely use
- What all this means for you if you're the one applying

Stephen helps recruiters choose the right tools. At Work It DAILY, we help candidates understand those tools and get seen. Same goal from both sides: hiring that's fair and works.

Join us Wednesday, November 4th at 2 pm ET 

Can’t attend live? RSVP to get reminders to watch the recording.

Meme Of The Day

https://programmerhumor.io/programming-memes/wheres-my-job-wjv1

The Truth About Resume Writing Services From a Career Coach

By @JT O'Donnell - CEO, Work It DAILY

Job seekers are wasting hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars on something that’s actually hurting their chances of getting hired in this market. I got another email about it in my inbox, and I want to share the story so the same thing doesn’t happen to you.

It came from a single mom of two who has been out of work for a year. She wrote, “JT, I spent $600 with a resume writer who redid my resume and I’ve gotten zero results. I’ve been watching your free videos and I’m thinking they did something wrong. Can you look at it and tell me what to fix?”

This happens all the time; maybe even you yourself have been disappointed after spending hundreds of dollars on a resume writer. Here’s how I want you to look at what happened, so you can avoid it in the future.

The Brakes and the Paint Job

Let’s say your car’s brakes are grinding and squeaking. You press the pedal to the floor, and the car still isn’t coming to a complete stop. You’re rolling through stop signs. So you take it to a mechanic, and the mechanic says, “You don’t need new brakes. You need a paint job.”

You pay $600, maybe $2,000, and the car looks fantastic. Then you roll out of the shop, straight through a stop sign, and get into a massive accident.

Who’s to blame? You, for trusting the mechanic? The mechanic, for selling you something you didn’t need? And would you really go find a new mechanic and ask them to fix it for free?

That’s exactly what’s happening to job seekers right now.

What Actually Went Wrong

When I looked at her resume, it was clear the writer had designed it to make her feel better about herself. There were fancy fonts and fancy language that made her sound super important and successful. And that’s the problem. Once she told me what kind of job she was going after, I could see the resume made her look expensive and overqualified. No wonder she was getting tossed over and over again.

Her resume needed a complete revamp. So I told her the truth: go back to the resume writer and ask for your money back, because you didn’t get what you needed. She sold you a paint job when you needed brakes.

Why a Rewrite Won’t Fix Your Job Search

Here’s what job seekers don’t understand. Slapping together a resume, or paying for a LinkedIn profile rewrite, is not how job search works right now. A prettier document isn’t going to get you hired.

What you need is to understand your brand, or what I like to call your unique value add (UVA). And more importantly, you need to know the specific language you should be using to grab the attention of recruiters. When you do it right, recruiters can skim your resume, skim your LinkedIn profile, and quickly find and check off the requirements they are looking for. When recruiters see the words they need to consider you for the job, you move forward.

And once you have that language, you can build a process where you get found because of it. That’s how you end up with recruiters knocking on your door. That’s how it works in 2026 and beyond.

Why Coaching Beats a One-Time Fix

This is what we do inside Work It DAILY. We are not resume writers or LinkedIn profile writers. We’re legit career coaches, and we coach you every step of the way so you’re doing everything right and you’re supported every single day. You are not alone and isolated in your job search.

And let’s be honest about what you’re up against. A job search in the United States is now taking 6 to 9 months. We’re cutting that time down and helping you do it the right way, for far less than people are wasting on a resume or LinkedIn rewrite. Why spend that kind of money on one thing that isn’t working when you could have a whole coaching team behind you?

Here’s What I’d Do If I Were You

This is what I told that woman, and it’s what I’d tell anyone in her shoes.

First, if you’ve been burned, ask for your money back. Seriously.

Second, take my free UVA quiz. It’s 100% free. The quiz identifies your unique combination of workplace personas and communication styles and unlocks the specific language you should be using in your job search. It’s one of my favorite tools that I’ve ever built.

Third, consider trying coaching. My team and I have created FREE access to our coaching platform, so anyone can try it out, no strings attached. If you’ve got a question or two that you want answered by our coaches, this tool is for you. You can find it on our free resources page here.

I hope you check it out.

Go get ‘em!

JT O’Donnell

In The News

U.S. worker job engagement hits lowest level since 2011, new Gallup poll finds: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/29/us-employee-engagement-gallup-poll.html

Just Ask JT

Thanks For Reading!

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