How much would you pay somebody to proof read your job application?

[Bobwibble]

This is something that I do quite regularly for family and friends, and the feedback I receive is that I am rather good at it!

I ask people what sort of input they want before I start. I can proof-read for language and grammar, help them to be more concise and to improve the structure of personal statements.

I can also cross reference with job advert and person spec criteria and suggest ways to strengthen their application (eg addressing requirements more explicitly or giving examples) Obviously I can’t give job-specific advice, as I am not a careers advisor.

Anyway, I have two questions.

1. If I started this as a sideline, what would be reasonable to charge? £10 per application?
2. Is it ethical? Helping out friends and family seems harmless and I imagine most people ask somebody to read through their applications and I know that university careers departments offer this service, but is charging for it crossing a line? At what point would it run the risk of becoming dishonest, i.e. not a true reflection or the candidate’s own work? Or does that not matter, so long as everything is factually correct?

Qualifiactions-wise, I am a qualified teacher, have a 1st class English degree, a masters and PhD in Education.

i’m not really sure what that means. Senior? any professional qualifications?

Oh sorry I thought you meant the applications I have proof read.

My career has been in education. Teaching, school senior leadership, now Local Authority role. My Masters and PhD are in education.

I would charge minimum £50-100 to do this.

I’ve done quite a few and is actually quite time consuming. Also, with family and friends you pretty much know where they are coming from and what they are trying to put across but that is much more difficult with someone you don’t know. I did one where the applicant had dyslexia and the mistakes and punctuation were really poor. Because I didn’t know the area of work the candidate was in I had to call her all the time to find out what she meant by this or that. That was just in order to put in punctuation, paragraphs and make sense of some of her sentences. She was a good friend so I didn’t mind but it wasn’t a quick thing to do.

I think you could offer this in conjunction with other services in order to make it more viable though.

in that case, absolutely focus on education!!

and ensure your CV is absolutely and utterly top notch

as that’s what i’d ask to see

Honestly, I wouldn't pay for it because I would proof read it myself. It's not a service i need. like someone else said, I'm guessing not your target market. If I were in your target market, I'd probably look for a friend or relative who was able to help me rather than pay for it.

I think you need to find a pool of people who are your target market and ask them - I suspect here will be too hit and miss - what people might say here wont necessarily reflect what people actually would pay.

Depends on the level of expertise. Many employability support bodies / organisations produce CVs as part of their delivery, wrapped up with coaching and a whole range of other support and training and the CV will often be free if produced as part of the support provided by a government funded programme. Quality will differ, but some can be very good and most work well for their intended audience, with application processes now depending on more than just a CV. I produce about 10-15 CVs a month, no charge, free to those I work with and I meet when volunteering at a specialist job club. They can range in complexity from a fairly basic CV through to a very specialized sector specific one. Check out Linkedin as some coaches advertise their prices and services.

I've used a service like this before when I first started working after college.
Can't remember how much I paid but it definitely wasn't as cheap as £10.
Maybe start off around £25?

Proofreading service, fine, although I can't see anyone paying for that unless they have no friends/family to do it for them.
But the deeper checks that you are suggesting make the business idea seem implausible.

So many problems:

1. It is definitely something that AI could do at least as well as you.
2. I definitely wouldn't take someone seriously if they offered to do it for a tenner.
3. It risks making the content more generic and therefore less compelling to recruiters.
4. It is a form of cheating.
5. Insofar as it seems like a plausible idea at all, I would expect to see it as a sector-specific service, provided by someone with inside knowledge of recruitment to certain positions,.

It is REALLY hard to do anything other than a straight forward proof read for for complete strangers. You have to understand their previous experience in order to pull out relevant points, ditto the job description usually means wading through a heap of jargon and buzzwords to understand the actual point. It takes ages and if they've got the wrong thing on their application in the first place, you're on a hiding to nothing. I am a professional copywriter and will not go near CVs, apart from a second pair of eyes for spag for very close friends and family.

You'd be better setting up as a job application specialist/career consultant.
Proof-reading a CV isn't something I'd pay for, but I can see that there could be a place where you could work with someone on how to tailor their CV, job application form and cover letter to a job description.

I probably wouldn't use someone who has only worked in education because that isn't an area in which I'd be seeking work, but things like having a hand hold through creating an effective CV and interview technique is something I benefited from.

Former professional proofreader and editor here. No one will pay for you to proofread their CV. People in certain industries will pay to have their CVs written, but that’s a completely different skillset to proofreading.

It is a form of cheating

I don't think it's cheating unless the job being applied for is as a professional CV writer. It's outsourcing/delegating a task to an expert. It's well-known that professional CV writing services exist. If the employer wants to test writing skills, they need to set an appropriate task under 'exam conditions' as part of the application process.

£10 per application is way too cheap. Personally, I’d be wary of asking you if you were offering it at that price as I’d wonder if you were any good. As to whether there will be any interest, probably. Enough to make a decent living? Hard to tell given that there’s people like Richard McMunn on YouTube giving the advice out for free.

I was ran an employment agency for many years until I retired recently.

i don’t believe you would have much call for this service tbh, most people these days register with an agency, and most agencies rewrite the cvs , we did for most of our candidates.

you also need to be very aware of data protection, you will need to be registered and have lockable storage for your paperwork and a way of disposing old files.

I would advise you look into it very carefully

@Bobwibble
Id presume its ethical as its no different than when people do it for a company but with office documents, or when someone is publishing a book etc.

Me personally i would use chatgpt, to correct spelling and grammer issues.

I follow the good copy on sm - have a look there for an idea of product offer, competition etc

£0

I wouldn't pay a penny for this.

£50 per application. For busy people applying for leadership positions it's a useful service. I'd pay that easily.

People on here have been so snarky OP!

I would use this and have used a service like this when I was at uni but I'm dyslexic. Like a pp said consider that the people who'd pay to use a service like this are likely to have much more difficult CV's to proof read than your friends and family and it will be a much more complex job. Make sure you pay yourself enough to make a reasonable wage. Could you offer it along with other services like English tutoring or interview advice and practice?

Hi - I'm a careers consultant at a university and review job applications/personal statements. Applicants should be able to access this support through the Uni careers service but as we are often under resourced can struggle to get an appointment before a deadline. I think many people would pay for your help. Especially recent graduates who are struggling to find their first role/applying for post graduate study and haven't engaged with a careers service.

You are also very highly qualified and could do a top up coaching course to expand from just proofreading to supporting applicants to clarify their goals/skills. Often candidates need help articulating what they have to offer and have low confidence/self awareness.

AI is unable to help with the necessary tailoring needed to get a job. We have experimented with this a lot as students and grads try to use Chat GPT but they tend to be generic in content. A great application or statement matches your skills, qualities and experience to the opportunity. But in the future... maybe it can pull that info from a CV first? Still a candidate would need to talk about specific examples from their experience.

@disappearingfish

£50 per application. For busy people applying for leadership positions it's a useful service. I'd pay that easily.

This is absolute nonsense. If you are of the capacity to apply for a leadership position, you will do it yourself because it will matter to you and you will have the ability to do it. You will also most likely have access to similar level friends who, if you are desperate for a second pair of eyes, will do it for free. I am in that sort of position and would never get someone else to proof read for me. I wouldn't trust anyone to do it as well or carefully as I can do it myself. For things that really matter, I will set it aside and come to it fresh at least once, possibly twice.

Paid proof reading is a service that would be useful for people who are underconfident with their spelling and grammar or have a tendency to carelessness AND also don't have access to a way to get this done for free if they want it done. This is not going to be people of leadership calibre.

That is completely different from a career coaching service advising on content and tailored applications for particular sectors.

Inevitably any post about spelling and grammar will be full of typos and errors; it's the law.

@howandwhyyy "Absolute nonsense"? Really? People in leadership positions are not all the same, don't have a homogenous set of circumstances and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that there are enough professionals who would pay for such a service, as evidenced by the responses on this thread.