What tools do you use to perform work tasks? When you want to dig a ditch, you won’t use a spoon because you are so miserly you don’t want to spend money to buy a shovel, right? When a seamstress cuts fabric and sews a dress, she doesn’t use a child’s scissors or a toy sewing machine. If you don’t use the best tools, you will work harder or spend more time to achieve a goal or perform the job professionally.  Time is money.

As a professional consultant, I am ‘eyeballs deep’ in using technology tools – computers, software, and hardware, and those tools are how I make my living serving clients. I use the latest version of MS Office Word to write resumes, including PowerPoint to create presentations, Adobe InDesign to create books for publishing, and I use an Epson Eco-Tank printer that cost me $1,300. Why do I spend money on the best tools? Because I want to present my best skills to my clients and work with industry standards to provide more than the minimum quality to customers with their finished products. 

Public school students attend keyboarding classes to learn to type, train on business software (e.g., MS Office 365 Suite), and/or learn graphic manipulation in Adobe Creative Suite products. The shame is they don’t consider becoming proficient in this technology as an essential career tool. (Note: I am not associated with any of these brands.)

As a print-on-demand editor and publisher, I encounter clients who have no idea how to create a simple paragraph indent in essays (even in Ph.D. dissertations!). As a writer, I have advanced my skills using Word, PowerPoint, and InDesign to compile and format my books; essentially increasing my use of more professional tools as I grow my skills. I am often shocked to discover my business clients have no professional office software on their computers. How do they manage without professional tools?

I have resume clients who use Google docs or Open Office to compile a resume. It’s obvious because the free word processors use default blank documents which have been pre-formatted with bloated line spacing, extra line spaces on top of page numbers in the footers, and huge page margins (1.25”). I can spot these ‘ugly’ templates from a mile away. I can identify graphic artists using free, but low-quality programs (or phone apps), to illustrate because their image are heavily pixelated. I can identify a lack of word processing skills when I open the formatting pane, and see the typist used a space bar to push the word content and simply eyeballed the center of a document.

The point is … when one needs to put out professional results, one needs to find, use, and even pay for the best tools to get the job done. Settling for ‘free tools’ (Open Office, Google Docs, Gimp) will potentially result in ugly documents. Yes, one can provide okay results using most office or graphic software. You always want to provide a stellar – and impressive – presentation to the client. That is why the professional software costs more – computing capabilities above and beyond what the ‘free’ software can provide. 

The bottom line is…if you seek a new career job, you must be well-versed in using business office software. Learn to use Word and document and paragraph settings to set up a beautifully formatted letter or document. Learn to use Excel spreadsheets with formulas and programming to increase the capability of reporting and accounting. If you are a presenter, learn to use PowerPoint’s brilliant functions and transitions to put the dazzle into your performance in front of the crowd. If you are in the graphics world, you should use high-quality illustration programs to create the most aesthetic artwork. If you are an editor, purchase a subscription to an editing tool (e.g., Grammarly, ProWritingAid).

If you are a professional and want your work and business products to look smart, consider purchasing and using the best tools to save you time and money. The results will showcase your services and quality products to clients at the most optimum output. 

Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., owner of D. Boyer Consulting – provides resume writing, editing, publishing, and print-on-demand consulting.  Reach her at: Dawn.Boyer@me.com or visit her website at www.dboyerconsulting.com.