Professional CV writing services
Discussion
Hello all
I am keen for a bit of advice.
To give you the background... after leaving school in 1997 post-A Levels, I chose to skip uni and took a job in accounting. This lasted until 1999, when I moved to the media / publishing company that I am currently working for.
I work on fairly niche trade publications and, whilst it's a relatively small company, it has been quite successful, earning me a decent wage, with little commuting effort, along with the bonus of travelling the world whilst on the company ticket.
I have been a director of said company since 2007, and have a small amount of shares that were given to me, which I would naturally hand back if I chose to leave.
I enjoy my job, the people I work with, and in a nutshell it represents quite a significant chunk of my being.
However, I am starting to reach a point where I feel earning potential is limited, and that I am getting to the age where if I don't move soonish, I will not be considered as a dynamic option to a new company, due to my reluctance to move around.
So, to the crux of things...
I have not written a CV since 1999, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I could do a decent stab at it if I tried, considering the pay bracket that I will be aiming for. The whole thing fills me with apathy, probably because I fear that I don't have enough interesting info to put on there, regardless of how hard I have worked and accomplished in the years I have been employed here. I just feel my effort would look weak, as though I have never had the ambition to try something new, job wise. The truth is that I have really enjoyed my current job, and the money has been good enough for me to remain for all these years.
So, in this situation, would a CV writing service actually be of benefit? If so, which outfit do you choose? And how much should you pay?
Thanks all for the advice.
I am keen for a bit of advice.
To give you the background... after leaving school in 1997 post-A Levels, I chose to skip uni and took a job in accounting. This lasted until 1999, when I moved to the media / publishing company that I am currently working for.
I work on fairly niche trade publications and, whilst it's a relatively small company, it has been quite successful, earning me a decent wage, with little commuting effort, along with the bonus of travelling the world whilst on the company ticket.
I have been a director of said company since 2007, and have a small amount of shares that were given to me, which I would naturally hand back if I chose to leave.
I enjoy my job, the people I work with, and in a nutshell it represents quite a significant chunk of my being.
However, I am starting to reach a point where I feel earning potential is limited, and that I am getting to the age where if I don't move soonish, I will not be considered as a dynamic option to a new company, due to my reluctance to move around.
So, to the crux of things...
I have not written a CV since 1999, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I could do a decent stab at it if I tried, considering the pay bracket that I will be aiming for. The whole thing fills me with apathy, probably because I fear that I don't have enough interesting info to put on there, regardless of how hard I have worked and accomplished in the years I have been employed here. I just feel my effort would look weak, as though I have never had the ambition to try something new, job wise. The truth is that I have really enjoyed my current job, and the money has been good enough for me to remain for all these years.
So, in this situation, would a CV writing service actually be of benefit? If so, which outfit do you choose? And how much should you pay?
Thanks all for the advice.
ChasW said:
Save the money and ask a trusted professional contact, who knows you well enough, to review your draft/s to make sure you are highlighting relevant skills and experience.
This practice has served me very well for 30 plus years, and I don't mean from the money saving aspect.
Those f
king HR/PR influenced "life CVs" make my fking blood boil.Best of luck with your future.
I have recently had to write a CV for the first time in over 10 years (I have always been able to find work/contracts through my network of contacts, but things have gone a bit quiet so I have had to go to the open market).
A friend of mine paid £250 for a local CV service to format and write his CV for him, being a resourceful kind of chap I simply copied his format etc and wrote my CV based on his layout and style of writing. Once complete I asked a dozen or so colleagues to peer review it for me, a few revisions later and I was happy with it (as are most recruitment agents).
The company who wrote his CV offer a free review service so I mailed the finished CV to them for review, they tore it apart - not based on my wording which I could have accepted, but based on the format and style of writing! Obviously they offered to re-write my CV for me for the very reasonable price of £250....
My advice, find a format you are happy with that is easy to read and understand, populate it with your words and then get as many people as you can to review it for you. There is no 'right' way to construct a CV but you need to keep in mind who will be reading it, and the fact that when they read your CV they are likely to be sifting through a dozen others at the same time - too little info and it will get dumped, too fussy and difficult to read and it will get dumped, too many buzz words and bullst it will get dumped!
I used to run a consulting team for a large IT company a few years ago and was always recruiting, it was an element of the job I hated with a passion. When I was recruiting I would get the recruitment agencies to pre-filter the CV's to get rid of the chancers, I would then put aside an hour to filter the CV's the agencies felt were appropriate for the roles. My method was a first pass of all of the CV's to filter into possibles/no piles, anything that was badly written or difficult to read went directly onto the no pile (bearing in mind a lot of the output of the role was written reports - so the inability to write one's own CV well didn't bode well for a position where 20% of the role was report writing).
Once I had my 'possible' pile I would read the entire CV and review it against my tick box of MoSCoW's, further filtering the CV's that looked OK but lacked essential skills or experience, this would usually get me a pile of 'consider for interview' CV's! My final step before asking agencies to arrange interviews would be to get one of my senior consultants to review the final few CV's - this was a long winded way of filtering CV's but my hit rate in recruiting decent consultants was very high (back in the day).....
A bit of a diversion from your original question but I am sure I was not alone in my method of reviewing CV's - you have a very short window of opportunity to go onto the 'possible' pile!
Another thing you should do is bespoke your CV for each role you apply for. Have a 'generic' CV in your back pocket that you can use for speculating, but write it in a way that you can bespoke it with skills and experience for a specific job role.
A friend of mine paid £250 for a local CV service to format and write his CV for him, being a resourceful kind of chap I simply copied his format etc and wrote my CV based on his layout and style of writing. Once complete I asked a dozen or so colleagues to peer review it for me, a few revisions later and I was happy with it (as are most recruitment agents).
The company who wrote his CV offer a free review service so I mailed the finished CV to them for review, they tore it apart - not based on my wording which I could have accepted, but based on the format and style of writing! Obviously they offered to re-write my CV for me for the very reasonable price of £250....
My advice, find a format you are happy with that is easy to read and understand, populate it with your words and then get as many people as you can to review it for you. There is no 'right' way to construct a CV but you need to keep in mind who will be reading it, and the fact that when they read your CV they are likely to be sifting through a dozen others at the same time - too little info and it will get dumped, too fussy and difficult to read and it will get dumped, too many buzz words and bulls
t it will get dumped!I used to run a consulting team for a large IT company a few years ago and was always recruiting, it was an element of the job I hated with a passion. When I was recruiting I would get the recruitment agencies to pre-filter the CV's to get rid of the chancers, I would then put aside an hour to filter the CV's the agencies felt were appropriate for the roles. My method was a first pass of all of the CV's to filter into possibles/no piles, anything that was badly written or difficult to read went directly onto the no pile (bearing in mind a lot of the output of the role was written reports - so the inability to write one's own CV well didn't bode well for a position where 20% of the role was report writing).
Once I had my 'possible' pile I would read the entire CV and review it against my tick box of MoSCoW's, further filtering the CV's that looked OK but lacked essential skills or experience, this would usually get me a pile of 'consider for interview' CV's! My final step before asking agencies to arrange interviews would be to get one of my senior consultants to review the final few CV's - this was a long winded way of filtering CV's but my hit rate in recruiting decent consultants was very high (back in the day).....
A bit of a diversion from your original question but I am sure I was not alone in my method of reviewing CV's - you have a very short window of opportunity to go onto the 'possible' pile!
Another thing you should do is bespoke your CV for each role you apply for. Have a 'generic' CV in your back pocket that you can use for speculating, but write it in a way that you can bespoke it with skills and experience for a specific job role.
MadDad said:
I have recently had to write a CV for the first time in over 10 years (I have always been able to find work/contracts through my network of contacts, but things have gone a bit quiet so I have had to go to the open market).
A friend of mine paid £250 for a local CV service to format and write his CV for him, being a resourceful kind of chap I simply copied his format etc and wrote my CV based on his layout and style of writing. Once complete I asked a dozen or so colleagues to peer review it for me, a few revisions later and I was happy with it (as are most recruitment agents).
The company who wrote his CV offer a free review service so I mailed the finished CV to them for review, they tore it apart - not based on my wording which I could have accepted, but based on the format and style of writing! Obviously they offered to re-write my CV for me for the very reasonable price of £250....
My advice, find a format you are happy with that is easy to read and understand, populate it with your words and then get as many people as you can to review it for you. There is no 'right' way to construct a CV but you need to keep in mind who will be reading it, and the fact that when they read your CV they are likely to be sifting through a dozen others at the same time - too little info and it will get dumped, too fussy and difficult to read and it will get dumped, too many buzz words and bullst it will get dumped!
I used to run a consulting team for a large IT company a few years ago and was always recruiting, it was an element of the job I hated with a passion. When I was recruiting I would get the recruitment agencies to pre-filter the CV's to get rid of the chancers, I would then put aside an hour to filter the CV's the agencies felt were appropriate for the roles. My method was a first pass of all of the CV's to filter into possibles/no piles, anything that was badly written or difficult to read went directly onto the no pile (bearing in mind a lot of the output of the role was written reports - so the inability to write one's own CV well didn't bode well for a position where 20% of the role was report writing).
Once I had my 'possible' pile I would read the entire CV and review it against my tick box of MoSCoW's, further filtering the CV's that looked OK but lacked essential skills or experience, this would usually get me a pile of 'consider for interview' CV's! My final step before asking agencies to arrange interviews would be to get one of my senior consultants to review the final few CV's - this was a long winded way of filtering CV's but my hit rate in recruiting decent consultants was very high (back in the day).....
A bit of a diversion from your original question but I am sure I was not alone in my method of reviewing CV's - you have a very short window of opportunity to go onto the 'possible' pile!
Another thing you should do is bespoke your CV for each role you apply for. Have a 'generic' CV in your back pocket that you can use for speculating, but write it in a way that you can bespoke it with skills and experience for a specific job role.
Really good info - thanks very much for taking the time to reply.A friend of mine paid £250 for a local CV service to format and write his CV for him, being a resourceful kind of chap I simply copied his format etc and wrote my CV based on his layout and style of writing. Once complete I asked a dozen or so colleagues to peer review it for me, a few revisions later and I was happy with it (as are most recruitment agents).
The company who wrote his CV offer a free review service so I mailed the finished CV to them for review, they tore it apart - not based on my wording which I could have accepted, but based on the format and style of writing! Obviously they offered to re-write my CV for me for the very reasonable price of £250....
My advice, find a format you are happy with that is easy to read and understand, populate it with your words and then get as many people as you can to review it for you. There is no 'right' way to construct a CV but you need to keep in mind who will be reading it, and the fact that when they read your CV they are likely to be sifting through a dozen others at the same time - too little info and it will get dumped, too fussy and difficult to read and it will get dumped, too many buzz words and bulls
t it will get dumped!I used to run a consulting team for a large IT company a few years ago and was always recruiting, it was an element of the job I hated with a passion. When I was recruiting I would get the recruitment agencies to pre-filter the CV's to get rid of the chancers, I would then put aside an hour to filter the CV's the agencies felt were appropriate for the roles. My method was a first pass of all of the CV's to filter into possibles/no piles, anything that was badly written or difficult to read went directly onto the no pile (bearing in mind a lot of the output of the role was written reports - so the inability to write one's own CV well didn't bode well for a position where 20% of the role was report writing).
Once I had my 'possible' pile I would read the entire CV and review it against my tick box of MoSCoW's, further filtering the CV's that looked OK but lacked essential skills or experience, this would usually get me a pile of 'consider for interview' CV's! My final step before asking agencies to arrange interviews would be to get one of my senior consultants to review the final few CV's - this was a long winded way of filtering CV's but my hit rate in recruiting decent consultants was very high (back in the day).....
A bit of a diversion from your original question but I am sure I was not alone in my method of reviewing CV's - you have a very short window of opportunity to go onto the 'possible' pile!
Another thing you should do is bespoke your CV for each role you apply for. Have a 'generic' CV in your back pocket that you can use for speculating, but write it in a way that you can bespoke it with skills and experience for a specific job role.
Gassing Station | Jobs & Employment Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff