Resume services

[geoffgarcia]

anyone ever use a professional resume service?
if so:
which company?
how much did you pay?
how satisfied were you with it?

reason for asking:
My current position is ending and I'm brushing up my resume. I do IT/Tech consulting and my engagements encapsulate many technologies and platforms as well as business + softer skills. I have a hard time putting such diverse work into a cohesive resume to highlight my experiences.

I could easily write out an 8 page resume, my problem is trying to condense it to 2-3 pages.

 

[Tyler718]

I have used one of the services a few years back when I was thinking of getting out of the military. I talked to a good many of them until I found one that was familar with the military and could translate military terminology into something a civilian person could understand. They did an excellent job condensing 10 years experience into just 2 pages.

I paid around $175 for it, but that included 20 copies w/ references and put on disk so I could change it later if need be.

I would suggest that you call around and talk to each and every one of them until you find one that can do the same thing. Also ask to see some of their previous resumes they have wriiten in the past to be on the safe side.

 

[dwayne]

I used to write resumes for people in college, and worked in an HR/recruiting department for 5 years...

good rules of thumb -

unless you have 15-20+ years of industry experience (in ONE industry), your resume should never, ever go past one page...

The sections of your resume should include objective (one or two sentences), work experience (very brief descriptions of past jobs, a little more detail for your current one), education (college/university), additional education (if any - things like one day or one week courses, one semester special class etc), skills (here you can list your 'soft skills', my skills are Predictive Index qualified, ABRA certified, MS Office Suite, Adobe, dictation machine, typing 80wpm... and if you don't have any skills as in they are implied in what you know/do for your job, then that's ok to leave it out )...

If you want I can email you a few resumes that I've done... different formats etc... let me know!

~Tara


p.s. -- I never charged anyone for my time, mainly because they did all the hard work (detailing each and every job) and all I did was lay it out and edit...

 

[geoffgarcia]

IME the IT programming industry is the exception to all hiring norms.
I've spent the past few days looking at other peeps resumes that have similar skills to mine and the standard is 3-5 pages.

For the type of work I do you must list the different technologies and how they were used. On a given project I'll use about 15 technologies. So lumping them together and keeping it cohesive and succinct is a big challenge.

If ya dont list enough detail and every technology then ur just not gonna get a call since they scan all the resumes through term filters.

I'm all set with style/form though thanks.

 

[OrionGirl]

I agree--IT is an industry where specifics matter. I've seen too many people hired because they listed a program (for example, Oracle), only to find out they've USED an Oracle system before, but never done in programming in it. Totally different. We also have a DBA here that is being expected to design databases, way outside his qualifications. One big thing--have samples of the work you've done with each technology and be able to identify your portion from a package. No need to send them to everyone, but note that they are available. With IT, those are references!

Also--best thing to do--have a really, really concise, well-written cover page. I won't look at resumes unless the cover page grabs my attention--IMO, that's the place to keep it to one page, and the resume should then be as many pages as needed to be complete without being wordy.

 

[dwayne]

Good to know, thanks geoff! I worked HR for a construction company, so the only IT people I had dealings with were not techies techies, if that makes sense... and I've never done a real techie's resume!!