Resume consultants worth it?

[Latrinsorm]

But Comic Sans is free.

[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.

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).