It’s a truth in the world of successful professionals that the desire to excel in drives ambition and gives direction to their career. Identifying where you want to go and what you want to achieve enables you to plot the right course and do what’s necessary in terms of gaining the right blend of qualifications and experience to propel you to where you want to be. This dedicated and purposeful ambition ensures that success will follow. It gives you the knowledge and skills to be able to be the best.

Knowledge and skills, then, are a necessary foundation for a career to be built upon. Having the desire to be an engineer, for example, isn’t enough – you need to have the practical knowledge and skills to enable that desire to blossom into a reality as a career. Having the right skill set and the requisite knowledge base is an essential and non-negotiable for any professional.

One of the difficulties for professionals in the job market is the assumption that things like CV writing or putting together a LinkedIn profile can be successfully done by anyone who knows how to turn on a computer. It’s easy to understand why people think this way – after all, who knows someone’s career and education details better than the person themselves. And it is true that if someone has good writing skills and a sound knowledge of employment and social media trends, then they will be able to craft a successful CV and LinkedIn profile. However, if you don’t have this skill set and knowledge base, then your CV and profile might not be as successful as you’d hope.

Consider a simple example – when I first started working for myself I was faced with having to fill out my own taxes for the first time. I figured that this was straightforward. After all, who knew my finances and income better than I did? Needless to say, the government did a lot better out of me than they should have that year, and I’ve used a professional accountant ever since. Assuming something looks easy very often masks the tremendous effort that goes into making something look easy.

The same is true of writing CVs and LinkedIn profiles. Good CVs and profiles are well crafted, use the right language, and target themselves to the right employers. They also mask the hours of effort that go into preparation, drafting and re-drafting, proofreading, and editing, to say nothing of the research into employment and social media trends, that are all a necessary part of producing successful CVs and profiles.

It’s perfectly true that anyone can write a CV or a LinkedIn profile. It’s also perfectly true, however, that anyone can change the oil in their car or replace the brakes. How many of us, though, would want to drive the car that we were responsible for servicing? We entrust these things to mechanics because we know they have the skill set and knowledge base to do the job properly. And it’s for this same reason that many job seekers turn to professional CV writers to craft their CVs and profiles. They turn to them because they want their CV or profile to come across as professional, and they want it to be targeted to current employment trends within their industry.

Let’s also not forget that you’re probably in competition with other people already using a professional CV writer. Using this service is now very common in both New Zealand and Australia.

So, if you’re trying to decide whether or not you should use a professional CV writer, ask yourself these questions:

• Can a professional CV writer create a substantially better final product that you can, or are you able to do anything they can do to the same standard?
• Will a mediocre CV that you write be able to make the same impression and get you the same jobs as a professionally written CV?
• Do you think the overall quality of a CV or LinkedIn profile is important or unimportant to prospective employers?

If you have the knowledge base and skill set to craft a professional CV or LinkedIn profile, then you should definitely do so. If you don’t, maybe you should consider hiring a professional CV writer so that you can be sure you’re getting the best possible final product.