The value of the free resume critique

We’ve already talked about resume writing and the truth is that many people aren’t that good at it. For some people, writing just isn’t their bag.

For others, it might be a language thing where your English skills aren’t great and/or you’re a bad speller who tends to make lots of grammatical errors, use run-on sentences, etc.

For others still, you might not realize how you write an effective resume and to design it in a way that makes people want to read it.

Ideally you want to write your own resume since on one knows you better than you. Or so one would expect.

The problem with resume writers is the same problem with anyone else you might considering hiring to do a job: Some are good. Some aren’t.

One of the newer ways that companies get you to use their resume writing services is by using the free resume critique offer. This is where you email them your resume and get one of their people to give you an honest assessment of your resume. So they aren’t going to rewrite your resume for free – they’re not a charity and aren’t doing this for their health – but you might think that they will offer up some great ideas that you can use to improve your resume.

Unfortunately that’s not the way it usually works. I offer a resume critique service on my Services page but it’s a paid service. What I’ll do is read over your resume and using my experience as a recruiter and someone who has read thousands of resumes and helped many people find new jobs, give you some advice based on the solid resumes that I’ve seen that have helped people get interviews that resulted in them getting jobs. I don’t claim to be a professional resume writer – I’m not – but if I can help a person improve their resume with some suggestions and tips, I’d like to help out.

With the companies that tend to offer the free resume critique, what it usually entails is you getting a generic and canned response from them that doesn’t actually tell you what to change in your resume but instead tells you all the things you’re doing wrong in your resume, in their opinion.

Essentially, it’s a pitch for you to pay for their paid resume writing services. In other words the goal of the free resume critique is to get you to buy a new resume from them.

You could send over the best resume ever written and they’ll still find a canned response to send you to convince you that you need their resume writing services.

As with other career-related scams, it’s the offer of a freebie that is actually masquerading as a sales pitch.

Last month I wrote a post about how some businesses – particularly career counseling type firms – offer you a free resume rewrite and when you end up getting the new resume, you find out that the new resume was based on a cookie-cutter format that every other one of their other clients also received, one that is possibly worse than the resume you wrote yourself that you were trying to improve upon.

As mentioned before, writing your resume yourself is your best bet but if you do need the help, make sure you use someone you trust who can supply you with free samples of their work and ideally, references you can speak with if you so desire.

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