Thoughts on professional CV writing?

[cpjames]

Hi All,

Current contract is coming to an end after a year and a half and with the market the way it is I am thinking about getting my CV professionally written.

What are peoples thoughts on this, is it worth it? Most of the sites I have had a look at charge aroud £300 - £350 for a complete CV. Just out of interest I got a free review done (you know the one where they tell you your CV is terrible and say they can fix it for £300 quid)

Has anyone gone down this route, what did you think etc?

Any advice is as always greatly appreciated.

Chris

[Langkawi]

Hi CP,

I'd imagine this is a subjective one.

I think a lot of the CV writing firms just take your current CV and add a lot of proactive verbs and language.

Therefore the paradox is that unless you have a decent CV to start with then they can't do much with it.

I'd spent a while on my CV and whilst it was in pretty good shape I figured it was worth a punt using the CV service. (After all it's a tax deductable expense, right?). I thought my own CV was better than what they sent me. But I did like a lot of the language they used and incorporated some of it into my old CV.

Also, £300 wraps sounds pretty pricey to me. I think mine cost about £70.

Cheers,
Alan

[Lumiere]

Read this thread, change your CV following the recommendations there, then use a proofreading service which offers "suggesting improvements in both expression and organisation".
Should cost you no more than 20 quid.

[Lumiere]

Has anyone tried using an agent for CV proofreading ? At the end they are the target audience ...

[Muttley08]

Wouldn't have too much confidence in them - 9/10 aren't that bright or barely literate. They don't understand the context of terms, and I'm sure couldn't actually be bothered.

When I've been recruiting, had a few CV's with really bad spelling / grammar, and suspect its the agents playing about with the CV's to fit into a standard format.

[scooterscot]

At the end they are the target audience ...

Good luck with that. I've never encountered an agent that understands what I do.

[mace]

Used to get up to 8 calls a day until an agent suggested I bullet point my CV and make it shorter. After that, got no new leads at all. So just go with whatever works best. For me, it was providing a large amount of info on what I did in my last job and 1 paragraph max summaries of all previous jobs.

[Bright Spark]

I have used the same cv for past 15years for contracting all I do
is add the latest role at the top and delete the old role at the bottom.

cv is always 3 pages, also i tweak the skills or highlight them more based
on the job spec and tend to use the same words as the job spec, I put
in more technical buzzwords and especially the latest and greatest stuff, this
usually impresses the agent and increases your chances of him/her forwarding it to the the client.

I would never put a picture of yourself on the cv unless your an attractive
page three model!

[Muttley08]

I have used the same cv for past 15years for contracting all I do
is add the latest role at the top and delete the old role at the bottom.

cv is always 3 pages, also i tweak the skills or highlight them more based
on the job spec and tend to use the same words as the job spec, I put
in more technical buzzwords and especially the latest and greatest stuff, this
usually impresses the agent and increases your chances of him/her forwarding it to the the client.

I would never put a picture of yourself on the cv unless your an attractive
page three model!

I've got a cracking pair of moobs coming on...does that count??

[cpjames]

Hi CP,

I'd imagine this is a subjective one.

I think a lot of the CV writing firms just take your current CV and add a lot of proactive verbs and language.

Therefore the paradox is that unless you have a decent CV to start with then they can't do much with it.

I'd spent a while on my CV and whilst it was in pretty good shape I figured it was worth a punt using the CV service. (After all it's a tax deductable expense, right?). I thought my own CV was better than what they sent me. But I did like a lot of the language they used and incorporated some of it into my old CV.

Also, £300 wraps sounds pretty pricey to me. I think mine cost about £70.

Cheers,
Alan

Can you remember who you used? There are so many of these types of services that it would be good to use one that someone had experience of.

Chris