How to Find the Best Resume Writer for You: Red Flags & Green Lights for Resume Writing Services

1. The Red Flags in Resume Writing Services: Behind-the-Scenes Insights for Australia’s Resume Writing Industry

Too-good-to-be-true resume writing pricing

Australia’s resume writing market is unregulated. Low barriers to entry contribute to the broad range of resume writing services available in the market. With the increased quantity of resume services comes a greater variation in quality. When finding a resume writer to invest with, remember, buyer beware. Like with any product or service, you get what you pay for. If a quote for a brand-new resume feels too good to be true, it likely is. A $20 resume writer service you engage via Airtasker, is likely to deliver very limited results compared to a premium $1.5K+ professional branding package.

Make sure you understand clearly what you’re paying for. It will have a significant impact on the quality of your resume.

Lack of an in-depth consultation before writing your resume

As you move down the pay scale in resume writing services, you’ll likely see big shifts in personalisation, customisation and targeting. A bright red flag in resume writing is a lack of consultation. If a resume service only requires you to fill out a form, this is a recipe for overpromising and underdelivering.

Picture resume writing on a scale. At one end sits resume writing as “admin”, and at the other is “career branding strategy”. The first treats resume writing as a low-skill service, centred on templates and superficial refreshes. The latter establishes a unique professional brand aligned to your career goals.

The information you already have in your resume has only gotten you as far as you’ve already come. The real magic of your resume is created in the information gathering process, specifically through prompting led by your resume writer. Without this, your new resume risks being much of the same – dressed up in a new template.

Consultations on offer in the resume writing market can range from 10 minutes to 1-2 hours. Quick chats lead to only a basic understanding of your expertise, so expect this to be reflected in your final resume.

No talk of targeting for your resume

A poorly targeted resume leads to misaligned outcomes. At Elevate, we require our clients to have a certain level of clarity about their career goals before agreeing to work with them. Because your resume should not try to be everything to everyone. As with all good branding, when you try to be everything to everyone, you appeal to no one. Imagine asking a graphic designer to design a logo for your business, without telling them who your target audience is?

If your potential resume writer isn’t asking about what types of roles you’re targeting, that’s a billowing red flag. Rather than caring about your career goals, they’re likely pumping out your resume, focused on quantity over quality.

Outsourcing to ‘resume factories’

Speaking of quantity, outsourcing in Australia’s resume writing industry is more common practice than you might think. But, it isn’t best practice. Overseas resume writers offer a limited understanding of the nuances of the Australian job market. From my experience behind the scenes of big-name resume writing services, I’ve come to see these as resume-writing factories. Think fast fashion for resumes – high volume, quick turnaround and lower quality.

In these environments, resume writing sits strongly at the admin end of things. It’s more about transferring information from one template to another. Your brand-new resume may also be entirely AI-written, rather than custom-created. Price can be a clue into whether a resume writing service outsources its resumes overseas. Look for mid-range pricing and signs of very high-volume work.

Rushed resume writing turnaround time

How quickly your resume writers promise to turn around your documents gives you some insight into the volume of work they produce. Even without international resume writers, some services have up to 50+ writers Australia-wide. With an elaborate network of resume writers, service providers promise irresistible turnaround times.  However, a lack of due diligence in engaging, onboarding and training their resume writers, means turnaround times are often not met – especially in peak periods.

Remember to pay careful attention to the fine print regarding turnaround times. If you’re on a tight deadline for your dream job, be sure you understand the timelines clearly.

Resumes that guarantee interviews

Perhaps counterintuitively, flashy guarantees can be a subtle warning sign for low-quality resume writing services. A sales tactic, guarantees are designed to reduce your perceived risk. Some resume writing services might promise you an interview within 60 or 90 days. These businesses are less clear on the next steps if you don’t land an interview. Others are more careful about putting their terms in writing, so check the fine print. Some may set unrealistic expectations for the number of applications you must have submitted to trigger a review. Only after that, they may agree to take another look at your resume, making a few trivial edits.

Offers to completely rewrite your resume

On the opposite end of the scale, others may promise to rewrite your documents entirely if needed. In theory, it’s a great guarantee – but the offer itself presents the problem. If a resume writer offers to rewrite your resume entirely, it means they weren’t confident in their original work. At Elevate, our writers don’t treat your first documents as an experiment. While some minor details might need updating, the first version of your resume is presented as our professional recommendation.

While a complete rewrite is an initially attractive sales tool, it shows a lack of conviction in the resume you may receive the first time.

Unlimited revisions on your resume

Like complete rewrites, unlimited revisions show a lack of expertise and confidence in strategy and writing. At Elevate, we offer two rounds of feedback. This protects the quality of work, and also you, as the client. We intentionally avoid requiring our clients to lead the project – because that’s what you hired us for! Unlimited revisions to your resume place the responsibility on you as the client to take control of the project.

If you’re directing the project till your heart’s content, without your resume writer pushing back on any feedback – that’s a red flag that can easily go under the radar. They are treating your resume as a simple writing service, rather than thinking like a career branding consultant. We believe we have a duty of care to our clients, to ensure the quality of their final resume. Implementing unlimited changes is easier than providing considered professional recommendations for your resume.

Unlimited revisions can easily become you rewriting your own writing – and that’s not what you paid for.

Overselling Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), scoring tools and use of AI

Wanting to get your resume perfect is a sign of how much you care about your professional brand. Unfortunately, some resume writing services can exploit the vulnerabilities you are likely already feeling in your job search.  Many resume writing services will offer to run your resume through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), sharing an associated score with you. While ATS is common among recruiters, some resume writing services misrepresent the use of software systems, leveraging it as a scare tactic among would-be customers.

These businesses are likely to also over-leverage technology to produce your new resume. They may produce AI-written resumes or engage in excessive keyword stuffing – where keywords are unnaturally integrated into your resume. While this might uplift the new ATS score presented to you, you likely have a resume optimised for a machine rather than a human reader. We remind our clients that we format for ATS, but write for the human eye.