Paying Freelance CV Writers?

[MarcusUK21]

Afternoon ALL.
I hope yiu are having a great weekend? I am starting an online CV & Careers consultancy. The customers will be people who are either seeking a career change or unemployed looking for employment. The customers in both cases will need a good professional CV along with additional services. I am looking for CV writers on a freelance basis who will be paid per CV order. I want to ask what responsibilities I will have regarding the CV writers. I will no doubt have to record the fees I pay them as outgoing costs. Any device welcome from you appreciated.

 

[Gecko001]

You will have total responsibility for the CV writers output. It would be advisable to take out professional indemnity insurance if you can get it. Putting the responsibility on the CV writers by say having a clause in your contract with them, would not be practical in my view since you would still be held responsible for settling any claim a client would make and then you would have to seek to be reimbursed by the CV writer.

 

[IanSuth]

Pointless

I worked in recruitment for 28 years (perm IT) and rarely saw a "professionally written" CV that was better than people wrote themselves. Different clients had different foibles and preferences, it was my job to know those and help applicants put their best foot forward. You and/or those writing the cv will not know who the cv is for the eyes of so can't tailor it.

If it needed doing I would rewrite with the applicant as my sales relied on it - and we did it for free.

Remember agencies are allowed to charge for extra services like cv writing but not make provision of work finding services dependant upon take up of those other services. Also places like executive job clubs for the unemployed will provide the service free of charge to out of work executives.

You may con some people out of some money but you won't make a living from it - what do you think a cv is worth/can be priced at ?

 

[fisicx]

I do quite a lot of temp contract work and rewrite my CV each time I apply. Have to do this because each role has different requirements.

Only fools keep using the same CV for everything making a CV writing service pointless.

 

[MarcusUK21]

Pointless

I worked in recruitment for 28 years (perm IT) and rarely saw a "professionally written" CV that was better than people wrote themselves. Different clients had different foibles and preferences, it was my job to know those and help applicants put their best foot forward. You and/or those writing the cv will not know who the cv is for the eyes of so can't tailor it.

If it needed doing I would rewrite with the applicant as my sales relied on it - and we did it for free.

Remember agencies are allowed to charge for extra services like cv writing but not make provision of work finding services dependant upon take up of those other services. Also places like executive job clubs for the unemployed will provide the service free of charge to out of work executives.

You may con some people out of some money but you won't make a living from it - what do you think a cv is worth/can be priced at ?

You have a very narrow minded view. Recruitment agency CV,s I have seen and not the best by a long shot. As for your word con that’s unfair. There are plenty of good quality CV companies out there plus we will be offering career coaching. I have dealt with agencies over the last 20 years and there’s some good ones but most are terrible.

 

[MarcusUK21]

I do quite a lot of temp contract work and rewrite my CV each time I apply. Have to do this because each role has different requirements.

Only fools keep using the same CV for everything making a CV writing service pointless.

You raise valid point yes each CV should be tailored to each vacancy with tweeking for each job applied for. A good CV which is sector specific together with a good cover letter is important. CV writing services are more popular these days with career coaching added.

 

[fisicx]

Maybe you are good. But a CV needs to be tailored for each application. If I apply for 20 jobs there will be 20 variations of the CV. There has to be to make sure the keywords from the vacancy notice are in the introduction. When I pay for my CV do you do all the version as part of the deal?

 

[estwig]

I do quite a lot of temp contract work and rewrite my CV each time I apply. Have to do this because each role has different requirements.

Only fools keep using the same CV for everything making a CV writing service pointless.

I've never had a CV, that does sound like cheating...

I've got lots of different landing pages, they always feel like cheating, especially as once someone has left the page, they can't get back to it. It doesn't feel fair at all!

 

[IanSuth]

You have a very narrow minded view. Recruitment agency CV,s I have seen and not the best by a long shot. As for your word con that’s unfair. There are plenty of good quality CV companies out there plus we will be offering career coaching. I have dealt with agencies over the last 20 years and there’s some good ones but most are terrible.

Just saying - doing IT recruitment the majority of "professional" cv's were written by people who didnt understand IT projects and systems. That meant the majority of the cv's they wrote just didn't sell the applicant as well as they could for the role they were applying for.

I am the first to agree a vast majority of recruiters just post an ad on a bunch of sites, key word search the resultant pile of applications and punt out the cv's to the client without a lot of thought and many times without even speaking to the applicant (which is actually illegal).

If you are talking about very specialist career coaches who understand the exact market of their clients sure they are good, but most of them actually talked the clients through writing their own cv's, they didn't take the job off them. And for them the production of the cv was part of the process/service not a service in it's own right.

I stand by the fact that MOST cv writers (which is not the same as a career coach) are no better at writing IT industry cv's (or indeed engineering and I would guess most specialist roles) than the person themselves if they actually sat down and thought about writing it rather than expecting a miracle in 20 minutes.

I also regularly came across a couple of companies masquerading as agencies, running adverts and telling the applicants they really needed to purchase cv writing services from their sister company to have a good chance - they then proceeded to charge large amounts for a cv and surprise surprise no interview was forthcoming. They have rather set me thinking that those who sell themselves as cv writers (not career coaches) are largely pointless and in many cases a con

 

[MarcusUK21]

I understand and agree with where you are coming from. Yes sadly there will always be “cowboys” that take advantage, we will be recruiting specialists from within the specific sectors. Some good feedback from you thanks.

 

[IanSuth]

I've never had a CV, that does sound like cheating...

I've got lots of different landing pages, they always feel like cheating, especially as once someone has left the page, they can't get back to it. It doesn't feel fair at all!

Nope - if a company is using tech means to sort cv's (which is what a lot of the ad sites do with the responses giving a score with the cv) then it is not cheating to tailor your response to match that tech. I always suggested mirroring the language.

To give an old and real example of the problems with not doing so although in this case human not computer related.

Many years ago when I had only worked in recruitment for a short time I had a role for a Unix Pre-sales consultant, I sent 3 cv's of differing levels of experience, 1 (the middle) was immediately jumped on for an interview to be set up and the other 2 not replied to.
I was not meant to speak to the manager just the HR person
A week went by and the interview took place, the manager rang me to say "sorry no, not quite enough experience for the role, specifically x,y & z" - I said well from what you have said I am surprised you didnt want to interview xxxx whom i sent over as he had lots more experience including all of those"
He said I have never seen that cv he sounds exactly what I need - I rang the guy to try and sort an interview but he had just accepted a role elsewhere not through me and wouldnt go back on his word.

With a bit of detective work the manager and I found that the HR manager had taken on a junior - she had been told to watch for cv's coming out of the fax (it was a while ago) and for each mark it against a check list for each role. If it got enough ticks it could be passed on and if not it went in the shredder.
The juniors list for that role had about 4 items on it including Unix - she had no knowledge that where the applicant had listed all the differing versions of Irix, SunOS/Solaris, AIX, DG-UX and HP-UX he had worked with they were all Unix variants so she shredded it as not having a tick in that "essential" box

For ever after I ensured I specifically highlighted exactly where the listed skills where evidenced in the cv using the same language

 

[fisicx]

Where a mate works all applications are passed through a checker app. If the keywords on page 1 don’t match the words on the job spec they are automatically rejected. They don’t even get seen by a human. His company gets hundreds of applications for some positions.

It’s so sophisticated it can spot standard sentences - the sort of stock phrases cv writers reuse again and again.

 

[japancool]

I would hope that, if I were recruiting someone, they'd be competent enough to write their own CV. Seems to me like getting someone to write your course essays for you.