If you need a resume, our professional writers’ reviews can help you determine which company provides the highest quality resume. After all, there are hundreds of resume services out there, and it’s tricky to know which one will truly provide you with the best product.
That’s why Top 5 Resume Writers is here. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you, sifted through the mire and found the best resume companies out there.
Our Selection Process
In order to ensure that our professional resume writer reviews were as accurate as possible, our team created a “mystery shopper,” and we provided the same information to each resume company and ordered one of their standard professional resumes. We sent resumes to an assortment of resume companies, and then sat back and waited for the results.
Our Resume Review Criteria
1. Is It Error-Free?
Obviously, the first factor we considered was accuracy. Many hiring managers say that they’ll toss a resume with just one careless error on it, so a single spelling mistake can kill your chances of gaining an interview. Sadly, many of the resumes we bought contained multiple errors.
2. Is It Well-Organized?
Surprisingly, we paid for some very poorly designed resumes. Some featured a different typeface for each header, or they listed items chronologically in one section and in reverse chronological order in the next section. Some listed too much information and ran onto a second page, which typically isn’t a good idea.
A hiring manager wants to be able to scan each section quickly, so you need to label each section clearly and keep the style consistent throughout the resume. Otherwise, it’s just hard to read, and if the hiring manager becomes confused by your resume’s organization, they’ll just toss it in the reject pile.
A few tried to charm us with clever designs and fun typefaces. In some cases, the design was confusing and in other cases, the design was great, but the content was horrible, so it didn’t really matter how carefully each font was selected if there were grammar and spelling errors in each section.
3. Does It Contain “The Right Stuff?”
In general, a resume should never run longer than a single page. For very high-level executives, a second page might be needed, but for most people, a one-page resume is ideal.
This means that for your resume, professional writers need to know which items to include and which to omit. For instance, some of them added the line, “references available upon request.” This should never appear on your resume. It takes up valuable space, and obviously you’ll be expected to do so. Don’t state the obvious.
Some of the writers would include skills or certifications that were not needed for the jobs their clients sought. Or, perhaps they included skills that everyone has such as using Microsoft Word or Google Docs. You should never list skills that pretty much all people possess.
Some spent too much time crafting a career objective and wasting five or six lines of type discussing what the job applicant wanted rather than focusing on the skills the job applicant possesses and how these skills would benefit a company.
Hiring managers understand that you have objectives and that those objectives are important to you. However, hiring managers are far more concerned with fulfilling the needs of the company than with your personal goals, so it’s not awesome if a resume writer provides you with a massive career objective section.
4. Is It Dynamic & Quantifiable?
Hiring managers need to understand your skills and accomplishments quickly, but it’s important to provide truly quantifiable examples of your work experience.
For instance, perhaps you managed a sales team successfully. A hiring manager will want to know the size of the team and whether or not you met and exceeded goals. Rather than stating you, “were responsible for managing the company sales team,” or even that you, “managed the company sales staff,” you could transform this to read – “Managed 10-person sales team, met or exceeded sales goals in 2017, 2018 and 2019.”
This doesn’t take up a ton of space, but it conveys your abilities to the hiring manager. It allows them to see how many people you managed, as well as your success at leading this team.
During our review of professional resume writers, we found that many services just relisted the information we gave them, basically using the exact verbiage we gave to them. A great resume writer will take the information you have provided and ensure that it is beautifully written and that your qualifications are clear.
How Much Should You Pay For Resume Services?
While you might be out there searching the web for affordable resume writers or even “cheap” resume writers, we didn’t really factor cost into our decision.
There are a few resume companies out there that promise a great resume for just $49 or even $39 dollars, but we haven’t included any of these services on our shortlist. Typically, a quality professional resume will cost between $90 and $250, depending on your level of work experience.
An entry-level job hunter with no professional experience might only pay $90 to $100 for a resume, while a professional executive with more than 20 years of experience might have to spend double that amount.
In general, a cheap resume probably won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. A resume is an investment in your future, and this is an area where you don’t want to cut costs. Still, you also want to ensure that you are getting your money’s worth, which is why we encourage you to select one of our top picks.
Now that you understand how we select our top picks, you can bypass that search for professional resume writer reviews, and head straight to one of our top picks. Resume Writing Group, our #1 choice, even backs up their work with a unique guarantee. If you use their resume and follow their advice, but aren’t hired in 45 days or less, they’ll refund the cost of your resume and give you an additional $100.
