About this SiteThis site exists because over the summer I needed to have my resume written, and like you, I didn't know who to trust. After days of solid research, I tried one company, then another and finally another. I didn't find a company I was happy with until the 3rd try.
That made me curious about the other companies I had seen during my search. I looked over my notes, did some more searching, and made this list. I'm sharing it with you so that you don't have to spend all the time researching the companies that I did. As best as I can tell, these are the 10 or so most prominent resume companies, ranked according to my research. My criteria for ranking: 1) Reputation. This was simply Googling, Googling and more Googling. I asked around the industry for professional writers' opinions of each companies. There were some companies everyone had heard of and most had even worked with. There were others that no one had ever heard of, despite their ubiquity on the internet. I searched for "ripoff reports" and "scam reports" for each company and took these into consideration keeping in mind that these are largely unregulated internet chatter that may or may not have merit. Finally, I took into account BBB scores, knowing the BBB to be a trusted 3rd party. Companies with better BBB scores got more points; companies with poor BBB scores got less. I also added points if the company was at least BBB accredited. 2) Age. There are companies that have been doing this for decades and have a solid reputation in the industry. There are even companies that have been around so long, they were writing resume before the internet. But these days, there's nothing to stop fly-by-night companies from popping up every day. Think about it, anyone could put a website like Joes-Resumes-of-Peoria.com. Joe might do a good job, but I tended to give more points to companies I could determine were more established. I used Google, the Wayback Machine and the domain age tool to determine age of a company on-line. 3) Products. Why do I love one-stop shops? Mainly, because of the continuity of service in being able to purchase everything you need for your job search and for it to all sound like one person put it together (the illusion of me doing the crafting)! The types and quantities of services offered by a company reflects on wither or not they are actually listening to their customers. LinkedIn Profile writing is a huge product right now - as it should be. I have seen almost every potential employer that I have sent a resume to, actually view my LinkedIn profile. So for my rankings, the more products - the better, but I also took into consideration the sophistication of the products. For example, companies who offered LinkedIn and CV writing - got some major bonus points for offering complex products. 4) Price. Industry standard price for professional resume writing seems to be in a range of $150 to $300. Some places that charge more might be worth the money for that particular writer's expertise, but most resume services charge in the $200-$250 range. A lot of companies charge less than $100, and you have to wonder about quality when it's that cheap. If you think about it, you want the resume writer to spend several hours on your resume over the course of several days. If you've only paid $75 for a resume, how could it be worth the resume writer's time to do it right… unless they're just a template factory of they've outsourced to overseas typing sweatshops. I take off points for companies that I feel are too cheap or too expensive. 5) Industry Affiliations. There are 3 industry organizations that for years have certified resume writers: PARW, the NRWA, and Career Directors. A lot of sites claim they employ only certified resume writers, so I checked on that. If I site indeed had memberships at the organizations they claimed, I gave them points. If they claimed membership but I could find no record, I took off points. If they did not even mention using certified writers, I took off a lot of points. There might be other, smaller resume companies out there that I haven't given due consideration to. If you find one you like, let me know in the comments and I'll consider researching them.
And as full disclosure, I'm not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I hope to make some money on the ads and the links, that might lead you to buy from the companies I mention or even their competitors. But I've tried my best to rank them according to solid, independent criteria. |
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