Resume Services (ie Monster.com)
 

Having just survived a recent head chopping here at good ol' Miramax Films, I'm in the process of updating my resume. I don't think this company will exist as more than a name and a handful of employees by next year...

I took a look through all of the resume threads here but I didn't see anyone commenting on the quality of professionally done resumes.

Has anyone here ever used a service to have their resume done? Monster.com has one that is quite pricey and there are about 10 million other people who advertise this service.

Any thoughts?

The downside with "professional" type set resumes, is you can't gear the resume towards the position which you are applying for. Depending on the job you are going for, you might want to stress one set of skills over another.

Nice paper, and a laser printer is what's expected, I'm not sure that spending an extra 1000 bucks is going to get your foot in the door anywhere.

But that's coming from a technical background.

i wouldn't bother with a professional service. my field is pretty general, so i customize my resume to EVERY position i apply for.

do some reading on it, look at examples, and try to make a clean template you can use. then see if someone with experience can help you (if not personally, i'm sure there's plenty of design majors on forums that'll gladly take a peak and give you some help). a couple people i know are design majors, and so they helped me make my resume/cv. chose what font i should use, organization, that sort of thing.

proper fonts, hierachy, clean lines and organization are what you should be looking at when you're making a template.

I was told in college that a empolyer can see a resume that is done by the individual or a professional service. Which they tend to lean towards the person who did it themselves. I recommend u to just set up a standard template and do it yourself. Shows them that you know how to do thing yourself.

Many large companies now use software-driven tools to scan resumes and sort them by suitability based on keywords that describe the attributes needed for the particular job. So 950 out of 1000 resumes might be eliminated from consideration before a human ever sees them, because they didn't have all the keywords that the software was looking for.

I knew somebody who spent several hundred dollars to have a consultant rework her resume into a stripped-down, keyword-laden form that would guarantee she got past the computer guardians. And it was a very successful resume; she got work quickly.

I find this somewhat depressing, but it's the state of the job market -- at least a large piece of it -- today. Still, applying for work via resume is much like knocking on the front door of a company; kind of hard to get past the receptionist. You have much more success getting to the right people if you come in through the side door, through personal or social contacts.

EXACTLY!!!!
I recently went thru this whole job thing and had many different versions of my resume created. You can download many templates for free from websites to create an outstanding resume. Remember: Head Hunters and HR people are using software to scan resumes these days. They are searching for "keywords". If you pay to have a professional do your resume, the "keywords" may not be listed and then you're out a couple hundred bucks.
EXAMPLE: I sent one resume to a employer and received a denial letter within days. I re-sent a modified resume to the same company a few days later with words and phrases of the particluar industry, and received an interview request. Weird huh.

I have to imagine any professional person is educated enough to create a resume. Buy a book and examine the options. A career counselor of some sort is always good for input on what current employers are looking for. I created my own and customized it for each position. And make sure you have someone proof read for you - it's very easy to miss your own mistakes.

wow, i wonder if there's a site the lists what the magical keywords to get past the gate are. i'm gonna need to revise my resume and send it in again ..

Okay, thank you for all the input. I've done my own resumes in the past so I am able to do them, I just was wondering if there was any benefit to these services and past the keyword issue, I can see that there is not.

We'll see how I do as I am (as of yesterday) unemployed!

(watch my TFP postcount increase dramatically) :)

I don't have the book in front of me, nor have I seen the current years version -- however one of the best job hunting books I ever seen, and the bible for people serious about it - it's especially good for changing careers too is What Color is Your Parachute. In this book, it lists "action verbs" that are attention getters... And stresses using Active rather than Passive verbs.

Post your resume here, there are enough people around, both that look at resumes for a living, have written a resume or three in their life that'd be happy to help you critique your resume.

I used that book too. It is updated every year and your local library should have it. Helped me alot. Also, CareerBuilder.com has all the key word for your industry somwhere on the site. Just search the archeives.