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?"

Comments

Use pre-paid for College help

[markwusinich]

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

Missing the point

[cybermace5]

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.

Do it yourself with help

[MrResistor]

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.