Resume Service Guarantees – Happiness Versus Interviews
Shopping for a resume writing service? You’ve likely been comparing costs, exploring writers’ credentials, and staring at a lot of blurry resume examples. Before you plunk down your hard-earned money, don’t overlook the resume service guarantee.
What’s that, you say? Resume services offer guarantees? Well, some do, some don’t. It’s the prerogative of the resume writing service as to whether or not to offer a guarantee to their customers, and if so, how strong to make that guarantee. Guarantees typically come in three flavors:
The “Tick-Tock” Resume Service Guarantee
A common guarantee in the business whereby the resume service offers a number of days (usually 3-7) for you to identify any necessary changes or corrections to your initial resume draft, and they’ll make those changes free of charge. Acceptable, if not particularly lenient.
The “Happiness” Guarantee
A few companies offer to continue working on the resume “until you’re happy.” No time frame is specified, though I have a hard time believing they would still be writing and re-writing your resume three months after that first draft.
As in the case of the tick-tock guarantee, this “happiness” guarantee if fine, but it does tend to favor those who know enough about resumes to discern whether or not the product they’re being presented is a good one. Trouble is, too many folks are unfamiliar with the marketing demands of a resume, and are likely to be “happy” with a document that might not serve their interests well.
Alas, there is a stronger guarantee. That would be:
The “Results” Guarantee
In the resume writing world, “results” are interviews. After all, that’s the pinnacle of success for a resume – to deliver interviews for the job seeker. Beyond the interview, there’s not much the resume can do for the candidate. It’s up to him or her, and face-to-face dynamics, as to whether the end result is a job offer.
A results-based guarantee typically means that the writer is offering to re-write the resume if it is unsuccessful at generating at least one interview after a certain period of time in the marketplace – say 30 days or so. In rare cases (and I do mean rare), the resume service will offer a money-back guarantee if no interviews are forthcoming.
The beauty part of the “results” guarantee is pretty obvious: you’re spending a good chunk of change on a professional resume, so it’s nice to have the assurance that it will result in at least one job interview. The underlying benefit to this type of guarantee is that it demonstrates to a prospective client that the resume service behind the guarantee is confident in the workmanship of their products. It sends out a subtle signal that these are pro writers who stand behind their work.
There are certainly more variables to consider when selecting a resume writing service, like certification of writers, turnaround time, quality of samples posted on their website, etc. But the type of guarantee they offer speaks volumes as to the type of company you’re dealing with, and the confidence they place in their service.
