Any Dopers care to share their experiences, anecdotes, praises, or complainants about using resume writing services? Most I’ve seen cost around US$200-US$250.
The last time I applied for jobs it was still mailing in traditional paper résumés. I used to get a reasonable response rate. At least it took a real human to throw you résumé in the trash.
Now everything is web based and it seems like my résumé isn’t even getting past the computer filters.
Job hunting sucks. At least I have a decent job while I’m hunting.
You need one. First of all, your resume now has to fit a certain format. Next, it can’t have any errors or some HR moron will toss it. Lastly, it has to have the right buzzwords for your career so that the bots & spiders will search out and find your resume.
Now, yes, any reasonably smart SDMBer can do the 2nd. Any computer guy can do the 1st. But it takes an expert to know #3.
As a part of the package when I was laid off several years ago I had not only a resume writing service but a job hunting service included. I found both to be immensely helpful as I am a great employee but a terrible job hunter.
Based on my experience we hired a resume writing service for my husband when he decided to move on and paid about $150 cdn. They provided several options until it was not only something that would work but that he was comfortable with and also included 5 cover letters that they wrote based on job leads he sent them. The whole process helped both of us feel a lot more comfortable writing the additional cover letters we needed.
One thing to note - both the services we used set up our resumes so we could easily customize them for a particular job - highlight some specific skills, minimize others etc by having a long and a short description for several key paragraphs. I think this was a huge factor and I wouldn’t accept a service that didn’t provide it. If I had used all of the long descriptions my resume would have been 5 pages, but by including short ones I could easily customize a 2 page resume for any position.