Now that most college campuses are winding down for the academic year, my work focus has narrowed to providing services for private clients.

Here’s a sampling of the work I did last week–most of what I do is some version of these three activities:

Client 1: We worked together over email to tweak and edit a resume and cover letter. Once the documents were ready to go, I provided a screencast to the client to show him how to save files as a pdf and then attach them to an email–I am happy to provide those kinds of ancillary services and skills training.  

Here’s the reply I got from the client at the end of the week:

“This was not only a great idea, but it actually worked!  I sent all to the [person] I know, who forwarded it to [the employer] who answered and said, “LOVE referrals like this – thanks so much I’ll pass it on.”

Note the essential role of networking!

Client 2–an academic client–had received a revise & resubmit notification on an article submitted to a journal.  I went through the article and added annotations using the “Insert Comments” feature in Word to suggest all the changes that should be made to complete the revisions and get the article in the publication pipeline. Then I annotated the reviewers’ comments in a similar fashion with comments such as “done!” “this will be addressed if you make the following change…”  

The revisions will be sent in by the end of this week!

Client 3–another academic client–is starting a new article so we worked on a timeline and task list that I will follow up on with reminder emails to keep her on task and on schedule. On that same call, the client talked to me about the new article in such a way that I was able to provide a broad written outline that she can use to get started on the research & writing while refining and tweaking my outline as she goes.

This week–more of the same. Today I am:

• Preparing a solid one-page general resume for a client so we can quickly move to the next steps of customizing to specific job ads, crafting a cover letter, and securing interviews!

• Editing academic documents in preparation for initial submission.

• And following up with academic clients on timeline compliance writing progress.

Darcy Lear is a career coach specializing in academic writing, job search documents, professional school applications, and interview preparation. To schedule a campus workshop or for help navigating your career transition, contact Darcy: darcylear@gmail.com