Do ‘Resume Builders’ Work for Technical People?

Writing a great resume is a real challenge for most of us, and to get it near perfect we have to learn from the best. In my article ‘ 9 Highly Effective Habits of Great Technical Resume Writers ‘ I shared with you what I consider to be the best traits of the great resume writers. One of the most difficult tasks is getting started and building a framework for your resume that works. Is there a quicker way?

I wanted to experiment and find out if I could build a resume quickly, whilst still staying true to the ‘9 Highly Effective Habits’, so I turned towards an ‘automatic resume writer’ to see if it can help.

Resume Builders

Resume builders are (mostly online) tools that build your resume for you – all you need to do is add in the information by filling the gaps. You don’t need to know MS Word, OpenOffice, etc – all you require is knowledge about yourself! The experiment is, can these tools really create a resume that will be successful?

I scoured the market to find a resume writer that was so simple that I didn’t need to create a document myself, but rather just answer questions. For this experiment I chose a tool called ‘The Resume Builder ‘ which promised to instantly create a professional resume that was easy to edit in minutes. It was just what I was looking for.

Other similar products are:

• CleverResume (www.cleverresume.com )
• Amazing Resume Creator (www.amazingresumecreator.com )
• EasyJob (www.easyjob.net )

The Experiment

I put it Resume Builder to work. To start with I had to create an account so I can go back and access or edit the resume at a later time. Nice feature. Like its competitors, it takes you through a number of sections where you fill in the detail, e.g. Personal Details, Work History, Education, Skills, Achievements, etc. all of which were quite straightforward and I was done after about 10 minutes .

At the end of the process, I could see the results. What I found was a nicely formatted, simple and fancy-free resume in the default format. The sections were well structured, logically sequenced and clearly labeled. If you’ve read my ‘9 Highly Effective Habits of Great Technical Resume Writers ‘ article then you’ll know that the simpler the presentation, the more easily transposed it will be into a recruitment agencies database, and the more likely you’ll be put forward for the best jobs. There is more than one format to try also to suit your tastes, although they are are roughly similar. Despite that, some of the other formats moved some of the labeling around to break the rules I have laid out.

Conclusion

‘Resume builders’ offer a huge time-saving when creating a resume. If you’ve started one from scratch before you’ll know that it can take an age to build the structure, let alone populate it with content. They also offer the typical sections you find in your resume, and format them in a well structured format that is then easy to edit.

For technical people, the skills section is typically the hot-spot on the resume. The resume builders are not designed specifically to represent technical skills – I don’t think it matters. The way the information is captured will support most people’s needs to demonstrate their skillset. You might need to have a couple of attempts to arrive at something you’re happy with once you’ve seen the results. But it won’t give you the option of creating a skills matrix like I talk about in the ‘9 Habits’ article. You will need to construct that yourself.

To make the best out of these tools I think you need to use them as a starting point, and embellish your resume over time by including your own content. What they do is enforce simplicity and structure, which you’ll discover is a key attribute if you’ve read ‘9 Highly Effective Habits of Great Technical Resume Writers ‘.

So I think the verdict is that they receive a thumbs up . They don’t completely solve the problem, but as far as the experiment goes to prove the concept, it is a success.

Resume Builder

If you want to use your resume once you’ve created it in Resume Builder then you need to pay a small fee of $14.95 which gives you 1 year access and editing of your resume. You only need to pay if you like the results. Who can say fairer than that? I must admit to thinking this is a very reasonable price as it takes a lot of the hard and boring work away. With Resume Builder , you can also opt to have your resume made available to recruiters by search engine submission. So I think it’s well worth the 10 minutes invested in creating your resume, even if you don’t purchase at the end as you will see a good example of what you need to produce yourself.