CV writing services

Edrof · 6 Dec 2019 at 14:17

dowie said:
You referred to “CVs”. Bit dubious...

Aside from the expanded form, I'm interested to know how you think it should be written.

dowie · 6 Dec 2019 at 14:47

Edrof said:
Aside from the expanded form, I'm interested to know how you think it should be written.

In proper English like wot I speak, innit.

As per my post, I'd assumed the word "were" would be used.

Dazzas1066 · 13 Dec 2019 at 17:33

I would be keen to go to the original question. Who can recommend some good companies, yes we can write our own, but the question is what companies are recommended.

Perhaps it would be useful to provide your number of years working experience as well. A company writing a cv for a newly employed person is different to a professional with 15 years experience.

4K8KW10 · 13 Dec 2019 at 17:37

Vince said:
Can I recommend that you don't and that you write your own? Reason being I am one of the guys that goes through hundreds of CV's when recruiting for my team and the ones written by these services stick out like a sore thumb. For example I recently recruited a new tech and had some 300 CV's. Around half of those CV's were indistinguishable at a glance, looking closer I think they probably all came from people that had sat a basic course like Compu+ all laid out the same with similar content and to me it looked like they were all written by the same person.

I won't lie in the end I was just dumping the CV's that all looked the same because it was obvious that the person applying for the job hadn't written them, perhaps they provided some content or whatever but for the most part they were all very similar and as somebody who hires people I want to see something that isn't the same as everybody else that applies. Your CV should be used to set yourself apart, not to allow you to get lost in all the dross.

How can 150 CVs be all the same? With the same education, previous positions, the same references, the same interests?
I don't think it's possible. Maybe you were so tired and bored to recruit?

And why this so gigantic interest? 300 is a lot!

If they all do look similar, maybe the recruiter should find a method to distinguish them using more information, for instance - like IQ level, motivation, family status (employed should not be considered, unemployed should be given a chance), age, gender... etc things which make every individual unique on their own.

Vince · 13 Dec 2019 at 18:14

4K8KW10 said:
How can 150 CVs be all the same? With the same education, previous positions, the same references, the same interests?
I don't think it's possible. Maybe you were so tired and bored to recruit?

And why this so gigantic interest? 300 is a lot!

If they all do look similar, maybe the recruiter should find a method to distinguish them using more information, for instance - like IQ level, motivation, family status (employed should not be considered, unemployed should be given a chance), age, gender... etc things which make every individual unique on their own.

A lot of em do exactly what your doing and fail to read the brief. "Indistinguishable at a glance" is very different to indistinguishable. It's that sort of attention to detail I'm talking about. It is also fair to say that I'm not going to waste my time when clearly the owners of those CVs put very little time in themselves. 300 also isn't that many, for some lesser roles, for example secretarial positions you can get more still. I don't recruit for them, I recruit for my team, but I know it can be bad. I'm just going to assume you haven't ever recruited for a job in central London.

Now why might you see a lot of CV's for a relatively entry level IT role that pays 30k for 7 hour days with flexi start times (8am to 10am) and other benefits, not to mention working for me

.. yea you are right, no idea.

4K8KW10 · 13 Dec 2019 at 20:30

Vince said:
A lot of em do exactly what your doing and fail to read the brief. "Indistinguishable at a glance" is very different to indistinguishable. It's that sort of attention to detail I'm talking about. It is also fair to say that I'm not going to waste my time when clearly the owners of those CVs put very little time in themselves. 300 also isn't that many, for some lesser roles, for example secretarial positions you can get more still. I don't recruit for them, I recruit for my team, but I know it can be bad. I'm just going to assume you haven't ever recruited for a job in central London.

Now why might you see a lot of CV's for a relatively entry level IT role that pays 30k for 7 hour days with flexi start times (8am to 10am) and other benefits, not to mention working for me .. yea you are right, no idea.

Then, you expect CVs which don't look in the standard way, but ones with different designs, more art in them, something nice to the eye?
I still don't get how recruiters select - most of their selections may fail or would miss the best candidate because they didn't recognise their CV. Which is their own choice, after all.

Vince · 13 Dec 2019 at 22:55

4K8KW10 said:
Then, you expect CVs which don't look in the standard way, but ones with different designs, more art in them, something nice to the eye?
I still don't get how recruiters select - most of their selections may fail or would miss the best candidate because they didn't recognise their CV. Which is their own choice, after all.

That's the thing there isn't really a standard way, going for an IT type position sure go for a little flair with some nice looking tables or something, put all those credentials at the top, Degrees, MCP's, MCSE, prince whatever it may be. Some of the best CV's I've seen are the ones where I've looked at it and thought yea that could be a pain in the arse to make in word, you know all them tables lining up nicely, justified nicely, nice font preferably not times or some other serif font. Nice double or subtle underlines to end sections, you know the sort of CV, a CV somebody has invested a little bit of time into, if I see a CV like that I just know that person will also make good documentation (I'm not wrong here in a few years our place went from barely any to hundreds of lovely formatted documents including everything you need to know about 60% of everything IT in our business).

You want to see that they have some kind of interest in the field if at all possible. Those first few sections are really what you are going to look at straight away. How it works at my place is quite simple, we advertise to everyone internally and also through a load of agencies when a role goes up, all the CV's get put into a dms folder for the role and you trawl through them, half won't have the required covering letter so you can't really spend much time there, move them across into a holding folder. Then I have a quick look through and scrap probably half of them for whatever reasons some you get further looking through than others, some you like even though they don't really have the credentials to do the job. Basically you fairly quickly get it down to perhaps 4 or 5 you think look promising and line up those interviews, when they get going, you carry on having a look through while seeing if those first round interviews go well. Generally all of them will get a second and even third glance by me and a senior member of the team as well as a further glance by HR to make sure there isn't anything that's been missed. Dumping CV's on simple inability to follow instructions is fairly common, if the job asks for a covering letter just write one and try and make it some way relevant to the role.