Melissa Peacock is the founder and chief executive of The Perfect Resume - one of Australia's leading career service providers.
Melissa Peacock is the founder and chief executive of The Perfect Resume - one of Australia's leading career service providers.
The Perfect Resume was not my first resume writing business. After 10+ years of government, community services, not-for-profit, and private corporate experience, I lost count of how many people I hired (hundreds), how many resumes I reviewed (thousands) and how many interviews I held (thousands). All this experience was tucked away until 2018 when I was made redundant.
Being made redundant was not a good place for me. I didn't understand. I felt hurt. I was bitter about the entire situation and it set my career back. I also wasn't offered an outplacement package. In fact, I didn't even know they existed! After a period of soul searching, someone wise (my mum) told me to start doing something I love. For me, that was writing. So, I did. It was through my search for writing courses that I stumbled on a resume writing course. This blew my mind! I didn't know that a resume writer job existed!
I completed the 216-hour course (who knew there was so much involved in writing a resume) covering everything from chronological and functional formats to hybrid layouts, executive profiles, industry-specific language, ATS optimisation, and personal branding.
If you're interested in having me as your resume writing teacher, please have a look at the resume writing course here.
I was then accepted for a job with Outplacement Australia. This company was a huge eye-opener. They specialise in helping people who are going through redundancies get their resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile in order.
The outplacement packages I offer today are not the same as Outplacement Australia's, but I thank them for giving me the insight that these packages are available. Outplacement packages benefit both employers and employees: they provide a structured transition period, maintain professional relationships during difficult separations, improve re-employment outcomes, protect employer reputation, and give displaced staff dignity and practical support when they need it most. If you're after outplacement services, I can help.
For other resume writing businesses around Australia, I'm the professional resume writer they can turn to when they need someone they trust to look after their clients and/or their business. If you Google my name, you'll probably see my name in their team profiles. Others have utilised my expertise as a ghostwriter. We've become good friends over the years. I've even stepped in to look after their business when they are unwell, on holidays, or just need an extra hand. It's these trusted connections that allow me to look after their businesses when they need a break as well. If you run a resume writing business and would like someone to lean on, please feel free to reach out.
Working with other resume writing companies in the UK, Australia and the US has made me recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all resume writing service. That is why I don't just run one resume writing business — I have several. They all serve a different audience and offer a different service, designed for the people who need application support.
I also worked as a freelancer on Airtasker and worked with hundreds of people one-on-one. I left the platform as more and more overseas providers and bots started taking over, the fees went up, and it was no longer a viable business option. So, in 2018, I opened up ATS Resume.
ATS Resume has become the home for migrants, students, hospitality, aged care, disability and other front-line service positions. It's an affordable option for job seekers who don't need phone calls — they just need a quick resume without the fuss of competitive benchmarking, industry research, and personal branding. Click here to visit ATS Resume to see if those services suit your needs.
In 2020, it became apparent that ATS Resume was not suitable for managers, senior managers and executives. These cohorts require more than a resume rewrite — they need performance-based resumes that quantify achievements, demonstrate leadership impact, align with board-level expectations, and tell a compelling career narrative rather than just listing duties.
Therefore, The Perfect Resume was founded. Phone calls are included in this service, unlimited revisions until you have a resume you are proud to put forward into the market, and if you need support with interview preparation and career counselling or outplacement services, getting a resume review is your next best step.
In 2023, I acquired Resume Writing Australia and became a go-to for job seekers and recruiters in construction, mining, energy and resources resumes. These are an entirely different skillset! Construction and resources resumes need to highlight safety certifications, ticketed qualifications, site experience, and the ability to work in remote or challenging environments — completely different from corporate office roles.
In 2024, I acquired CV Writers, a resume writing service for government and public sector job seekers. Teachers, Nurses, Police Officers, Public Servants all require selection criteria to be responded to. With CV Writers, the entire government application is looked after.
In 2024, I also acquired ITCV Writers (ITCV Writers), however it was operating under the CV Writers banner. As a bit of a tech geek myself, I knew people in tech needed a different resume entirely — one that highlights technical skills, project experience, certifications and measurable outcomes rather than traditional corporate achievements.
In 2025, I separated the entity out so I could offer a specialised service for IT and technology job seekers. In 2026, I leveraged my IT company to build specialised software that other resume writers can now use to fast-track the research component of the resume writing process. This software was previously several spreadsheets that were glued together with macros and clunky formulas. One of my senior writers used to keep stealing the macro button. To this day, I still don't know how she managed to do it. But I love her all the same! Today, it's a responsive, mobile-friendly site. If you're a resume writer, please visit TPR+.
For years, 1-2 hours were spent copying and pasting information from an old resume into a new Applicant Tracking System (ATS) friendly template. Some older scanned documents couldn't even be copied — they had to be manually typed out word for word. Another hour or so would be used to go through any performance documents, cover letters, or other resume versions etc. to pull out any gold we could find. Then, 3-5 hours of a resume writing service would be spent on research: searching Google, Seek and LinkedIn for position descriptions, identifying keywords, mirroring language hiring managers are using, and coming back with questions for the candidate.
Now, our resume builder, TPR+, does this part for us. We then take over from there. And believe me, there is still A LOT that needs to be done manually.
Do we use AI? We'll be upfront and say: to a degree, yes. However, we are not one of those companies who serve up AI slop and pretend we have done the work. In fact, a lot of our work comes from people who have used ChatGPT etc. and they haven't been successful.
Remember when I said some of those resumes we get sent are scanned documents? Sometimes they are handwritten notes too. AI is used to extract information in any form and put it into a draft resume that we can work with. It pulls out your dates, job titles and does the previously manual step of copy and pasting.
From there, it's a manual process using recruitment expertise. The benchmarking process is our secret weapon. As we have worked with 6K+ job seekers since 2018, we have a huge library of all roles, levels and content that we know are job-winning. We formulate questions so you can present an interview on the page, not a generic AI document.
We also use AI when you send us reports. For example, teachers will send us annual reports and we use AI to extract performance metrics we can highlight as achievements. We've also been sent news articles, website links for construction projects, podcasts, videos etc. All these different forms of content — back in 2018 would have been me listening to a podcast to pull out some useful information. Now with AI, it can do it for us.
We DO NOT send your data to a third-party AI business. 2026 has become a pivotal turning point for the business. There are so many security issues when it comes to AI, therefore we no longer use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, Claude etc. We have our own AI setup that we host locally so your data is not going offshore or being held hostage in an unknown data centre.
Your sensitive information is kept safe and away from prying eyes, and we destroy all AI chats the same day we update anything so you can be assured that your information is safe with us.
If you would like more information, please contact me at info@theperfectresume.com.au.