Someone called me to say they had their résumé professionally by a well-known company. They even had an “Interview Guarantee” but person didn’t get ONE SINGLE CALL.
Here are some notes from the perspective of someone who delivers a customized service:
1. Photo: Most countries are leaving this requirement off to avoid discrimination & bias.
2. Irrelevant personal information: This only enforces discrimination & bias which is against human rights.
3. LinkedIn link with numbers after the name: Easily editable in LinkedIn settings.
4. No title & no branding: Leaving the reader guess which role you’re looking for is a waste of time. Add the title of the role you’re interested in. What are you good at? What makes you different from others?
5. Summary: Writing several lines to say nothing of value won’t help. Write a strong value proposition to engage the recruiter to read further.
6. Content: Without the job description next to you, what are you writing? To whom are you writing? There’s no point in writing everything you’ve ever done, nor listing all your tasks. What employers care for are your achievements.
7. Columns: They don’t do well with online application parsing software.
8. No display of career progression: There are ways to display progression within the same company.
9. Nothing about the companies, no scope, & content that made only sense to local competitors: Applying abroad is different than applying locally. The assumption that the local company that worked at is known to the future employer in another country does not stand. What are you doing about it?
10. Incomplete LinkedIn profile: Writing 3 lines when you have space for 2000 characters in the About section isn’t taking advantage of space. Moreover, only listing positions & company names doesn’t help the reader understand your value.
Like anything else there are generic lower priced services that rely on volume & templates to maximize their revenue on one hand and there are highly customized services that take a lot more hours to write. They definitely cater for different clients & can’t be compared pricing wise since their processes are completely different as well.