was wondering…has anyone on this forum ever used any professioanl cv writing service and did that pay off? i’m one of those people who depsite sending lots of applications are still stuck in a boring MO admin job, passing all 3 levels did not make any difference… i’m hoping the main reason for this might be my terribly written cv so am willing to spend a bit of money now to prove myself right. the problem is, i don’t find my terribly written cv to be terribly written so this is probably where i get it wrong…
if you did use this kind of help, can you recommend any website (uk/ireland)?
With the employment market improving, I thought it might make sense to rework my resume. One should always have a current one on hand. Teams change, priorities change, companies get purchased and spun off, George Soros comes by saying he likes something you wrote. You just never know.
I was having trouble making my progression flow and decided to hire someone to help me. I felt creatively imprisoned by how my resume has looked in the past and felt I needed someone to build it from scratch who wasn’t biased by what my past resume has looked like.
She’s not done yet, but if the result matches the quality of the questions she is asking and the level of attention I’m getting, I think I will be quite happy. Her fees are neither cheap nor expensive (compared to her competitors), but for the quality of service, I suspect it is a good deal. She’s also UK based, so that may work better for you.
I’ll let you know how it goes and am happy to refer her if I end up happy with the result. I did ask around, and some other people I know who used these kinds of services ended up paying several hundred dollars to answer a questionnaire and have what was clearly a bunch of call-center type people enter the responses into a template, so you do need to do your due diligence. That’s clearly not worth several hundred bucks/quid/pau/etc., but something done right is.
It sounds like it is a waste of money for the most part. The best bet is to speak to friends who are in the positions/companies that you want and see what their resume looks like. Ask them to critique your resume and after you get a few sources from people who are “in the know” then you will have enough feed back to make changes. If you don’t have any finance friends/collegues then it will be a bit tough obviously.
I know there are other sites that also offer free resume feedback and paid options (which would be cheaper if you had to go the paid route).
^ Yes I would do this. People who actually do the hiring and have seen hundreds of resumes can tell you what attracts them. Most of the time, it is the experience/background that trumps it all. You could have the greatest formatted resume with the cleanest look, but if the experience is blah, you’re not going anywhere.
It’s like MBA applications. Your essays could be killer, but if the GMAT doesn’t make the minimum cut, forget it.
wallstreetoasis has a great discussion on bulge bracket hiring, some guy literally goes through the entire hiring process from how they do resume choosing all the way to the end. It’s a great read
Thanks for your input. As expected, opinion is divided so I’ve decided to do both. I’ve rewritten my cv over the weekend so I will see how it goes. There is this one vacancy out there at the moment that I’m particulary keen on so fingers crossed that they will find my cv in current form appealing.
I agree that it’s the contenet that counts more but if I can’t impress anyone with it, I have no other option than to hope that somebody will fall for the form.
@bchadwick - I would really appreciate if you could let me know once your cv is done and if you happy with it - please do forward the details of that clever writer.