CVs - FAQs to help you decide.

 "How can you justify your charges? – I see plenty of CV Writing Services offering to write my CV for less than £30.00".

The range of pricing quoted for CV writing does indeed vary by a wide margin; from the amazingly cheap to the startlingly expensive (over £1000 pounds plus to write a CV!).  If your current CV is not delivering the desired results, then will a quick cut-and-paste refresh with minor formatting changes make any difference?

 

You may have noted from the "Services" pages that we feature on each product the two key paragraphs: "1) How we BEGIN to understand YOUR requirements and 2) How we CONFIRM that our understanding of YOUR requirements is complete”. This underlines the fact that accurate information gathering is a pre-requisite to enable a candidate to have a professional CV. We spend over an hour (and often much longer) on just considering and understanding all of the information that our clients supply and how we need to use this to their best advantage before we even begin to layout and commence writing the initial draft CV.

 

It’s reasonable to ask what a “£30 CV Writing Service” can actually do apart from cut/paste/re-format if they are actually going to make a profit from the service.

 

"I’m paying you and don’t want to do any additional work, that’s your role – why do you expect me to fill in a questionnaire – can’t you just use my original CV?"

Let’s assume that your current CV is failing and therefore it needs a complete ground-up rethink and rewrite. If we acknowledge this then it’s also fair to assume that we need to be able to identify the key and often missing information that will prove to be vital. Our proven questionnaire provides all of this information to us.

As a comparison, you engage an architect, at great expense and give him this instruction: “design me a house, you come highly recommended, just go away and do it”. Would this produce something better than if you had actually engaged with the architect and identified a really clear requirement?

"How can you possibly know about every discipline and every type of job?"

We can’t and interestingly, neither can anyone else, despite some “impressive” claims that other CV writing companies make. What we understand above everything else is just what a recruiter expects to read in the very highest quality CVs that they receive and how we need to construct a client’s CV to ensure that their capabilities “jump straight off the page” and meet the job requirements.

"You are planning to write my new CV in the “third person” – I don’t want the recruiter to think that I’m not capable of writing my own CV and that I have had to resort to commissioning someone to write one for me."

There are few “rules” with writing CVs and Covering Letters but if there are two that we follow they are: CV = Third Person, Covering Letters = First Person. A Third Person style confers many benefits and allows for a more positive and higher impact CV to be written without sounding boastful – the “ I did this..I did that” issue is completely removed. Also, as we will have gathered a tremendous amount of information about our client including their past history and future aims, we are well placed to produce a first class piece of CV Writing for them that is honest, accurate and relevant.

All recruiters will actually value the candidate much higher than their competitors for the same position for having provided a first class CV that shows that they have the initiative to commission a professional CV writer. It also shows that they are highly professional in their approach to both job seeking and business in general and have the desire to only present and produce outstanding work.

In simple terms, as a recruiter, which of the following candidates would you rate the highest?

• Candidate A has forwarded a self-written CV that is several pages long and full of irrelevant content, empty statements and annoying buzzwords.

• Candidate B has commissioned a professional CV writer and has forwarded a CV that is crisp, clear and concise; containing supportable facts and highly relevant content.

 

 

"I’ve got some really strong views on just how my new CV should look, how long it should be and exactly how it should be written."

Then take a deep breath, relax and consider why you want to engage a professional CV writer. We pride ourselves on being able to write outstanding CVs and have a reasonable expectation that our clients should back their judgement if they choose us and allow us to use our expertise to write a new CV that we know will allow them to have the very best chance of securing interviews and as a consequence, their next position. The new CV should invariably look different from the original one – after all, if the original one is successful, then why commission someone to write a new one?

In fact, we believe that a client should be concerned if their new CV does look remarkably similar to their original one that it’s fair to assume, is not securing the response that they desire. We are definitely not a “cut and paste” or “quick reformatting” CV writing business; there are plenty of those who will happily perform this type of service for much lower rates than we reasonably charge for a truly bespoke one-to- one CV writing service.

If you have strong views and clear ideas, then simply make us aware of them from the outset so that we both have a clear understanding of what we are jointly trying to achieve.