About
My Background
Maritime Resume Services was founded by me, Hans P. Larson.
I graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1996, and after graduating from college I spent two years living in Taiwan. Why did I head overseas after finishing college? I suppose I just wanted to travel a bit and see the world, some people move to Europe after finishing college, but I chose to go somewhere else.
When I was living in Taiwan, I taught English and worked for a trade company as a part-time gig while studying Mandarin at the National Normal University’s Mandarin Training Center. For those who are not familiar with this institution, the National Normal University is a place of of higher learning that functions as Taiwan’s national teacher’s university, and this university is commonly called “Sher-Da” by the locals.
After returning from my time overseas, I worked as a substitute school teacher for a few years, but I was not sure about becoming a full-time teacher despite having received many formal job offers for full-time teaching positions. My adventures in maritime work actually began when I met-up with an old friend of mine at a party on New Years Eve in 1998 with the beginning of 1999 being only a few hours into the future. My friend had previously worked on Alaskan fishing boats during the summer months while attending Old Dominion University in Virginia, and my friend’s stories of daring-do and adventure in Alaska sounded quite cool at the time, so I decided I would take the same path when the school year came to an end.
True to my word, when the summer of 1999 arrived, I bought an airplane ticket to Kodiak, Alaska and tried my luck just walking the docks and looking for a summer job on a fishing boat of some type. Luckily, I did find work on an old wooden fishing tender that summer, and I made more money during those few months working in Alaska than I had the previous school year, so working on boats became my new career focus.
After a few months off after that first summer on the fish tender, I returned to work on the same boat; however, a change of ownership on that old fish tender left me without work, but luckily a tug boat had arrived in the port of Dillingham, Alaska where our vessel was tied to the dock and offered a job to anyone looking for work.
I wound-up working a full season on that tug boat that I encountered there in Dillingham, and this boat performed fuel and freight deliveries above the arctic circle in Alaska. The company where I worked was called Yatana Barge Lines, and this company no longer exists, but a full working season at that company meant working until the rivers and the ocean itself began to freeze, so the working year with that company ended in the last days of October each year.
After working in Alaska, I spend five years working as an Able Seaman and QMED in the Gulf of Mexico, then I spent the last nine years of my maritime career working as an engineer on tug boats that delivered freight between the Hawaiian Islands.
My Maritime career ended in 2016 for a list of reasons, so I enrolled in a professional writing program at San Francisco State University in January of 2017. After finishing the professional writing program at San Francisco State, I completed the Academy Certified Resume Writer (ACRW) credential program and the Academy Certified Profile Writer (ACPW) program at the Resume Writing Academy.
I am proud to say that nobody else anywhere that I know of has the same background in professional writing and the Merchant Marine that I have, so I am uniquely qualified to writer resumes for professional mariners.
I look forward to applying my writing skills and my background in the maritime industry to the process of building you a cool new resume.
I am here to help you get the best job possible!