Singles Hire Coaches to Improve Their Dating Game

Aug. 11, 2005 — -- Looking for a good opening line?

When polishing an online personal ad, certainly you can enlist friends to critique your photo and jazz up your self-description -- but those who know you best may not be the best candidate for the job. Who else but a paid professional will truly give you an honest opinion and even tell you what you might not want to hear?

"I'm going to tell you the truth. I am not going to tell you something sounds good when there's nothing there," said author and dating coach Liz Kelly.

"There are so many disastrous profiles that misrepresent or don't bring out the best in someone online. So what I try to do is interview people and survey them to get their best and then put it in a short, concise profile," said Kelly.

She jokingly compares her work to the dating guidance offered by Will Smith in the movie "Hitch." Kelly says she is approached regularly by single people who are either re-entering the dating world or are repeatedly not getting the results they had hoped for when posting a profile online. Her clients e-mail her a copy of their online profile for review, and they are often surprised to learn she is not impressed with their pitch.

The California-based author describes one gentleman whose profile had "no meat in it."

"If there's nothing specific in it, there's nothing to grab onto and engage the reader," said Kelly. "He came back and said, 'Yeah, but I showed it to the women at the office and they told me it was great.'"

What was missing, according to Kelly, were the examples of his interests that would have generated an inspired response. She tells her clients to go out and get professional photographs, dressed in the manner they would choose for a first date, while she uses her marketing background to liven up the text for the profile as in this example: