Paid $800 for a resume rewrite, the real fix was free

I paid a fancy career coach in Austin $800 to rewrite my resume and LinkedIn last spring. They made it sound great, lots of keywords, but I sent out 40 applications over 6 weeks and heard back from maybe 2 places. Turns out my old format was fine, the issue was I applied to jobs where I was missing 3 or 4 required skills. Instead, I used that same time to take a free Google cert in project management basics and tailored each resume section to the job posting, not my whole history. Landed 3 interviews in 2 weeks after that shift. Has anyone else wasted cash on resume services before realizing the problem was elsewhere? What did you change instead?

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james_bell19h ago

The keyword thing is such a trap, but here's a part nobody talks about: a lot of those resume services are just copying what the job posting already says. So you end up sounding like a mirror of every other applicant. I had a friend who paid 600 bucks and her resume had the exact same bullet points as the template they used for like 50 other people. Hiring managers see the same phrases over and over, so you blend in instead of standing out. The cert thing you did works because it actually shows you closed a gap, not just that you know how to repeat their words back at them.

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