How much should CV writing services cost in 2022?

The Cost of CV Services

If you have been looking around for a CV service, you will have noticed that prices vary considerably, and you may be wondering why.

The CV & Interview Advisors (that’s us) were one of the early entrants into the world of CV writing and have been around for many years (16 years as of 2022). Hopefully, that qualifies us to give some insights into our industry, so here’s some thoughts on the subject that might help with your decision making.

The different types of service

The first thing to consider is the different types of CV services that exist. This ranges from basic CV editing to high-level executive personal branding. It is important not to look at all providers as doing the same thing – yes, they all do work on CVs, but the type of service differs considerably.

Cheap and cheerful

As with most industries, there’s always lots of companies who provide a cheap and cheerful service and there’s nothing wrong with this. For anything between £50 and £100, you can buy a CV editing service where someone will take your existing CV and make it look tidier and worded better.

Note: I suggest we completely dismiss anything less than £50 as just plain daft and not worth considering.

This £50 to £100 type of service is quite popular, but often leaves people underwhelmed as it’s the content of your CV that makes the difference, and if a writer simply re-works your existing content, the key driver of CV success is never addressed.

In fact, we have this kind of service too (it costs £99 + VAT), although we supplement your existing CV with information collected through a detailed questionnaire so that we can improve the content as well as the layout and wording.

Middle of the road

You then have some mid-tier services that cost up to the £200 mark. These might have a bit more interaction with a CV writer and theoretically should involve a bit more time and effort than a simple CV edit.

This is a good point to mention that many CV services are offshored to outsourced writing teams in Pakistan and South Africa. This provides the CV writing company with a lower delivery cost and higher profits, but CVs are often written using a North American resume format and there are often grammatical and geographic nuances that are overlooked.

The sweet spot

The next level up is where the proper CV writing services exist and what we would encourage job seekers to explore. That being the case, it’s worth providing a bit of detail around this.

In many ways, it is a simple question of economics. A CV, if done properly, takes several hours to write – we estimate between 4 to 6 hours depending on the level of seniority of the customer. In addition, to write a CV effectively, the CV writer needs to know what they are writing about. This means a good CV writer will spend 1 to 2 hours talking to you to discuss your career history.

If you factor in all this time, then 6 to 8 hours plus follow up would be typical. That’s a day’s work!

Now ask yourself what kind of person you would want to write your CV. Someone who works for minimum wage, or a highly qualified / experienced person who can add value to the process? Not that there’s anything wrong with working for minimum wage, and there are some talented people who do that, but I’m sure you get the point.

If you make some assumptions about what an experienced CV writer would expect to be paid for a day’s work, it is clear that major compromises would need to be made to produce a CV for anything less that £250.

Look at it this way, if you were to engage the services of a Builder, Plumber, Electrician or specialist Gardener, you would expect to pay between £200 and £300 for a day’s work (the average cost of a plumber in the UK is £50 per hour).

CV Writers often come from a HR, recruitment or relatively senior industry background and have the writing skills of an Author or Journalist; this level of expertise just cannot be bought for peanuts.

If a Tradesperson charges £50 per hour, why should a highly trained and experienced CV Writer charge less? And would you want a minimum wage level person writing your all-important CV?

After all, your CV is the ticket to what you spend a third of your life doing and your job puts a roof over your head and food on the table.

Top tier personal branding

At the top end of the scale, you have the elite level CV writers with robust service packages that will explore your personal brand, career objectives, industry positioning value proposition and track record.

These CV writers will have a deep understanding of what executives do and the KPIs they perform against. They are likely to have either operated in a senior role themselves or worked extensively as an executive career coach / CV writer.

These executive packages may include career coaching, LinkedIn profile content and additional content for targeting different roles.

These services may range between £500 and £2000, depending on how much work is required.

Do you need help?

We have 3 options for you:

1. The CV & Interview Advisors offer a CV Revamp for £99 + VAT, which is a full re-write of your CV in our tried and tested methodology, using the content from your existing CV and what you populate our detailed questionnaire with. This is a great option for any level of job seeker and really good value if you are on a budget. This is really a mid-tier service at a cheap and cheerful price.

2. We also have our Professional Level Service that costs between £199 and £299 + VAT, depending on how many years of work experience you have. This involves a 2-hour fact-finding session with one of our experienced CV Writers (via telephone or Zoom), who then write your CV in our award-winning CV methodology. Our CV writing team are revered as being the best of the best and work with job seekers at all levels from graduates to FTSE100 executives.

3. The professional level service above is extremely robust and more than adequate for all job seekers through to the most senior level, but we also offer a range of personal branding and career development packages, exclusively for executives, through our sister company DCS Executive. These packages range from £750 + VAT to £1750 + VAT and include services for independent professionals and portfolio career executives.

If you are interested in further information, please contact us on 01274 408 222 or email us at [email protected]