Not a very useful service
After a layoff I was offered outplacement services from my former employer through Velvet Jobs. Knowing that the job market is a rough I figured a second pair of eyes couldn't hurt, but honestly after my interactions with them I couldn’t recommend them. They asked for resume and some general questions (e.g. looking for jobs in North America vs Europe, job title you are targeting). They asked no followup questions about my experience to flesh out some experience to see whether I was overlooking anything or could expand some bullet points with more relevant keywords. After a couple days I was offered a "first" draft for a resume and a cover letter. Most of the suggestions on the resume that they offered weren’t that useful to the point of being counterproductive. e.g. They created a summary that was a generic grab bag of buzzwords. Most of the sentences in their summary were so vague that it felt like a generic template. I genuinely don't feel like anyone read my resume in “writing” it, which for a professional service seems rather cringe worthy. They suggested skills that were NOT anywhere even close to anything in my resume nor was there any conversation that would have suggested that these were relevant to my experience either. Several were so far off my experience that they would be a straight up lie and a reader would be confused why they didn’t fit with the experience of the resume. In the experience section it I felt like they mindlessly copy and pasted the past job titles and bullet points into a generic template then combined a couple bullet points in an incoherent fashion. The combinations were problematic in that they implied certain projects were related to each other that weren’t and implied certain tools did something that they couldn’t, which would make a hiring manager question my competence. They also suggested that removing months off of job descriptions was "standard". I have sat on several interview panels so have seen the resumes of a number of potential coworkers and a few that ultimately joined past teams I have worked, and I did NOT see that on any resumes. Not sure what industry that is “standard” for resumes, but I haven't seen it in my experience. When called out on these criticisms I got a "sorry you feel that way" non apology. They suggested that the generic keywords were “common” even though some I have never seen in a job description in over a decade in the industry or were at the least rare outside of job descriptions that were irrelevant to my experience. I have archived several years worth of emails from recruiters that number into the thousands and most of the keywords they suggested didn’t appear in job descriptions or were for jobs that were irrelevant to my skills. They just said you could remove random skills that were neither from my resume nor any conversation with me, but offered no suggestion that they would revise anything never mind that they initially suggested that they this was only a “first” draft. i.e. they lied suggesting it was a “first” draft. If this person spent more than ~15 minutes on this I would be frankly surprised. Reading some of the positive reviews I honestly suspect many are sock puppet reviews based upon how many are short, vague/formulaic, and don't offer meaningful details on the feedback. In addition, many reviews name drop people, which as it appears that the people "helping" you are independent contractors rather than employees of Velvet jobs likely is a mechanism to encourage the company to give them more leads that they are paid upon once complete. It feels like Velvet Jobs doesn't vet these people much and it isn’t merely because my interaction feels like they barely skim the initial resume. Looking at the Linkedin profiles of several of the people getting “kudos” in reviews here I don't see people with any type of background that seems overly relevant. I couldn’t find any that were recruiters or better yet hiring managers. While you don’t need that background to offer generic resume advice someone that doesn’t have any background in hiring or recruiting nevermind hiring/recruiting to a specific field that you’re trying to get a job is unlikely to be able to offer much meaningful advice that is specific to that industry. Some things someone with the relevant background will likely catch a generic reader will easily miss as they have little or no concept of what resumes really perform well in that field. Worse they may make suggestions that could make your resume seem even worse to a hiring manager as I noted earlier. In a great job market this is likely “good enough,” but for most especially those in technical fields where generic advice often isn’t good enough I question the value of their “services.” I would look elsewhere for useful resume writing services.
By SSA