CV review companies - anyone used one

[richatnort]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a new role and being at my current job 5 years i'm out of practice CV writing and although i'm applying for jobs i'm not hearing much back and i'm wondering if my CV is to blame for that.

I see you can get companies to review your CV and wondered if anyone has used such a service and could recommend any?

[iMungo]

My tuppence worth - I think you buy a book on it and save yourself the expense. Then have a friend or colleague (ideally someone in HR) check your updated CV and provide feedback. Writing it yourself means you can speak to exactly your experience and strengths etc. But you do need to put together something punchy and to the point. In each of your roles describe the challenge, action you took and the result rather than just your responsibilities etc. It should be written to be 'readable' by applicant tracking systems (ATS) too. There are online ATS tools that will score your CV and recommend improvements - maybe start with this.

You should also freshen up your LI profile if appropriate and understand how to stand out/how to raise your profile.

Good luck with it.

[Defcon5]

I beleive a PHer does this type of thing

Rog007 or similar maybe?

[zedx19]

What's your covering letter like? You can learn a lot about someone from a covering letter, if that's not up to scratch, people might not even be looking at your CV.

[RizzoTheRat]

I took voluntary redundancy some years ago and part of the package was a couple of sessions with a consultant who advised on CV's and interview techniques. I actually found it really useful and made a lot of changes to my CV because of it.

One of the key things I remember was don't have "a" CV. Do a massive one with everything you can think of in it, and then use that as your source of info for a 2 pager which is specifically targeted at the job ad you're responding to, making sure you include all the key words from the job ad as a lot of companies will do a first sift based on responses to specific bits of the advert rather than by anyone who knows what the job entails.

[rog007]

richatnort said:

Hi all,

I'm looking for a new role and being at my current job 5 years i'm out of practice CV writing and although i'm applying for jobs i'm not hearing much back and i'm wondering if my CV is to blame for that.

I see you can get companies to review your CV and wondered if anyone has used such a service and could recommend any?

Glad the feedback was helpful Richard; good luck going forwards.