SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Crystal Résumés expects to be taking new orders from about the end of April or early May.
Site content, including prices, has not been finalized.
By all means, look around. If you’re shopping for résumés, there’s a lot of valuable consumer information here for you.
Intensive résumé consulting (and writing):
Specializing in Executives, Upper Management, and senior people in Sales, Accounts, IT, Engineering, and Healthcare Business and Management.
In-depth, individually developed interviewing—typically three hours for senior clients. So thorough, detailed, and individualized that it teaches my clients, by example, about how to think about and present their own skills and experience.
Total information strategy and writing craftsmanship, so your résumé can open doors that other résumés can’t—making the points that need to be made at each stage, from the first screening to the final short‑list.
Technical formatting to create résumés that skip through the automated résumé-processing minefield that kills or cripples most electronic résumés.
Plus, I’m with you after the résumé is done—for questions, technical or otherwise, about using the documents I’ve sent you.
Scroll down for the tour.
The Tour
All your basic questions will be answered on this page—it’s designed to give you a quick and convenient tour. Use the links below, or just keep scrolling.
Within each section of the tour, after you’ve clicked on a link for details, you will be able to click right back to where you came from.
And don’t miss the general information pages: • Résumé Realities … … covering the pervasive misinformation about résumés, including killer myths that could make your job search fail even if you do everything else right.
“If one see the ground first, without adequate study of the map, one is very apt to miss something important.”
— Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, soldier, strategist, and military historian
“The buyer has need of a hundred eyes, the seller of but one.”
— old proverb, quoted by, among others, Benjamin Franklin
Getting Started
After you’ve taken the tour, If you’d like to know more, give me a call. I’ll take the time to answer your questions, and get to know about what you’re looking for. (This is what other résumé services call a “free consultation.”) It helps a lot to e-mail me your existing résumé first:
info[at]crystalresumes.com
We’ll discuss your situation and your objectives, and what services you need, and agree on fees and a schedule.
During the first week or so after we make our arrangements, I’ll develop lines of inquiry for the in‑depth interview.
(This has nothing to do with the generic scripted interviews and one-size-fits-all information strategies that normal services use.)
The interview is pretty intense, typically 2.5 to 3 hours.
I suggest you have a cup of coffee first, and then settle down someplace comfortable, with a glass of water handy.
So thorough, detailed, and individualized that it teaches clients, by example, about how to look at and present their own backgrounds. My clients often tell me they’ve learned a lot from the interview alone. I get remarks like “I never realized I did all that!” One client called it “résumé therapy.” I could call it “coaching,” but I’m an information professional, so to me it’s just professional information gathering.
The interview can be scheduled afternoons or evenings, including late evenings after the kids are in bed. Weekends, too, subject to availability.
Writing: A résumé has to be effective at every stage of the hiring process. I take the information I’ve gathered, develop an overall strategy, and then write and structure the résumé so that it works at multiple levels:
• content that will speak to every member of an executive team considering the short list, including people in other sections of the organization
• bullet points that combine into stories of performance and achievement
• prominent main points for a quick scan by an HR person
• keywords for scanning by automated résumé-processing systems.
(Most résumé services only talk about the last two points.)
Formatting: Custom-fitted, with the format and visual structure appropriate for you, not slapped into a template.
I use expert-level Word techniques, and exceptional technical production knowledge, to format résumés that are compatible with current automated résumé processing systems.
(Many common Word techniques used by virtually all résumé services are not appropriate for the kind of processing that résumés get.)
Review and quality control: Based on years of editorial and technical QC experience—before I ever got into résumés. I spend more time on QC than some résumé services spend on the whole job.
The production phase (writing, formatting, QC) typically takes two to three weeks, depending on my workload. It has to be done in stages, and spread out.
I’ll send the résumé, in MS Word, for you to review.
When you’ve gone over it, I’ll work with you to make sure that I’ve covered everything that needs to be covered, that all the information is accurate, and that everything is expressed in language you’ll be comfortable responding to questions about.
When I’ve had your OK, I’ll do the final round of review and quality control, format the plain-text version of your résumé, create the LinkedIn profile, if you’ve ordered one, and put together the final package.…
Every digital format you’ll need, so you won’t have to interrupt an application or an interview to think about résumé formats.
• MS Word, the standard for visually-formatted résumés to be read by humans.
• Plain-text. A specially formatted, ATS-optimized, plain-text résumé is what you should use when pasting text into the Web forms that are increasingly used by employers for jobs at all levels. A résumé formatted for convenient reading by humans gives a messy result when pasted into Web forms. Few résumé services seem to know this, or know what to do about it.
• PDF. Commonly used in some industries, and always handy to have.
You’ll also get information about using the items in your package, including when to use each format, and some tips about job-hunting. Plus a free References Sheet template, with tips to get the most out of even that simple tool.
With the résumé thoroughly nailed down (and all the information and tips I send with it or put on this site), you can go about the rest of your job search without further trouble over the résumé.
My résumés earn enthusiastic feedback from my clients. And my clients get enthusiastic feedback about the résumés from the employer-side decision-makers who read them. The résumés have opened doors that were previously shut, and turned around many job searches.
Look through the TESTIMONIALS page: feedback from people in your field—and from HR specialists.
“Wow! This is wonderful!” — auto sales manager. My first client as Crystal Résumés. That was his whole e-mail.
The typical fee for the Résumé Consulting Service is $2000.
If you find someone who charges more, I’ll match their price. Guaranteed.
For full detail on fees for all services, see the Services page.
Payments & Terms
Like all résumé services, I require payment in advance*: in my case, a retainer up front, and the balance when we’ve done the interview, before I start writing.
Like all résumé services, I have a no-refund policy.*
I’m transitioning my credit card arrangements. At present, you can pay with your credit card via PayPal. You don’t need a PayPal account. I’ll have PayPal e-mail you an invoice—it’s super easy. I’ll be notified the moment you pay.
Three weeks is typical: from the time we agree on a schedule and take care of the payment, to the time when I send the approval version. This may vary with my workload and the size of the project. I’ll need about a week to prepare for the in-depth interview, and two weeks to complete the approval version.
Rush service is never an option. Please don’t ask.
Crystal Résumés is basically me, Ken Dezhnev. I started it in 2008, and have owned it, done all the work, and made all the decisions ever since. I’ll do all the interviewing, writing, and formatting on your résumé. I don’t farm work out. (That’s why I can take only a limited number of projects.)
Before Crystal Résumés, I spent 20+ years doing writing, editing, typography, and technical production for leading national ad agencies, corporations, and publishers in New York City.
With those skills, I don’t need to rely on standardized interviews, generic résumé-speak, and templates.
That’s why HR people like my résumés—and hire me to do their own.
I don’t slap résumés into templates. Different fields involve different types of information. The qualifications of different people in the same field may be best presented in different ways.
But they’re all clean, plain-vanilla. Because nothing else will survive the electronic processing that résumés are subject to. I did demanding type and graphics projects for years for leading ad agencies and design studios. But “visually distinctive” résumés turn into garbage at the employer’s end. It has to be that way—no automated processing system could handle all the coding variations used for elaborate visual presentations.
With my experience, I can make clean, plain-vanilla look better than just about anyone else can.
A résumé is an all-text document. It has to be. Hiring decision-makers have no time for fluff and eye-candy. They want the information that they need, they want it right up front, and they want nothing else. Fluff and eye-candy are strongly disliked by people who read résumés. (And they are NOT ATS‑compatible.)
This is an all-text site. It’s designed to give you the information that you need, as efficiently as possible. It’s also a sample of what I can do with information presentation in an all-text résumé. You can read the main points, and then go down one or more layers deeper whenever you like.
Value for the Future
I’m with you after the résumé is done—for questions, technical or otherwise, about using the documents I’ve sent you.
(“You’ve saved me HOURS!” said a director-level client when I walked her successfully through a tricky upload process.)
A résumé that you can revise and update yourself in the future. Plus tips on how to do it.
One client said that this alone made it the best investment he’d ever made.
(Of course, I can do updates for you, too. In any case, when you’re ready to make the next big step up, come back to me for information strategy and professional writing.)
The myths about résumés that everyone is bombarded with can wreck your job search several times over.
Take a look at Killer Myths, the most dangerous conventional wisdom about résumés.
A lot of what “everyone says” about résumés is just guesswork, sales hype, and partial information, carelessly copied, chopped up, mixed up, taken out of context, and repeated for decades, often long after it’s outdated. (How does this happen? See our #1 Résumé Tip.)
There’s a lot more to résumés than people think. A lot more to the writing, to the visual presentation, and to the technical aspects of creating and using résumés.
The résumé business is also a lot more complicated than people think. There are no standards in this business, for either products or quality. The price/quality relationship can be very loose. And résumé services are very much not all the same. See The Résumé Business in General.
That’s why I’ve prepared the Résumé Realities page, your guide to this site’s information resources: the Tips & Myths page, the F.A.Q. page, and the Résumé Encyclopedia.
There’s a lot of valuable information on those pages. Some of it you may not find anywhere else, and I doubt very much that it exists all in one place anywhere else.
“The website is super helpful!” — national manager, $500M retail category
It’s also an example of my professional approach to information—and of my knowledge of résumés. Compare it to what you see elsewhere.
About one third of our clients are in upper management: CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CIOs, company owners, board members, presidents, VPs, and directors. They’re in all sorts of industries, in corporate, public-sector and non-profit organizations. They’re in every area of corporate and organizational management: enterprise leadership, sales, accounts, finance, operations, technology, human resources, planning, marketing, facilities, security, and so on.
So I’ve probably got a good deal of experience that’s closely relevant to your career, and I can also anticipate the perspectives of the entire management team that may be considering your résumé.
The in-depth information I gather from you will enable me to tell stories with a few bullet points—portraying complex projects, business efforts, and achievements, and a trend of continual advancement, that points straight to your value to your next employer.
We’re particularly happy that our many sales and accounts clients appreciate our own specialized sales communications skills. They’re in a range of fields: in B2B products and services, in commodities, in consumer products, in manufacturing or specialized technology, in outsourcing, in logistics or distribution, in consulting services, in all sorts of specialties. Some have huge portfolios of simpler products, some have small portfolios of highly-specialized and complex services or technology products.
Senior-level sales and accounts responsibilities can cover a lot of ground, and I make sure to cover all that ground when I interview you. Then I select and arrange the information to tell the full story, a story more widely relevant to employers than what they’re used to seeing.
An information-based approach to résumés is especially appropriate to technology—not only for the obvious reasons, but because you have to go beyond the technology, with information about how you achieved your results—how you used your resources, how you led teams, and how you worked with non-tech people and departments. The “how” side, in combination with a fully professional presentation of the technical side, will make your résumé stand out clearly from most technology résumés.
A large portion of my clients are in IT, particularly at project management, department management, and executive levels.
Many other clients are in various fields of engineering, at all levels up to senior management and company ownership.
In Minnesota, where I’m based, healthcare, both for-profit and non-profit, is big business. I’ve had many clients in all areas of the field, from nurse administrators to CEOs: executives in all management roles, sales and accounts people, IT and telecomm specialists, research and testing managers, technicians, and caregivers. I’m experienced with the special requirements of regulated healthcare businesses and licensed healthcare providers.
In addition to résumés, I have extensive experience in healthcare industry communications—healthcare advertising and corporate communications, documentation and packaging for many dozens of prescription and OTC pharmaceuticals, and technical documentation for more medical devices than you can shake a stent at.
Clients with management and senior tech positions in the following organizations have come to me to help prepare them for their next move:
• Target*
• Cargill*
• U.S. Bank
• Supervalu
• UnitedHealth*
• HealthPartners*
• Boston Scientific
• Wells Fargo
• 3M
• General Mills
• Ecolab
• Express Scripts
• Digital River
• Medica
• OfficeMax
• Polaris
• Deluxe Corp.
• Delta Air Lines
• Schwan’s*
• General Motors
• UPS
• Wal-Mart
• Accenture*
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Defense Intelligence Agency
• United States Navy
• Ameriprise
• Andersen Corporation
• Avnet Electronics
• Carleton College
• Digi International
• Dynamics Research Corp. (now part of Engility)
• Equus Computer Systems
• Graco
• Harland Technology Services
• Hunt Electric Corp.
• Landscape Structures
• McGough Construction
• Minnesota state government*
• National Co+op Grocers
• Nilfisk Advance*
• Opus Architects & Engineers
• Sovran
• Sun Country Airlines
• U.S. Corrugated (now part of McKinley Paper Co.)
• University of Minnesota
• DHL Ecommerce
• Enterprise Rent-A-Car
• Google Creative Lab
• Kohler
• Principal Financial Group
• Reinhart Foodservice (now part of Performance Food Group)
• Sentara Healthcare
• Wolters Kluwer Health
I’m inevitably less well-informed about where my clients have gone with the help of my résumés. But from repeat clients, and letters of thanks from others, I know they’ve gone to the organizations marked with asterisks above, to positions ranging from middle and senior management and tech on up to C-suite. You can read feedback I’ve had from clients in various fields on the Testimonials page.
Crystal Résumés is basically me, Ken Dezhnev. I’ll do all the interviewing, writing, and formatting for your résumé. I’m a lifelong communications professional who eventually decided to specialize in résumés.
Before starting Crystal Résumés, I had over twenty years of experience doing writing and editorial work for leading national ad agencies, corporations, and publishers in New York City (where I started out), along with digital typography and graphics work (including technical consulting, quality control, font consulting, and production with InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fontographer) for similar clients and for design studios and specialized type houses.
I’ve also edited and written proposals and key business communications for marketing consultancies and other firms, consulted on editorial style, and edited scholarly and technical books, reference works, and doctoral theses.
Some of the better-known organizations I worked for directly in New York were:
• Ogilvy & Mather
• Time magazine marketing department
• KPMG
• Estée Lauder
• Gerstman & Meyers (now Interbrand)
• Grey Direct
• RAPP Worldwide
• Doremus Advertising
• Wells Rich Greene
• Bozell Worldwide
• Macy’s
• Scholastic, Inc.
• Miramax
• Crain’s N.Y. Business
• Atlantic Monthly • American Lawyer magazine
… along with dozens of lesser-known ad agencies, design studios, and specialized production houses, some of whom were names to conjure with in New York at the time. (At one of these, known as PDR, one spring night, I had the complete annual reports of three of the Fortune Five on my desk at once, for quality control.)
Before that, while I was in grad school, I did proofreading and copy-editing for Penn State University Press, and edited graduate theses and papers for the Penn State University Thesis Office.
In Minnesota, before starting Crystal Résumés, I worked for:
• Martin/Williams
• BI Worldwide
• Thomson West (Reuters)
• Campbell Mithun
• Allina Media Services
• and other ad agencies and design studios
People who knew my work occasionally asked me for help with résumés. When they saw the results, they always told me I should make a specialty of it. Eventually I did, starting Crystal Résumés in 2008, a few years after moving to Minnesota.
I serve clients all over the U.S., and I’ve worked directly with clients around the world to create international CVs for foreign employment. Of course, I have a strong client base where I live, in the Minneapolis—St. Paul metro area and the Upper Midwest. (I’m located in Plymouth, MN.)
Letters after my name? I could put “M.A.” if I wanted to. B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, with three years of grad school on academic fellowships. I sweated blood for that. But, as guarantees of even minimal competency in any professional or intellectual skills or knowledge, those degrees are meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know me. I'm also IRTFM-qualified in several key technical specialties and software applications—backed up by years of professional experience for the sort of clients listed above.
Beware of imitations! Remember: it’s crystalresumeS-dot-com.
Since I started in 2008, I’ve accumulated some imitators, including some who have “borrowed” text from this site. Some have even tried to steal the Crystal Résumés name. That’s part of being a leader.
When looking for Crystal Résumés on the Web, it’s best to use the URL, crystalresumes.com, rather than searching for “Crystal Resumes”. You are not dealing with Crystal Résumés if you are dealing with anyone under that name using a Web site other than this one, or a Web or e-mail address other than crystalresumes.com.
If it looks cheesy, it’s not the real Crystal Résumés.
“Crystal Résumés” is a registered trademark and registered d.b.a. of Ken Dezhnev. Neither Crystal Résumés nor Ken Dezhnev have any relationship with any other persons or firms offering résumé services.
What my clients have said about my work—and what employers and recruiters have said about my résumés. The client comments will tell you a lot about the experience of working with me.
Give me a call or an e-mail. Remember, it helps to e-mail me your existing résumé before you call—my services are highly individualized, and I can give you a much better idea of what I can do for you if I have that detail on your background.
Your guide to my pages of essential information about résumés:
Tips&Myths: A must-read. It will change the way you think about résumés. Includes a section on “Killer Myths”—common myths about résumés that can wreck your job search even if you do everything else right.
Résumé Encyclopedia: Terminology and technology. Résumé terminology can be confusing and inconsistent, not to mention that some of it is empty hype. Technology is a much more important aspect of résumés than most job-hunters realize, and I cover the basics here.
