Leading a (not particularly helpful) session

Last Wednesday afternoon when I came into the WC, I checked my clients for the day and discovered that my first client wanted help with a CV and a cover letter. I come in after my first class on Wednesday is finished, so I usually get there and jump right in with my first client. In this case, that meant that I had no time to do a little research about either of these items. I've never written a CV or cover letter or looked over anybody else's either. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a CV at all. In any case, I began to be somewhat concerned about the impending session and thought I should maybe find someone else to help him. When my client came in, I felt even more concerned. He was maybe in his late thirties and looked impatient. Fantastic. Trixie suggested I talk to other tutors to see if anyone could switch, but unfortunately the only tutor who hadn't started her session yet was working with a personal statement, which she said was kind of the same thing. I disagreed, but she didn't seem inclined to switch. So I sat down with my client, who as it turned out was from Israel (he had an accent I hadn't heard yet) and had written both this CV and cover letter awhile ago but had been told at some point recently that neither were very up-to-date or American. I explained to him up front that I was not the best person for this job, being an undergrad who, so far, really hadn't put time into learning either of these genres. I suggested that if he were to come back to the WC, he might consider trying to schedule with a grad student, who would probably have more experience with these types of writing. He opened his CV for me anyway (he had it saved on a flash drive), and I looked at it, but at the end I still had no idea what to tell him. Should he bold all the parts he bolded? Were all those categories really necessary? Is it normal to include your birthplace? I wished I could tell him something useful, but in the end I thought that trying to give him advice could do more harm than good. Trixie gave me some literature about both genres partway through the session, and we looked over those. The client ended up staying for about 40 minutes and then said he would schedule with me again later in the week after he'd had time to implement some of the strategies we'd looked over. I wasn't sure why he wanted to reschedule with me and not with someone else, but as I'd already said my piece I decided to let him do what he wanted. If he did reschedule, he worked with someone else as I didn't work anymore this last week, and I really hope they were able to be more helpful than I was. Since coming to the Center, I've learned some things about APA style and resume writing in case I should need to help someone with those, but Wednesday taught me I need to look for even more unfamiliar genres to (hopefully) prevent the extreme unhelpfulness from happening again.