Resume consultants worth it?

[Stretch]

Anyone here ever pay for someone to help revamp their resume?

Mine is pretty badly organized right now, and I'm starting to wonder if it'd be easier just to pay a HR professional a few hundred dollars to tweak it for me.

[Delias]

I rather doubt it... just spend an hour or so on it and re-work it. Unless you'd rather spend the money, then by all means, stimulate the economy!

[Kuyuk]

You have a very high degree... yet you cant write your own resume?

Why would anyone hire you if you cant even express yourself?

[Delias]

You have a very high degree... yet you cant write your own resume?

Why would anyone higher you if you cant even express yourself?

*cough* hire...

[Kuyuk]

Hah, yeah, that was pathetic. I had it correct and re-read my post and changed it to the incorrect thing.

I cannot multi-task. I have more than one tab open on Chrome, so I r dum.

[Delias]

That's alright, I used Allowed in place of Aloud the other day. The internet is destroying my comprehension of language.

[Kuyuk]

Agreed.

If I had money, I would pay someone to type what I dictate to them on these forums.

[Stretch]

You have a very high degree... yet you cant write your own resume?

Why would anyone hire you if you cant even express yourself?

I could probably update it on my own and do an okay job, but someone else who does this thing for a living can probably do it much better than I can. If it's enough to make the difference between the recycling bin and the call back folder, why not? It's not like I'm going to put "prepared by XYZ" as a headline.

I was mostly curious to see if anyone else has done it and if they thought it made a difference or not.

[Smythe]

Yep. Worth it, if'n ya find da right firm.

- Smythe

[Kitsun]

I had a professor that did a lesson on resume writing since he did it as a side job. There's lots of little crap that HR people pick up on that I would never think of.

[Amber]

I did once but the finished product was utterly worthless. The woman who did it had absolutely no scientific background and did a simple list resume, omitting publications and patents, both of which are much more important when trying to get a job in academia than a list of tasks you've done. I wound up redoing it on my own. If you can find someone with expertise in your particular field, I'd consider that as an option, but otherwise, if you're in any kind of specialty area, I think you'd have a better idea of what a potential new employer may be looking for than a random HR person from a different field.

[Kuyuk]

I got to look at over 200 resumes for a nanny position...

There's a lot of people who have fucking horrible resumes. Horrible.

I think I saw about 5 that I kept and set aside because they looked good.

While I understand that the 90% of people applying for a nanny position are not the "caliber" people you may be, but they all had higher education backgrounds and such.

[TheLastShamurai]

There's a lot of people who have fucking horrible resumes. Horrible.

Fact.

At one of my previous jobs I got to look over quite a few resumes from people that were applying to work there; as well as people that were currently working there. They were all horrid IMO. Not a single resume that I touched had good formatting, which made it difficult to find the relevant information; assuming there was any. It was truly amazing that people would hand these resumes off to companies, and expect them to be reviewed favorably; or even reviewed at all for that matter.

.

Depending on the cost and their ability, I could see it definitely being worth investing in a consultant. And like Amber said, if you can find someone who knows a little something about your field, even better.

CVs are like some sick OCD hobby of mine, so I spend a lot of time playing with mine and trying to keep up-to-date on the current trends associated with them.

Which makes me wonder...


I had a professor that did a lesson on resume writing since he did it as a side job. There's lots of little crap that HR people pick up on that I would never think of.

Like what? :)

[LMingrone]

Screw all that. Think about if you owned a company. Would you care if someone's resume followed some kind of format? I wouldn't, and I wouldn't want to work for someone that something like that actually matters.

I'm not at liberty to say who I've worked for, but I can tell you one thing. Do this: You want a certain job? Find out who does the hiring. Call them. Tell them you want the job, and instead of doing all that BS resume shit, tell them that you want five minutes of their time to talk in person. If someone needs your hyphens and format to be perfect, you're smarter than they are, and need to start your own business. This plan has never failed me.

[TheLastShamurai]

Would you care if someone's resume followed some kind of format?

Yes. Do I care if it's in a particular format? No. Do I care if it's perfect? No. But I expect it to look nice, and I don't want to read through several pages of bullshit to get the info I want from it.

Even if they never really delve into it {because a lot of companies don't}, it shows that you can put forth the effort. If you cannot even put forth effort into presenting me a decent resume, why would I want to hire you?

[AnticorRifling]

Why would attention to detail matter?!


Vihgnnghinv (I think I spelled it right I'm not good with eskimo names) you can email it to me and I can give it a once over. I enjoy tweaking resumes for some sick reason and I can, at the very least, tell you where you're retarded.

[Smythe]

and I can, at the very least, tell you where you're retarded.


Ya mean ya give dat shit away fer free?!

- Smythe

[Ashliana]

I wouldn't pay a consultant, no, but I think I had both my roommates, parents, and all my friends help review/critique mine. Some people just have a knack for them--the biggest problem is that you'll get conflicting advice, both from people and sources on the Internet. Especially whether to respond to "respond with salary requirements," etc, questions.

[kookiegod]

I actually used one when I needed to write one for the first time after getting laid off from the company who acquired mine.

I thought it was outstanding, and had the end product critiqued by others and they thought it rocked.

Sadly, or not so much, I went back into biz for myself. www.games2u.com

I am now HIRING people for my new biz, and the resumes I am getting are HORRID. Really, spelling errors, typos in capitalization, horrid fonts.

Spend a few bucks, really. You got 3 seconds between the wastebasket/delete key, make the most of it.

~Paul

[Drevihyin]

A decent resume writing service will cost you $200.00.

[Latrinsorm]

But Comic Sans is free. :yes:

[Gan]

I've had a few of my HR contacts review my resume when needed. I have never had to pay for anyone to review it.

It seems like everyone had a theory on how resumes should be formatted and with what information that would appear catchy.

My only philosophy is customize each resume for each type of job being applied for. Highlight areas where you think the target reviewer would focus on. Having a one format cookie cutter resume to use for all postings is not a good idea IMO. Which is the downside to posting a generic resume on places like CareerBuilder and Monster.

[Atlanteax]

But Comic Sans is free. :yes:

Win

[Archigeek]

I've reviewed a lot of resumes, and from my experience, unless you're hiring an English teacher or a typing professional, you don't really look at format that much so long as it's easy to read. What you try to discern in the very short amount of time that you have to look at a resume is whether or not they have the skills you want. Make absolutely certain that the resume indicates that you have the experience to do the job you are applying for.

There are some things that really send a bad message too:

You might still get an interview from me, but if you have poor spelling/grammar in your resume, I'll already be hedging against you, even if all of your skills matched up. Proper spelling and grammar are indications that you have a good basic education. If you don't, then your secondary education probably isn't that good either. Any job I might be hiring someone for will have clients reading what you write. I don't want to have to police your writing skills. In fact, about the worst thing is if I can tell that all you did was click yes to everything when you sent it through the spell checker, without actually knowing how to spell.

The other thing that may get you to the waste basket is if you're just too damn wordy. A 3 page resume is not usually a winner. Sometimes yes, it is, but most of the time it's just full of crap I don't want to know. Make sure key words stand out. Put them in bold if you want, because I'm not going to read every single word of a resume on the first pass, so you'd better make sure I see the few key things that say "this person can probably do the job." If you know what the job requires, focus on that instead of your entire life story.

One thing to make absolutely certain is on your resume, that actually sometimes gets left off: accurate, complete contact information. I kid you not. Make sure there's an address, telephone number, email address, and website if that's appropriate to the job, (IE: a portfolio on the web or something like that).