Recommendations

One of the best indicators of quality is word-of-mouth recommendations. However, even this is not foolproof. For example, if you have a friend who says their new CV “looks good” then while this is useful information it is probably not unequivocal.

Firstly you should ask yourself just how much does your friend know about CVs. Secondly, you should also ask the question ‘just how good it is good?’

For example, your friend may have used the services of an average CV company to produce an average quality CV, but because he/she isn’t an expert then there is nothing to compare the CV to other than the original. So how do you know how good it is? Well in this case you don’t, unless you have other professional CVs to compare it with. Of course it would be an expensive exercise to pay for several different CVs just in order to compare them. You really need to make the right choice first time.

One other (more cost-effective) tip I could give at this stage is that if your friend says their new CV is ‘good’ then this suggests that it could have been better if they had gone elsewhere. The best CV companies have genuine testimonials on their website littered with superlatives, and clients of the best CV companies tell their friends that their new CV is ‘fantastic’ or ‘excellent’ – not just ‘good.’

Another tactic is to read the testimonials on the CV company websites. If the company is worth its salt it will have such a section. I do suspect that not all testimonials on every website are genuine, and unfortunately there is probably no sure-fire way of identifying the fake from the genuine. Nevertheless, at the very least, one thing you could look out for is that the testimonials are from people with proper names and locations, rather than spurious shortened entries such as “Mr T, California.”

More to follow…

Paul (182 Posts)

Paul , top UK CV specialist, head of leading firm CV Succeed, and author of the most pioneering CV book in decades, The One Page CV (published by top career sector publishers Pearson Education).


Comments are closed.