CV sector common (mal)practices

The good, the not so good and (ahem)… the worse still.

Most sectors include the good, the bad and the unscrupulous.

Sadly, unlike most sectors, the CV industry probably has far more than its fair share of the bad and unscrupulous.

Why is this?

Again sadly, it’s because the bad and unscrupulous firms can (and do) get away with it.

How can they?

Numerous reasons, but mainly because (A) their marketing gimmicks and groundless claims sound very appealing, and especially when backed up by (B) scams and unverifiable false statistics spouted by slick salespeople. Additionally, (C) many people see fees as costs rather than investments so opt for cheaper/inferior options and (D) most people don’t understand the difference between a typical professional CV and truly outstanding professional CV anyway. On the contrary, most tend to work on the notion that just because they paid good money to a so-called professional firm then it not only must be good, but it also must be of equal quality, value and worth in comparison to all other professional CVs!

Of course, this is complete nonsense, and the quality, value and worth of your professional CV will vary enormously depending on which company you choose.

Read more about discovering how good your professional CV is here.

So, what are the scams?

The biggest scam is pretending to be something they aren’t – i.e. professional CV experts, with top writers creating top of the range products.

Really?

Have you checked out the firm’s recruitment policy? Do you know what qualifications the writers have? Do you even know what country they are from? What their mother tongue language is? Are they naturally talented writers? How experienced are they really? And if so, have they gained their experience with a genuine top firm or one of the other 99.9%? Significantly, does the finished product match the salesperson’s glowing assurances? Is the language natural, flowing, proactive and scintillating? Or is it complex, artificial and littered with errors?

That’s the biggest scam, but there are others too including not just fake reviews, but entire fake review sites promoting inferior services over and above more capable (and evidently more trustworthy) firms.

Yes, such scams are an insult to peoples’ intelligence, and yes, you would think that only the craziest fall for them, but some people are blinded by a “deal” and salespeople can be very persuasive…

Regarding deals; people are used to looking at e.g. two cans of chickpeas and choosing the one that is 15% cheaper as the ‘best deal.’ While that works for chickpeas it most certainly doesn’t apply to CVs. A genuine top quality CV can be the difference between continued piles of rejection letters and a steady rise up the career ladder, but in this modern age not everyone sees the investment value, and many instead plump for what they perceive as the best “deal” – false economy or not.

It’s understandable to some degree, and especially since, as mentioned, some salespeople are very persuasive!

What are some of the claims?

These vary from purported “expert” company to purported “expert” company, but some claims include the usual unverifiable statistics, often the exact same (spuriously static) statistics that they’ve been using for years along the lines of 90% of our clients land their ideal job within just 2 weeks of receiving our wonder product.

Really?

By all means try such firms but (A) see how long it takes you, and (B) see whether or not their statistics go down when your two weeks turns into several months and counting…

Another claim that many people are taken in by is the ‘guaranteed’ job, or ‘guaranteed’ interview. If this isn’t amazing enough such fantastic claims usually further embellished to e.g. ‘within just 2 weeks!’

Really?

Let’s think about this for a moment, and seriously consider the facts.

Fact 1 – employers don’t employ someone on the basis of their CV. The CV is the vessel that presents their case. However, it’s the candidate’s suitability for the particular job (or otherwise) that sways employers one way or another. And this suitability, for a large part, is determined not by the CV itself, but on what the candidate has done and achieved as well as how well he/she matches the requirements they are looking for in a candidate.

Fact 2 – most employers’ decisions then are not based on your CV, but on a wide variety of factors pertaining to you – including your qualifications, location, gender, age, experience and how many ‘desirables’ and ‘essentials’ you meet on the particular job specification.

Fact 3 – if that isn’t enough, there is also another external factor, a hugely significant X factor – the competition! The job market is extremely competitive these days, and if you are applying for good jobs then it is pretty much inconceivable that you won’t be up against other strong candidates. Your CV is not a work of fiction, and you can’t just add a PhD if you don’t have one, and you can’t just invent that you were CEO of Apple. It boils down to your particulars against the particulars of your competitors. Additionally, you don’t know exactly what criteria a particular employer will use to judge you in relation to all the other competitors – let alone how much (actual and subjective) weight they will give to the numerous different factors. Moreover, you don’t know how well your competitors fare compared to you either! This much is fact. And this one absolute fact alone arguably renders “job guarantee” marketing gimmick claims worthless. Even so, such claims do attract paying customers. A crude, but not too dissimilar analogy would be a comparison to when, in days gone by, pregnant woman paid ‘seers’ to predict the gender of their child. Even if they were inevitably wrong half of the time the ‘seers’ still profited handsomely.

If you seriously think that your application for a particular job can actually be ‘guaranteed’ then by all means try one of these firms and see for yourself! All we can do is alert you to truths, dangers and facts.

Talking of which, despite all of the above, there is one notable caveat;

Fact 4 – while no CV can actually ‘guarantee’ your target job, what a top CV can do for you (by this we mean a genuine top CV, not just a ‘purported’ one) is that it can present your case to the absolute optimum. While you still need to stick to the facts not fiction, these facts can be presented in a multitude of ways – some far better than others.

Many people are surprised at just what a genuine top writer can do to present their case. Indeed, the very best CV writers can not only transform, but dramatically enhance the CVs of any typical CV/resume firm.

Understandably, this can (and frequently does) make a huge difference, and is the difference between a cost and an investment.