Professional CV writing

[supercee]

I'm considering paying a company to revamp/rewrite my CV. It's not a bad CV but it could be a lot better.

A company I'm looking at does this, writes a cover letter and does your LinkedIn page but it's £££.

I am looking to relocate to London so feel this would be a good investment if done properly? Can anyone recommend any companies?

One of the things that really puts me off a candidate is the knowledge that they have sent me the same CV and covering letter as 100 other companies (it's obvious by the generic way it's written)...they don't care who they work for, they just want a job - I get that but we don't want people who don't care where they work because when they get here - they will care when it doesn't suit them!
Generally, I don't like flashy CVs and covering letters - I like honesty - answer the job description tell me what you've got to offer why you'd be good for us, your green or blue CV won't sway me - I think the more creative industries sometimes like that kind of stuff though.

What industry are you working in? IME it's increasingly uncommon for employers to ask for CVs. Every job I've applied for in the last decade (which is many!) has an application form instead.

Complete waste of money. There's so much advice online.

I've done a fair bit of recruitment and would advise anyone to always tailor their CV and cover letter to the role and the specific company they're applying to. While I assume a commercially produced CV/cover letter is likely to be technically OK (free of spelling and grammar errors, includes key information) it is probably not tailored enough to put you among the top applicants. If you're keen on using a CV writing service I'd only use the results as the basis for your own tailoring.

The CV should pick up on all key responsibilities and person specs and omit any irrelevant details (e.g. detailed descriptions of responsibilities that are not relevant to the role). The cover letter should explicitly state why you are the right candidate for the role in terms of skills and personality, and why you are applying for THIS role and THIS company . Good luck with the job hunting!

I used to do this for a living. I think a good CV writer can add value and make your experience obviously relevant to a target role/industry, but most of the large CV writing companies are a) wildly overpriced b) hiring any idiot off the street if demand requires. I'd get onto PeoplePerHour or similar and find a specific person you like the look of.

Thanks all, great advice. Yes I would never punt a generic cv and covering letter for a job, I'd always try and tailor it. The covering letter certainly.

I have over 20 years mainly admin/office experience (I'm nearly 40) and trying to obtain an Executive Assistant role so have tonnes of transferable skills (in my humble opinion!). Want to get this across but I think I could present it better, hence the paid help.

I think it was the Reed website I was on the other day and it gave the option to have a free CV check by a company called TopCV. I was sceptical but did it anyway and got a really quite detailed response. The feedback is clearly template based but they did pick out some really good examples from my actual CV as to how I could improve it! They also had a section that shows what keywords a recruitment software pulled out from my CV and whether that was how I wanted to portray myself.

Obviously there was a follow up email offering a CV writing service for £99 but the initial free check gave me enough info to make a go of improving my own! Was really useful!

This is it: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.reed.co.uk/career-advice/free-cv-review-cv-help-from-topcv/%3famp

Thanks @Hairybaker I'll check that out.

@supercee

Thanks all, great advice. Yes I would never punt a generic cv and covering letter for a job, I'd always try and tailor it. The covering letter certainly.

I have over 20 years mainly admin/office experience (I'm nearly 40) and trying to obtain an Executive Assistant role so have tonnes of transferable skills (in my humble opinion!). Want to get this across but I think I could present it better, hence the paid help.

I don't know how much this helps but our EA has always been remote working and we use her to organise external and internal meetings - she basically manages everyone's diaries, everything else we can do for ourselves but she is invaluable.

@CBARN yes this is what I'd love to move in to. I can organise diaries, meetings, pre-Covid travel etc standing on my head. Remote or otherwise.

[quote supercee]@CBARN yes this is what I'd love to move in to. I can organise diaries, meetings, pre-Covid travel etc standing on my head. Remote or otherwise. [/quote]
Good luck with finding something - our Ra works for several companies

EA - sorry!

HI there, could I suggest you take a class instead?

I took two classes about 10 years ago and it was helpful because then I was able to make all the changes to the CV myself. As other pp have mentioned, you may want to continue to tweak your CV as different opportunities come along.

I have to also highly recommend doing a very precise covering letter. I tend to choose 3 things from the job description where I can provide 3 examples of what I have done.

Regarding Linked in, I suggest searching for other individuals with your job title or responsibilities. Have a look at their pages. What do you like, what don't you like. How are they using headers? How are they framing their experiences. You do not want to plagiarize, however you may come away with some insight as to how you want to present yourself on Linked in.

A question I wonder about is what do you think would be the greatest benefits to you if you had someone "professional" do this on your behalf.

The challenge with all of the above as well as interviewing is that you have to be your own cheerleader and PR person. A bit of a challenge but maybe you can do it!

I think you can.

All the best.

I wouldn't pay

Ask your agencies to help and ask friends to read and comment

Great advice, thank you.