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Tips for Those Using a Resume Service?
hireMePlease asks: 'I am getting ready to re-enter the job market because I work in the 15 hours a day company that was mentioned in an earlier Ask Slashdot. I realize that the job market for us techies is not very good right now(especially where I live in the southeast), so I am trying to find any edge that I may be able to get in order to land another job. My question to the slashdot community is have any of you used one of the many resume services (where you tell them about yourself and they write a resume for you) and were they at all helpful?"
Why do you think that somebody else could do a better job describing your positive attributes than you could? Honestly, don't let anyone write your resume for you. Instead, have them assist you. Have them help you determine what order to put things in. (The most important stuff should be at the top -- whether that's experience, skills, or whatever.) Have them review it for grammar. Have them help you make it look good. But never let them write it for you. Otherwise, you'll end up with something that doesn't match the way you come across in the interview. I once caught a glimpse of my resume that a recruiter "revised" for me, and it was complete and utter nonsense.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
The company I was recently "fired" from (sorry I feel a "lay off" implies you _might_ get to come back) paid this service to help with my "transition". So far they have been worthless. Maybe if they spent some of that money on CURRENT employees they wouldn't need this service.
Ok enough with the rant. I have found the best results so far have been from going to individual company websites and doing job searches / applying directly. My resume is on all the usual "head hunter sites" -- www.monster.com www.careerbuilder.com etc...etc. But no luck so far.
If you are looking for help acctually BUILDING your resume I know Monster has a service you can pay.
Anyway -- that is my $.05 worth with the experience I have had so far.
Good luck!
-- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
Most universities have placement centers that will help you with your resume, and job search even years after you graduate.
Try your old school. It never hurts to e-mail a copy to an english teacher you liked from either high school or college.
Another tip I have is I keep an eight page version of my resume that has an extesive description of every job I have had, along with phone numbers of contacts. When I start a job search I add my current info and then cut and paste a realvant resume.
Mark
So far, the replies seem to assume the asker is talking about online job sites. No, they're talking about a resume writing service, in the hopes that they will be able to put together a good resume.
Frankly, I've never used one of these services. Perhaps they have ways to word things that make you look really good, but I prefer my resume to be an example of my work. It's done well enough the way it is...I'm currently looking for an engineering position, but the real reason I don't have one yet is the market itself.
Employers are being swamped with resumes. One employer I interviewed with showed me a stack of resumes four inches thick. Even if your resume is more distinctive than the Declaration of Independence, it still has a good chance of being lost in the mess.
One flat piece of paper looks pretty much like any other flat piece of paper after the first two hundred.
Write up a good resume, but don't focus entirely on it. In today's job market you need phone time and face time. There is no other way a recruiter will notice you more than others. Well yeah, if your resume is currently written in crayon, a resume service will help, but in that case you're not going to get a job anyway.
Flashy, glitzy, buzzword-filled resumes are probably as much of a put-off as anything. I'm sure a recruiter can look at a resume and say "This person did not write this."
Go to places you want to work, call them, get face time and phone time. Don't just inquire at companies who say they have jobs...they get the most motivated employees when they wait for the candidates to ask if a position is available.
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Like I said....forget about it. Don't waste your time. The job boards are for inept recruiters that can't find anyone on their own and for the shady recruiters that harvest your resume and send it off w/ out your knowledge to their clients. They are merely fishing and snake the good honest recruiters out of helping you be/c when you/they find something good, you will inevitably get "your resume is already on file." They spend their days spamming clients w/ your resume..... I am not sure how many people know about this, but many staffing firms do this. My advice is to find a hungry recruiter who needs to eat, impress them w/ you skills and get them to find you a job. It's what they do. But make sure they listen and have at least half a brain! Don't say I didn't tell you wusuup!
http://thebigchoice.com
hehe typical that the first time a story about my company's line of work comes along I've got the server out of the co-lo so it's down until 9am BST when I go and fit the replacement one. I've got a nice Compaq Proliant to replace the 15 reboots in a day hand built.
We offer advice on CVs as well as a CV writing service and, although I say it myself, we do a good job. We have placed plenty of graduates and by Christmas we'll have well over 100,000 members.
Our money really comes from providing recruiters with good graduates so going over the top on a CV just makes us look ridiculous.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I went to a resume service a few years ago and it was a decent experience. She had me sit there and give all the details, while she formatted and reworded things to make it more impressive. I've ended up making significant changes since then, and you can look at the current version if you like. It's linked on my user page.
Really the service she provided was to get the thing started. Once that's done, it's easy to make changes to suit a particular situation or your changing experience and skillset.
As I said, I made significant changes to mine, mostly based on conversations with a guy I knew who had worked in HR doing hiring for a major company. Here are his pointers:
Your resume should be one page. It should be highlights, essentially; sort of like a movie trailer; a teaser to get you an interview. The main reason for this is that your resume will be copied and faxed, and in the process additional pages will probably be lost, and it's annoying to have to deal with staples. If you look at mine you will notice that I have seperate documents for contacts and work history, These cover all the stuff that doesn't need to be in your resume, and can be provided to the interviewer if they want it. You might also notice that I put a fair amount of time into making sure the online version of my resume would print as one page (I'm not sure if the current online version will, but it should be close enough that whatever ends up on the second page is unimportant).
Forget fancy colored paper. Again, your resume is going to be copied and faxed, and in the process the color of the paper will either be lost or will interfere with readability. The only person who will see the fancy colored paper is the receptionist you hand it to, and she's probably an after-school temp.
Use at least a 12 point font. Some of these HR folks have to go through hundreds of resumes, and the ones that stand out best are the ones they can read. Again, faxing and copying plays a factor here, especially faxing since it introduces heavy aliasing.
The final thing I have to say is don't beleive all the hype about the tech job market being in the tank. I've been layed off a little more frequently than I would have been in better times, but it's never taken me more than a couple weeks to find a new job, and so far each has been better than the last. There's nothing particularly special about me. I have only a few years of tech experience and no degrees or certifications. I've come to the conclusion that all the people complaining about there being no jobs are a bunch of lazy whiners.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I've had the same resume' for years. I copied it from somebody when I was in the service (my first "real" job) because I thought it looked good. (I think he'd had it done professionally). Ever since then I've just updated it and in 15 years (and 5 jobs) never had a problem getting lots of good offers and basically being able to pick where I wanted to work.
Until this time!
Fortunately I wasn't laid off, but I did want to move on to more interesting work and it took me a freakin' year to land a good job!! (Lots of offers, all of them complete crap positions).
I used FlipDog as the best job source I could find next to my local newspaper. (Monster/Dice/etc used to be good, now the good stuff is buried a mile deep in crap that nobody wants).
But I also, finally, sent my resume' to these guys, er gals.
I paid the initial couple bucks for feedback only and decided that they at least knew what they were talking about so I gave them some more money (I think the final total was around $70) to just go ahead and do what they were talking about.
And when I got it I said Egads! That's horrible looking! Until I sat down and really read it. It wasn't a layout I would have chosen by any means, but the more I looked at it the more I realised that it was really a much more effective presentation of my skills as a recruiter or hr person would scan for them.
Any computer geek I'd ever shown my old one to said "Wow, awesome resume', come work for us!" and prior to this slowdown that was good enough - HR saw the key words, passed it on and the IT guys did the rest.
But these days it won't get past HR without that added edge.
So yeah, get it done. I really did pick these guys at random originally but they did a good job so I'm passing 'em along!
You might be doing okay; but even in the Depression, some people had jobs.
The fact that HR has to go through hundreds of resumes for each position should be a clue. So far, after applying to 30+ jobs, the only interviews, or response of any type, have been through personal contacts.
I appreciate your advice, which is good. But don't assume that those of us having trouble finding jobs are 'lazy'.
... if these people knew how to write good CVs, would they be working for a CV-writing service?
It's like taking investment advice from your broker: there's a reason he's a broker and not a fund manager. There's a reason that your waiter isn't a chef.
The best person to ask for advice is someone who has successfully written a CV that has gotten an interview for a similar job to the one you want. Another good source would be someone who interviews candidates for that job, at least they can point out common mistakes.
Remember, a CV can get you an interview, but only an interview can get you a job.