NFT: Resume Writing Services - Anyone have experience with them?

of time and money. There is no "magic" way to write a resume, and before hiring anyone, you should have your resume reviewed by a career counselor at your local state workforce agency. Many also offer resume writing classes. Both are free.

Some other thoughts:

"Tailor" your resume for each job opening by blending the key words from the ad into your experience.

Replace any objective statement with a handful of bullet points listing your skills and a few of your achievements. Center the bullet points at the top after your identifying information.

Use a chronological format if possible.

Only include the last ten to fifteen years of your experience, unless an older job is directly relevant to the position for which you are applying.

Remove the date of your college graduation if you are over forty.

Understand that doing this is still not likely to produce results. Resumes are overrated, at least as an introduction. No matter how it is written or formatted, you are still likely to be screened out by applicant tracking software. So why pay for something that is so unlikely to work? The value of a resume is after it is requested by someone to whom you have already made a professional connection.

Waste of time. Your local unemployment office should offer free advice and even resume review consultation.

Definitely tailor the resume. For that I recommend a site called jobscan.co (not .com). You can paste the your resume and the job description in and the site compares them much like the software employers use so it tells you how well your resume matches what the employers are looking for. Once I started using it, my interview percentage went way up. You get five free scans a month but I paid for unlimited usage because I found myself using it five times per job.

Good luck.

but a lousy written resume will absolutely guarantee you that you wont get an interview

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Your local unemployment office should offer free advice and even resume review consultation.

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you should have your resume reviewed by a career counselor at your local state workforce agency.

I have a career counselor that I've been working with through SUNY Buffalo's school of management. I had been planning to utilize both, but perhaps I'll forgo the writing service. Maybe use the state provided career counselor as well.

I have been hiring staff for the past twenty years. Everyone from interns to managers. As far as your resume is concerned be careful of length. Too long and most won't read it but too short and I wonder if the applicant is just applying to every job out there.

Write a few sentences about any substansial job you have. No dog walking or baby sitting unless you ran a small business.

Be truthful.

Good Luck and go Buffaloes. My wife is a UB grad and I am a Golden Griffin

I don't think I got my money worth but it is a nice resume probably better then most.

But I've always thought that if you're not qualified to even apply for the job, what makes you think you're qualified for the job itself.

You can learn to write your own resume with a little research on the Internet and with your peers. Additionally, learning how to do it yourself will be helpful, assuming you are going to have another job again at some point in your life.

You seem like a bright guy. I highly doubt putting together an awesome resume (something that would have to be at most 2 pages long) is something you should be paying for.

I just helped an experienced healthcare executive land a major contract for her company because she had an impressive resume to present that included all of her accomplishments. It included both functional information, as well as a detailed, bullet-pointed career history.

The first two pages are a professional summary that includes job history, skills, licenses, and education. If a hiring manager wants more details on a particular job, s/he need only scroll down. Or the professional has the option of submitting the professional summary that stands alone.

As a professional recruiter, I read resumes all the time. The ones that suck are unreadable blocks of text or lack detail or a layout that coaches the eye to look at certain things. If a resume is unreadable, it is worthless.

I draw on my career experience as both a recruiter and an online content editor and online sales copywriter to put together resumes that are eye-catching and push the most valuable, relevant information to where it is most likely to be read.

For a general tune-up, where the textual content has been provided to me, or where I'm taking an existing resume and improving it, the price is $300. Considering that it is a tool that can lead to a job paying $50,000 and up per year, that is a bargain.

The longer and more specialized the career, or where I am helping someone make a career change (emphasizing transferable skills), the more time I have to spend, and the estimate goes up from there.

I just did a 5-page resume (including professional summary) for a CEO-level guy, and also optimized his linked-in page for $3000. And that was also a bargain, considering that he is qualified for jobs earning anywhere from $250-350k.

An attractive, readable, professional resume is an investment in yourself and in your career.

If you're uncomfortable with writing, and have 0-3 years experience, $300 is a paltry sum for a resume that will make you stand out and create a positive impression, not to mention, avoiding some of the stupid mistakes I see candidates make all the time.

regularly and most of the time the decision to pass the candidate along comes from HR, not me. Rarely, but on occasion I have had to use our recruiting tools to source a candidate if I'm just not seeing what I'm looking for from the recruiters.

Normally, once the resume gets to me the candidate has been pre-screened.

so the resume is really initially for the recruiters, so I'd pay attention to headhunter. the recruiters aren't going to grill you on experience necessarily, they'll focus on keywords, years of experience, qualifications, companies worked for, salary ranges, and resume specifics (easy to read, no typos, etc) and then phone-screen you.

once I get the resume then I drill down into your experience.

not sure if that's helpful or not. bottom line is there are a few recruiters on here and headhunter, so I'd listen to them.

beware of killer typo's

my resume and I have been considering hiring a writing service. I have always done my own resume in the past and I've done ok with jobs, but now... I have experience in various careers and I am not sure how to tailor the resume. I am thinking at this point a CV might be better than a traditional resume. I am just not sure.

I'm trained and certified in resume writing, which is something I did as I was building up my freelance football writing business to help pay bills during the offseason.

Yes, the local unemployment office can do it for free, but you get what you pay for. Many of those people don't have a clue how to strategically brand someone to help them get what they want out of life. I've had to fix many of those resumes over the years, so I know what I'm talking about.

Yes, you can write it yourself, but you know what? It's not easy. Many people don't know how to strategically brand themselves--that includes many of the folks in the local unemployment office.

Many people prescribe to some outdated practices such as including an objective (no one really cares what you want; the company cares what you can do for them) and the one-page resume (rule of thumb is one page for every 10 years of experience).

Many people don't know how far back in their employment history to go into details, and the biggest no-no people make is they can't seem to combine what they did with the accomplishments they had. And there are countless people out there who believe they need multiple versions of their resume, which is perhaps the BIGGEST mistake one can make.

So no, writing a resume isn't an easy process and it is certainly NOT a waste of time or money to hire someone to do it. I could go on with more reasons, but I won't for the sake of not boring you.

The trick is to get someone with experience, who's been trained in the art and who has done it on a regular basis rather than as a side hobby.

There are a select number of credentialing agencies such as CDI, PARW/CC and NRWA, and then there are specialty agencies that credential for military transition, federal resumes and SES.

Yes, you'll pay a few hundred dollars to have your resume professionally prepared, but if it gets you a job with benefits, you'll easily make that back and then some with your first pay check.

Hope this helps.

Be careful when hiring services. There are places out there that claim to be credentialed, and they are, but the credential might not apply to every writer they employ.

That's the problem with some of the mills. Some stress volume, which is not the best practice. Also, you don't necessarily know what writer you're going to get--you could get someone just starting out in the business or someone who's been doing it a while, so you need to ask who the writer will be, and find out about his/her credentials and success rate.

I still don't get someone who is looking a job at a Senior level won't invest in a killer resume. You should see the dreck I see

Not for nothing, but some of the worst resumes I've seen come from HR and sales people. It's scary if you think about it, but upon further review, we're taught to be modest with our accomplishments and how we conduct ourselves--a mistake when job hunting, IMO.

It is stunning to think you want to interview for a SVP or Director role and you won't invest a couple of hundred dollars to present yourself in the best possible light. Most people who think they are, aren't

How much to work on a mid-level resume (mine)?

Lots of helpful information to consider.

one thing they did for me was make me think more of accomplishments rather than responsibilities. Sounds like common sense but you would be surprised at some of what comes across my desk.

Get it done once and update yourself.

Create specific resumes for each application. Yes. Do it.

I need to know what I have to work with and how much time it's going to take.

For example, if I'm doing a full-blown CV for a C-level executive with 30+ years experience and NOTHING written to give me: Basically, I have to interview the guy to get the basic resume info, it's going to be $3000 for the full CV.

Everything starts at $300 for a 1-2 page resume from a kid who has 1-3 years experience and a shitty resume for me to start with. In other words, I've got verbiage to start with, and it's really an editing job, requiring an initial phone call, a phone call to get any additional info required while putting it all together, and at least one phone call to go over the finished product and make any final corrections.

Based on the free initial consultation, I give an estimate before doing any work. The estimate usually includes a range of options because I can also optimize a LinkedIn Page, which is also a very important tool.

Once we agree on the services to be provided, half of the fee is due before I start and the second half is due when I finish. Once we have sign off on the final version, I will provide unlimited tweaks for life. Tweaks mean no new content, but if there is an error missed the first time around or if your margins or page breaks get screwed up, I'll fix that for free, for life.

If you want help, email me, and we can discuss what you need.

Interesting. I may hit you up as I am pondering looking for another job and I could use a tweak or two on my resume and the counselor I had worked with when I graduated Law School is no longer there