Help rescue my resume, is it worth $695?

It does need work. Here is some advice. Treat the resume as real estate where the farther away from the top you are, the less the value. The second page is worth almost nothing. Thus the single most important thing about you should be the very first line. Every single word counts. Right now you have "Director committed to creative solutions that increase effectiveness, efficiency, client satisfaction, and financial success.... " which, aside from being a big chunk of text that is hard to parse at a glance, is mostly fluff. Anyone could say these things. Of course you are committed to success, who wouldn't be? All candidates for all jobs are going to claim they are focused, have exceptional communication skills, are experienced leaders, blah blah blah. Therefore these claims have zero value in differentiating you from the pack. Instead, say what you actually did. Think up your biggest success stories and feature them prominently. Include numbers. How many clients did you work with, how many press releases did you draft, how much did you increase revenue by? Verb tenses should be past, not present, because you are not describing your job duties, you are describing your accomplishments. Definitely pare it down to one page. Trim the work experience; two or three short bullets per job is probably enough. You don't have to explain the details - these are like newspaper headlines, you will fill in the story in the job interview. The thing is you have lots of great experience. You started your own company -- you're an entrepreneur! But if I wanted to know more about you, I would rather see details about how successful this company was than see details about what type of products you came up with - do you see what I mean? There are tons of (free or inexpensive) resources out there that can help you revise your presentation and design -- give them a try.

No offense to LionIndex et al., but feel free to ignore the "protip" regarding one-page resumes. I'm a recruiter; I've looked at tens of thousands of resumes and if you're beyond entry level, the odds are that your resume will need more than one page to do you justice.

I've gotten just about every job I've every applied for, and I've always written my own resumes. It might be due the field I'm in, where the resume isn't really terribly important, but still. I think $695 is a bit much to fill out one sheet of paper for you. However, the critiques you've gotten from the company are actually pretty good (note that I haven't actually seen your resume), other than the font selection, which I don't think is really a very big deal. You want a nice font, but you don't want anything too out of the ordinary. Anyway, this item is really a good rule to follow: Task-based means it tells "what you did,” such as “Keep company up-to-date on latest promotional technology and events” This is clearly job description. Results-based represents what was ACHIEVED as a RESULT of what you did. Results-based items are what you need to have in bullet points. Your resume isn't just a description of what you did at your various jobs, it's a description of how you made those companies better just by your working there. Figure out how to describe some of your experience in that way; it helps if you have quantifiable data on hand to support it. Say you implemented some sales technique that ended up increasing the office's sales by X%--mention that with the percentage in your resume, not just "oversaw sales technique implementation".

I don't know much about your industry, but I'd be hesitant to pay $700 to anyone who recommends using wacky fonts on a resume.

I recommend: getting rid of the summary section completely, posting your education first - before work history, and keeping everything on one page. Lots of employers are looking for a candidate with an MBA, so you should put that up front to make sure your resume ends up in the right pile. Also, you said that the theme parks section tells a lot about your marketing background, but I don't get that from what you've written. It sounds more operational - like you were an events coordinator. Maybe there is a way to talk about how these events were used as marketing opportunities?

I have never heard of paying someone $300 to rewrite your resume, let alone $695. That sounds crazy to me. We're talking about a few paragraphs, tops, right? I would definitely not pay theladders.com a dime, just based on their nonsensical font advice. The fonts they mention have almost nothing in common, other than being serif fonts, they most definitely aren't "Courier-based" (Courier is a completely unrelated font based on typewriter printing), and Plain Text, by definition, doesn't let you assign a font at all. Garamond would be a perfectly acceptable, classy choice for a resume. If you want to toss your money at someone, buy yourself a Mac and whip something up using the built-in resume templates in http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/.

My wife, one of my friends, and others I know have used this company: http://branecompany.com/resume.aspx Specifically they have e-mailed taunya at the-domain-above dot com.

For the reasons indicated above, this service does not sound like the right one for you. However, depending on how muddled your resume is and how competitive your field is, it may make sense to hire someone to rewrite your resume and it may, indeed, cost that much. That's because it can take a while to tease information out. I don't mean that they're working with your existing resume -- I mean that someone interviews you about your experience and works hard to get the real meat of your story. It means that they review resumes and standards for your field of work and the positions you're targeting. It means they provide a couple of drafts and a finalized version. Your MBA careers office may be able to help. It depends on the school. Some schools have careers people with no real industry experience -- they don't know how to pitch someone who's on a different playing field. But do pay them a visit to see what they can tell you. In the meantime, consider whether people in your network can help you with the resume. Your sister is an obvious source. But perhaps there are past managers or superstars who can help you figure out what to do. Tap them out before paying anyone.

To be a bit clearer regarding my sister...she has looked at my resume and helped me. This is a revised version...she just doesn't seem to think it needs anymore help. Well, unless TheLadders.com folks can offer some convincing metric that says they've got better track record than your sister who "seems to get every job she applies for," I'd say she's at least as good an authority. The real authority you should check with, if you should be checking with any authority at all, is someone who hires for the kind of positions you're likely to apply for. At least three of these someones, so you can triangulate on conflicting advice, and more if possible. Your sister sounds like she might be one of these people, or might know some of them. So, trust her, and/or ask her if she knows people who specifically hire for the kind of position you're likely to gun for and ask for their feedback. You might also try talking to your career center, alumni center, and your business profs and ask them for help finding these people. They didn't have time machines in the 1500s. Well, not yet, anyway.