Resume mills are cheap and nasty.
They flog their services online from Joondalup in WA to the Gold Coast. They call themselves Adelaide CV, Sydney CV or a similar combination to trick Google in to ranking them.
The money they earn from the poor buggers who use them, is spent on extensive online marketing campaigns.
If they spent more time on learning how to produce first class resumes rather than black hat SEO techniques, their clients would be much happier.
Their client’s career goals are the least of their concerns. They exist to line their pockets with cash. That’s why they cut and paste generic pre-written text.
The reason they’re called ‘Copy and Pasters’, is they use blocks of the same text over and over again. They may vary it a little depending on the context, but in general, Adelaide’s recruiters and employers get the dubious pleasure of reading the same crap, over and over again.
Below is a real life example. The Executive Summary is the most important part of a resume. It’s where you summate your recent career, skills and capabilities and sell yourself to the employer for the specific job you are targeting. Think like a recruiter and ask yourself this – ‘what does this person do?’
Executive Summary
“A highly qualified and experienced professional known for a combination of focused technical and mechanical skills; leadership, analytical and planning capabilities, and interpersonal strengths. Strong background in Maintenance and Mechanical Operations, Technical Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, Staff Management, Safety Management and Compliance gained from numerous years of employment history within the mining and trades sector. Possessing highly developed management skills, strong technical aptitude, determination, capabilities and the ability to maintain a safe job site based on legal and company guidelines. Recognised for successfully delivering maintenance operations utilising a results-oriented approach. Holds a solid record of leadership, subject matter expertise and decision-making.”
This waffle hits the recruiter’s spike in about five seconds. Known? By who? Why are the terms capitalised? How many years are ‘numerous years’? Exactly what sort of trade? There’s a redundancy in the first and second sentence with technical and mechanical skills (repeated twice). Recognised by who?
There’s a big difference between resume mills and professional writers. The latter will get you short-listed for work.