For anyone reading this and your expertise is anything related to IT or work in an environment that may have involved a task or application that uses acronyms then you have to avoid this CV makeover service.
If you want a professional CV designed for any industry then side step this service from CVNow.
In fact, steer clear at all costs and I will explain exactly why.
This company is really bad at producing CV's and I shall summarise (or as CVNow would say, summarize but more about this later).
I paid, or should I say lost, £175 of my hard earned money by trusting this shambles to create a decent CV. I didn't expect miracles, but I did hope for a half decent CV that I could customise for various job opportunities.
They do absolutely no research themselves if you use an acronym. Let's face it, they are in everyday life and have been for ages. Let's explore some examples: BBC, RAC, AA and UHT.
Oh, hang on I forgot to mention the acronym CV. My mistake!
Any competent CV creator would at least use Google or a similar online tool to make an informed choice that is in context with your CV aka Curriculum Vitae.
Sadly not, when it is devised by CVNow.
The CV layout in Word format is unbelievably poor. If you have the pleasure of your CV being presented in a boxed format you will note that the lines are dreadfully out of alignment.
Also, you will find that some of the text extends beyond the boundaries of these borders.
The use of different fonts is generally a no-go in most professional presentations and publications let alone a CV. I'm quite surprised that Comic Sans was not included in mine!
CVNow is either based in the USA or they do not know how to set the spell check to suit the UK market that they apparently specialise in.
I wouldn't dream of sending a Curriculum Vitae prepared by CVNow to a prospective employer before spending considerable time making sure that:
The alignment is accurate and the grammar is correct.
For example, there has never been a comma before the word and, and the acronyms should have been researched, and used in context as part of the Executive Summarization.
Now, re-read the previous sentence and you will see that it is grammatically incorrect and not to UK spelling standards, therefore it is totally unprofessional and unusable if you wish to be taken seriously in a highly competitive job market.
The present and the past tense are not normally used in the same sentence. This I found quite amusing as I was not too sure if I was still there, had been there or was going somewhere with my previous experience.
They do not do refunds either (LOL).
I enquired about the very useful facility of getting my money returned and have been assured that due to my personal timeframe this fantastic opportunity had expired!
So in order to summarise.
There are plenty of free CV formats available on the Internet that you can utilise and obviously you know best about your experience, attributes and suitability for the position that you are applying for.
I wouldnt personally leave my future career prospects in the hands of an incompetent bunch of idiots.
Footnote: Further research has suggested that this mess of a service is based in the USA by the name of Talent Inc.
CVNow is a CV writing service that claims that they can write professionally-written resumes that will attract potential employers and help to land interviews easier and faster.
The CV they wrote for me did not obtain me one single interview in already two months. Having looked at this CV, local career advisors and recruiters I met afterwards told me that it was no good and I would never be able to find a job with this kind resume.
The company claims to provide services and deliver things that in reality they don’t:
I’m not a native English speaker, but even I could spot some mistakes and basic typos. Some sentences make no sense even to me. It proves that the CV writer didn't even bother trying to understand what i wanted to outline on my resume. She just changed it around to make it sound more "English", but never tried to get into it..
Their CV writers are not professional: they claim they use industry expert writers, but it is obvious that they are not familiar with the industries’ requirements.
They are based in the UK or US, and they have no idea of the job markets and the requirements in other countries, although they claim they do, their language is too complicated and redundant. They didn’t consider the specificities of the country where I was applying for the job, although I emphasized on that it in the beginning several times.
3) they use templates, and the templates are not up-to-date and optimal.
They do not deliver on their claims, too expensive for what they are and what they do!
And the worst thing, the company is ignoring my complaints and won’t refund me as I demanded!
On the first of September, I applied for a position in Instrumentation Engineering that was advertised on your site, mostly because I was looking to work as an EXPAT, as I had done a year ago, in Kazakhstan
Got an email from your company stating that my application had been sent
Next thing I get an email from Katie at CVNOW, saying she was going to look through my CV, which she did. She came back with a whole lot of suggestions about what was wrong with my CV
So I had a think about it, after reading all the promises on their site, so I asked her as a matter of interest, how much would she charge to sort it out. The send me the link to make an order
Next thing I get another email, from someone else at CVNow, with a big speech about how many interviews I would etc
So I did the online order, expecting an immediate reaction and the solutions that Katie had promised
I sent everything and more, that they requested and had to wait another week, for Jason to contact me, then another week to give me my first draft!
Well at a first glance it looked impressive, until I actually read it on the weekend, All two pages
NEVER in my whole professional life, have I read such garbage!!! obviously the guy did not have any engineering or technical knowledge, he could have even cut and paste from my original CV
But no, it was random words that he took out of my CV, then he added his vocabulary, and made it look like something straight out of a fiction novel!
I went from being a Multi-Discipline Principle Designer to a “Motivated project leader with capacity to set up complex mechanical equipment” & Highly skilled in directing cross-functional teams
So Now The reply I got when I sent a reply to him!!! “Thank you for reaching out!"
So Tara from support replys:
While I can understand your frustration, I am not sure that yelling at me is accomplishing anything beyond making us both upset.
I have assigned the order to a top writer. He is happy to work on this for you and I have expedited so you have this by the end of the week as planned. This also allows you a full revision period if needed with him. I will also ask him to contact you if he has not yet done so to discuss strategy.
I even sent them Tara and Katie a PDF, of the updated that took me over a day, to re-write the mess
I get senior writer Joe!! Apologising
Hi Cecily, I'm nearly finished with your document but would like to use this evening for final edits if that works for you.
Your original document was rather large, so I am trying to make sure I don't overlook anything.
I'll be back in touch
And now I am “Sr. Designer, Instrumentation & Control Systems”, with phrases like“Industry Agnostic: Broad experience in variety of verticals, including oil & gas, petro chemical, municipal waste, power plant, thermal, coal, water treatment, food, and mining”
Agnostic definition, a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human ...
I really thought at my age, I would know a SCAM artist, they have all tried, pay this amount, and we will guarantee so many interviews. But I feel hook, line and sinker for this lot.
The bells, should have started ringing, when there were no contact details for anyone!
The success stories are all fake! Its time to shut down this SCAM!!!
There are multiple gaps in the employment history, they has added in Project Management, a skill of which i have no experience and he uses the word resume instead of CV, we are in the UK, plus there are roles that are not relevant to administrative or clerical work and other roles that are relevant which have been taken out, he also mentions in the covering letter tat i have a proven background in Business Management, this is not true!
These are very basic things and does not give me confidence in this service, i have enrolled on the most expensive package from your company because i liked their personal assessment of my CV, however this had not come through so far in this service.
CVNow is a resume/CV writing serviced based in NYC. They are a brand of Talent Inc. and trade on the Internet as CVNow.com, CVNow.co.uk and TopResume.com. They purport to write professionally-written resumes that will gain you vastly more interest from potential employers.
I originally paid for CVNow's 'Career Evolution' package at the end of February. After three weeks of waiting, corrections and re-corrections, I received a CV and covering letter that did not obtain me a single interview in nearly a month. My careers advisor took one look at the CV and immediately pointed out its shortcomings in terms of layout and content.
After complaining in the strongest terms, CVNow did refund me in full. And oddly, a month later, offered to rewrite my CV again. Having read the second and now third rewrites from one of their 'veteran writers' I have no doubt that CVNow cannot deliver what they promise and at engaging in false advertising.
CVNow make these specific claims about their service that are just not true:
1) they use industry expert writers. They don't. CVNow uses freelance writers that have some modicum of professional writing experience. Every single draft I have received has been littered with basic typos and inconsistent formatting. I've not once been asked what industry I work in. Even when being specifically told I worked in marketing, two writers amalgamated to previous roles to create a ficticious job role as my profile header.
2) they are based in the UK. They aren't - this is an American company using American 'resume' writers (in the UK we use the term Curriculum Vitae or CV for short), US English, US formatting and US phraseology not suited to the UK jobs market.
3) they don't use templates. They do. When I questioned my first CV writer about the choice of font, he said it was simply a choice of which template he used. My second and third writers produced documents that were formatted in such a way that the chances of them having arrived at the exact same layout were practically zero.
4) everyone receives THE SAME critique of their original CV - 'you come across as a doer, not an achiever'. And of course, CVNow can help you correct this! This sounds very slick and professional but the aim is to get you to sign up, the critique having given you the impression that this is a company that knows what it is doing.
From the moment they take your money, the service is a complete shambles. They become slow to respond, even slower to react and give you a limited time in react before considering 'job done'.
They make claims they simply do not deliver on, are quick to take your money and slow to produce anything.
CVNow Reviews
For anyone reading this and your expertise is anything related to IT or work in an environment that may have involved a task or application that uses acronyms then you have to avoid this CV makeover service.
If you want a professional CV designed for any industry then side step this service from CVNow.
In fact, steer clear at all costs and I will explain exactly why.
This company is really bad at producing CV's and I shall summarise (or as CVNow would say, summarize but more about this later).
I paid, or should I say lost, £175 of my hard earned money by trusting this shambles to create a decent CV. I didn't expect miracles, but I did hope for a half decent CV that I could customise for various job opportunities.
They do absolutely no research themselves if you use an acronym. Let's face it, they are in everyday life and have been for ages. Let's explore some examples: BBC, RAC, AA and UHT.
Oh, hang on I forgot to mention the acronym CV. My mistake!
Any competent CV creator would at least use Google or a similar online tool to make an informed choice that is in context with your CV aka Curriculum Vitae.
Sadly not, when it is devised by CVNow.
The CV layout in Word format is unbelievably poor. If you have the pleasure of your CV being presented in a boxed format you will note that the lines are dreadfully out of alignment.
Also, you will find that some of the text extends beyond the boundaries of these borders.
The use of different fonts is generally a no-go in most professional presentations and publications let alone a CV. I'm quite surprised that Comic Sans was not included in mine!
CVNow is either based in the USA or they do not know how to set the spell check to suit the UK market that they apparently specialise in.
I wouldn't dream of sending a Curriculum Vitae prepared by CVNow to a prospective employer before spending considerable time making sure that:
The alignment is accurate and the grammar is correct.
For example, there has never been a comma before the word and, and the acronyms should have been researched, and used in context as part of the Executive Summarization.
Now, re-read the previous sentence and you will see that it is grammatically incorrect and not to UK spelling standards, therefore it is totally unprofessional and unusable if you wish to be taken seriously in a highly competitive job market.
The present and the past tense are not normally used in the same sentence. This I found quite amusing as I was not too sure if I was still there, had been there or was going somewhere with my previous experience.
They do not do refunds either (LOL).
I enquired about the very useful facility of getting my money returned and have been assured that due to my personal timeframe this fantastic opportunity had expired!
So in order to summarise.
There are plenty of free CV formats available on the Internet that you can utilise and obviously you know best about your experience, attributes and suitability for the position that you are applying for.
I wouldnt personally leave my future career prospects in the hands of an incompetent bunch of idiots.
Footnote: Further research has suggested that this mess of a service is based in the USA by the name of Talent Inc.
CVNow is a CV writing service that claims that they can write professionally-written resumes that will attract potential employers and help to land interviews easier and faster.
The CV they wrote for me did not obtain me one single interview in already two months. Having looked at this CV, local career advisors and recruiters I met afterwards told me that it was no good and I would never be able to find a job with this kind resume.
The company claims to provide services and deliver things that in reality they don’t:
I’m not a native English speaker, but even I could spot some mistakes and basic typos. Some sentences make no sense even to me. It proves that the CV writer didn't even bother trying to understand what i wanted to outline on my resume. She just changed it around to make it sound more "English", but never tried to get into it..
Their CV writers are not professional: they claim they use industry expert writers, but it is obvious that they are not familiar with the industries’ requirements.
They are based in the UK or US, and they have no idea of the job markets and the requirements in other countries, although they claim they do, their language is too complicated and redundant. They didn’t consider the specificities of the country where I was applying for the job, although I emphasized on that it in the beginning several times.
3) they use templates, and the templates are not up-to-date and optimal.
They do not deliver on their claims, too expensive for what they are and what they do!
And the worst thing, the company is ignoring my complaints and won’t refund me as I demanded!
On the first of September, I applied for a position in Instrumentation Engineering that was advertised on your site, mostly because I was looking to work as an EXPAT, as I had done a year ago, in Kazakhstan
Got an email from your company stating that my application had been sent
Next thing I get an email from Katie at CVNOW, saying she was going to look through my CV, which she did. She came back with a whole lot of suggestions about what was wrong with my CV
So I had a think about it, after reading all the promises on their site, so I asked her as a matter of interest, how much would she charge to sort it out. The send me the link to make an order
Next thing I get another email, from someone else at CVNow, with a big speech about how many interviews I would etc
So I did the online order, expecting an immediate reaction and the solutions that Katie had promised
I sent everything and more, that they requested and had to wait another week, for Jason to contact me, then another week to give me my first draft!
Well at a first glance it looked impressive, until I actually read it on the weekend, All two pages
NEVER in my whole professional life, have I read such garbage!!! obviously the guy did not have any engineering or technical knowledge, he could have even cut and paste from my original CV
But no, it was random words that he took out of my CV, then he added his vocabulary, and made it look like something straight out of a fiction novel!
I went from being a Multi-Discipline Principle Designer to a “Motivated project leader with capacity to set up complex mechanical equipment” & Highly skilled in directing cross-functional teams
So Now The reply I got when I sent a reply to him!!! “Thank you for reaching out!"
So Tara from support replys:
While I can understand your frustration, I am not sure that yelling at me is accomplishing anything beyond making us both upset.
I have assigned the order to a top writer. He is happy to work on this for you and I have expedited so you have this by the end of the week as planned. This also allows you a full revision period if needed with him. I will also ask him to contact you if he has not yet done so to discuss strategy.
I even sent them Tara and Katie a PDF, of the updated that took me over a day, to re-write the mess
I get senior writer Joe!! Apologising
Hi Cecily, I'm nearly finished with your document but would like to use this evening for final edits if that works for you.
Your original document was rather large, so I am trying to make sure I don't overlook anything.
I'll be back in touch
And now I am “Sr. Designer, Instrumentation & Control Systems”, with phrases like“Industry Agnostic: Broad experience in variety of verticals, including oil & gas, petro chemical, municipal waste, power plant, thermal, coal, water treatment, food, and mining”
Agnostic definition, a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human ...
I really thought at my age, I would know a SCAM artist, they have all tried, pay this amount, and we will guarantee so many interviews. But I feel hook, line and sinker for this lot.
The bells, should have started ringing, when there were no contact details for anyone!
The success stories are all fake! Its time to shut down this SCAM!!!
There are multiple gaps in the employment history, they has added in Project Management, a skill of which i have no experience and he uses the word resume instead of CV, we are in the UK, plus there are roles that are not relevant to administrative or clerical work and other roles that are relevant which have been taken out, he also mentions in the covering letter tat i have a proven background in Business Management, this is not true!
These are very basic things and does not give me confidence in this service, i have enrolled on the most expensive package from your company because i liked their personal assessment of my CV, however this had not come through so far in this service.
CVNow is a resume/CV writing serviced based in NYC. They are a brand of Talent Inc. and trade on the Internet as CVNow.com, CVNow.co.uk and TopResume.com. They purport to write professionally-written resumes that will gain you vastly more interest from potential employers.
I originally paid for CVNow's 'Career Evolution' package at the end of February. After three weeks of waiting, corrections and re-corrections, I received a CV and covering letter that did not obtain me a single interview in nearly a month. My careers advisor took one look at the CV and immediately pointed out its shortcomings in terms of layout and content.
After complaining in the strongest terms, CVNow did refund me in full. And oddly, a month later, offered to rewrite my CV again. Having read the second and now third rewrites from one of their 'veteran writers' I have no doubt that CVNow cannot deliver what they promise and at engaging in false advertising.
CVNow make these specific claims about their service that are just not true:
1) they use industry expert writers. They don't. CVNow uses freelance writers that have some modicum of professional writing experience. Every single draft I have received has been littered with basic typos and inconsistent formatting. I've not once been asked what industry I work in. Even when being specifically told I worked in marketing, two writers amalgamated to previous roles to create a ficticious job role as my profile header.
2) they are based in the UK. They aren't - this is an American company using American 'resume' writers (in the UK we use the term Curriculum Vitae or CV for short), US English, US formatting and US phraseology not suited to the UK jobs market.
3) they don't use templates. They do. When I questioned my first CV writer about the choice of font, he said it was simply a choice of which template he used. My second and third writers produced documents that were formatted in such a way that the chances of them having arrived at the exact same layout were practically zero.
4) everyone receives THE SAME critique of their original CV - 'you come across as a doer, not an achiever'. And of course, CVNow can help you correct this! This sounds very slick and professional but the aim is to get you to sign up, the critique having given you the impression that this is a company that knows what it is doing.
From the moment they take your money, the service is a complete shambles. They become slow to respond, even slower to react and give you a limited time in react before considering 'job done'.
They make claims they simply do not deliver on, are quick to take your money and slow to produce anything.