Can a $1,000 Resume Boost Your Career?

The recession may be leaving millions of people unemployed, but for one profession it’s been more of a boom: the job guru field.

This growing legion of self-styled employment experts say they’re dedicated to getting America back to work. Some have carved out their own job-search niche, focusing on nothing but résumé overhauls or interview prep. Others bill themselves as do-it-all career coaches, taking clients from deciding on an industry to negotiating salary. There are even “personal brand specialists” and Ari Gold–style executive agents who promise to open their golden Rolodexes to a few high-powered job seekers. Fees range from just a few dollars for group seminars to $500-an-hour coaching or even—you guessed it—a cut of your salary.

Gurus, of course, think they’re worth the money, especially in such a daunting employment climate. According to career coach Paul Bernard, people should plan for at least a month of searching for every $12,000 to $15,000 they want to earn. Employment pros say their knowledge of the recruiter perspective gives job hunters an insider edge they’d never have alone—especially if they’re among the 55-and-over set with rusty job-hunting skills and a skyrocketing unemployment rate (at its highest point in 60 years). Many job seekers are trying to transition out of distressed industries into new, unfamiliar fields. Some need help rehearsing for the rigorous, multistage interviews now standard in many screenings. Others aren’t sure how to leverage online resources like networking Web site LinkedIn.

Sorting through the maze of these various employment mavens is, well, a job in itself. Government regulation of this $400 million industry is practically nonexistent, and gurus themselves admit there’s no third-party policing organization. Instead, they rely on industry certifications, which critics say are a dime a dozen. In fact, trade group Career Management Alliance recently counted a total of 48 possible certifications, ranging from “certified workplace development professional” (cost for the credential: $75) to “certified career management coach” ($2,295). Liz Sumner, the group’s director, recommends that job seekers not just accept the alphabet soup of credentials but also check references and ask for samples of their coach’s work. To gather some samples of our own, we dusted off our résumé, put on our interview duds and (don’t tell our boss) hit the pavement to meet a few of the most popular types of job gurus.

Nothing provokes quite as much angst as creating the perfect résumé—Amazon.com lists over 268,000 titles on the subject—it’s not surprising that a résumé writer is many job seekers’ first hire. When it comes to qualifications, they often tout backgrounds in human resources or recruiting and, of course, those industry certifications. Some focus on senior executives and charge between $800 and $1,500 per résumé, but according to the Directory of Professional Résumé Writers, the majority work with a range of clients, charging an average of $350.

But résumés have become more than a sheet of paper. A recent survey by recruiter network ExecuNet found that 86 percent of job recruiters said they use search engines to find out more about prospects, while a whopping 44 percent said they’d actually eliminated a candidate based on information they turned up online. For résumé writers, this has meant a slew of new Web-oriented offerings, which can include an online “audit” (determining what face you present to the world in cyberspace), along with authoring or editing clients’ online profiles. It also might entail damage control if the audit turns up anything that could spook an employer—spanning from the minor (old marathon results that broadcast your age) to more-sensitive details about lawsuits or political donations.

To get help punching up our own résumé, we visit Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, a New York-based career-services company, whose average résumé-doctoring fee runs over a thousand bucks. Her first reaction? “We need to kind of sexy it up,” she says. Like too many CVs, she explains, this one reads like a laundry list of responsibilities rather than a bouquet of specific accomplishments. The document has no “headline” and is woefully short on style—no catchy graphics, shading or boxes setting off the key information. Even the font isn’t right. “Boring,” she says.

First, she suggests, we should kick off with a summary of our profession and skills. To play up our accomplishments, we should add the number of “hits” tallied by our online articles, to show measurable results and play up our Web savviness. To start building toward the next step in our career, Safani also suggests highlighting any management experience. (Does bossing around interns count?) And it seems we need to beef up our online presence; our Twitter account is practically tweet-free, and that personal Web site we’ve been talking about for years still hasn’t created itself. Safani also diplomatically points out that our Facebook photos could be “a little more professional.”

By far the most important thing she could do for us, Safani says, is build out our LinkedIn profile, which we could use to start bulking up our networking contacts. Including it as a link in our e-mail signature is “the best way of saying ‘look at my résumé’ without actually sending it,” she says.