Copied from The Orange County Register, Monday, May 12, 2003

A professional resume service can help you look good on paper, and it can be a good investment

That first impression created with a potential employer can make all the difference.

EXPERIENCED: For three decades, Nola Sheldon, also known as the Résumé Lady, has been helping job seekers prepare, hone and update their resumes. NICK KOON, THE REGISTER

By DEBBIE L. SKLAR
Special to the Register

Nola Sheldon, also known as the Résumé Lady, is somebody you might want to know.

For the past three decades, she has been helping job seekers prepare, hone and update their resumes. She's also seen the industry change dramatically with the introduction of computers in the 1980s to the more recent and less-personal electronic forms. The Résumé Lady says that even in these times of downsizing, layoffs and slow job growth, she can help.

The Résumé Lady

According to Sheldon, who started her service in the 1970s in Orange, "Things were very busy in the beginning, but once computers came onto the scene in the 1980s, the business went down because people were doing their own résumés. I didn't really feel the impact until the 1990s."

Sheldon, who charges about $195 for a résumé with cover letter, said the business is good when the job market is good. "If there are jobs to be had, people are applying or they are looking to better themselves in the job arena. The market has been slow recently, so business has definitely been down for me."

She begins her writing service by taking a phone inquiry followed by setting up a face-to-face, one-hour conference to obtain the résumé seeker's information, and then she sits down to compile it. "I do everything from scratch," she said.

While she doesn't use a computer program, Sheldon says she's kept up with the times. "I provide the client with a copy of their résumé and a cover letter on a disk so that they can use it on their own computer," she said. "I just started doing that a few years ago because there was a request for it."

Since she started, Sheldon said she has completed thousands of résumés, but these days, she only produces roughly 10 per week, if she's lucky. "I'm 71 years old, and I'd like to slow down," she said.

However, The Résumé Lady plans to stick around. "My success rate is very good," she said. "People always come back and tell me they landed the job, and they say a lot of it had to do with their résumé."