Resume Nerd Reviews [Is It Worth It?]

Resumes

Jun 3

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Resume Nerd. It’s one of the most searched for resume builders out there. If you look them up on sites like TrustPilot, you’ll see they have lots of stars. But just because customer reviews and people like it doesn’t mean it’s effective or worth the cost. So this week, we let the experts take a look at Resume Nerd products to see what they had to say. You know, the people who actually make hiring decisions.

What Is Resume Nerd

In case you haven’t heard of the software or visited their website in a while, Resume Nerd is a job search software program that includes an online resume builder, a cover letter builder, and a job board. It’s evolved a bit over the years. I’ll get into each of these features a bit later.

Who Owns Resume Nerd

It’s hard to find much information about Resume Nerd. That’s probably because it’s not a US-based company. They’re owned by Spector Technologies Limited which is located in the Cayman Islands, but according to Google, it appears the office is no longer there. When you look at their Terms, it’s unclear who you’re doing business with. While the terms state that it is between you and Spector Technologies, there are references to multiple other entities as well such as Candidate Trove LLC in New York and Blue Market Pay in Iceland.

I’m not going to hide the fact that I was a bit sketched out by all of that, especially when I don’t know who to get in touch with for customer service and payment issues.

How Long Has Resume Nerd Been In Business

Again, it’s hard to verify any information for sure, but according to their own website, it appears that the business has been around since 2016.

Is Resume Nerd Free

Most of the negative reviews on other sites are because they didn’t realize that the software wasn’t free. Resume Nerd is NOT free.

You can build a resume and cover letter for free to see if you like it but to save your resumes and cover letters, print them, or do anything with them, you have to pay a subscription.

One thing I really appreciated about this company was that I could try the resume builder and cover letter writer without creating an account. When I was finished, I could then decide if I wanted to create an account and pay for their service to use the resume and cover letter.

Resume Nerd does offer an inexpensive trial where you can pay $2.75 for 2-weeks of full access. After that, the price goes up to $23.75 every 4 weeks which is typical and a good price based on similar services. You also have the option to buy a year subscription for $100.

Your monthly subscription does auto renew and may not notify you ahead of time, so don’t forget to cancel it when you’re done.

So now that we’ve got all that out of the way, is it worth the price? To answer that, let’s take a look at the features and the software itself.

Resume Nerd Resume Templates

I was pleasantly surprised by the templates offered. Most resume builders have fancy templates that look great from a graphic design perspective but make no sense for the purpose of a resume. This was not the case with Resume Nerd. Their templates were all really good.

They offered 6 different templates to choose from and all of them followed the best resume formatting principles. Some had some pops of color and a few “extras” but it wasn’t distracting like so many other resume builder templates. On the other hand, they didn’t look like plain text resumes that came out of Microsoft Word either (not that that’s a bad thing).

Let’s get into the pros and cons of the resumenerd resume builder next.

Resume Builder Pros

Formatting

As I mentioned with the templates, you don’t have to worry about formatting practices because all the templates take care of that. This is one thing you can check off your list of resume worries. I would give Resume Nerd an A+ for formatting.

Easy to Use

I found the resume builder very easy to use. It started by giving me the option to let the program pick some bullet points or to write my own. They gave me a sample of bullet points they suggested and then I could decide if I wanted to use them. Overall, this was one of the easiest resume builders to use (and I’ve tried nearly 40 at this point).

Price

They have a great price point, especially if you only need to create one resume. You can do so for $2.75 and cancel before the two-week renewal.

Resume Builder Cons

Customization Ability

Compared to other resume builders, there was nearly no customization available in this program and that’s a big problem. I couldn’t change the name of the headers. I couldn’t add context lines to my job experiences. The program really bombed the test here. The only layer of customization that I could find was the ability to reorder sections and add special awards and descriptions to education items.

AI Content Quality

The AI content quality wasn’t bad. It was accurate and relevant to the job I entered. I experimented with the job of an SEO Associate. All of the bullet points and skills it suggested were relevant and there wasn’t any fluff that you get with a lot of AI programs.

It didn’t use a lot of filler words or showy buzzwords that lack substance and belong in a romance novel, not on a resume. IYKYK.

However, it didn’t help me translate non-SEO jobs into language that would be appropriate for an SEO job. It created content in what I call, documentary style. That’s content that focuses on your old jobs and not the job you want next. And if you haven’t been reading my resume content for long enough, you want to write for the job you want, not the job you have.

It also failed to give me ideas about how I could show that I was good at each of the things I did.

AI Analysis

Like many resume builders, the program will give you a score. Resume Nerd scores resumes from 600 to 1,000 with 1,000 being the highest ranking resumes.

I wasn’t a fan of how they programmed their AI resume analysis feature. The feature was ok, but it missed some of the big content levers. While it focused on things like action words, the truth is, they’re not as important as people make them out to be.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, you should use action words when possible, but I’ve worked with hundreds of recruiters over the years while in Corporate Recruiting and through my consulting agency, and I can tell you we interview people all day long who have poor or few action words.

What really matters is things like the relevancy to the job target. That is far more important than action words and unfortunately, Resume Nerd can’t analyze for that like some of their competitors do.

Resume Nerd Cover Letter Review

Resume Nerd also includes a cover letter writer with their subscription. You can also try it out for free without creating an account, but remember, you’ll have to buy a subscription to save it, print it, or download it.

The cover letter program starts by asking you to enter your career field and subcareer field. I found both to be pretty generic.

They have a couple of different templates to choose from. There is a generic template and templates for things like career changers.

I found all the cover letter templates very generic and ineffective. They regurgitated talking points from your resume and that’s the last thing you want to do in a cover letter.

In fact, I think a big reason many people don’t read cover letters is because people do this. Why read something that provides no additional value?

For example, they have a cover letter template for career changers, but instead of using the cover letter to explain how their previous industry may be similar to the target job, it was super generic and just kept saying, “I have transferable skills!” Not to mention, there was a grammar error in the template too.

I wouldn’t use this cover letter builder. There are so many better ones like Huntr out there who can reference unique things about the company and help you tailor a really good one.

Related Article: Has the Format For Cover Letters Changed?

Resume Website Review

One unique feature that Resume Nerd offers is the ability to create a resume website. It’s a URL that you can share so people can view your resume online using that URL.

It sounded cool when I first saw it, but it’s not necessary for success. When I asked my recruiting colleagues what they thought, they all agreed with me that everyone is going to want your resume document, not a URL. URLs also aren’t searchable in an ATS (applicant tracking system).

This feature may have worked well twenty years ago, but today, it’s pretty useless.

Job Matching Review

Resume Nerd appears to have built a job scraping tool that searches other websites, populates them on their website, and then tells you when one matches the criteria you submitted.

It could be a nice compliment to the resume and cover letter builder, but it’s not worth buying and I find little value in it. There are many other job search websites you can use for free.

Would I Use Resume Nerd?

Probably not. While it wasn’t the worst resume builder I’ve used or even close to it, I have found much better ones out there. Plus I found the cover letter builder and job board ineffective. In fact, I wouldn’t even use the cover letter builder because I found it more harmful than helpful.

What Is Resume Nerd Good For?

If I were going to use this software, it would be to identify relevant skills and experiences for my resume. But I would stop there. If you’re exploring new career possibilities, it could be beneficial to use Resume Nerd to create a skills section and one work experience section sample based on your target job.

If you do this, it will give you a lot of ideas about relevant skills and experiences that you can then:

Brainstorm content for your resume;
Use another program to create content for your resume; or
Use to identify skill gaps that you need to fill in order to obtain that job.

Resume Nerd Alternatives

If I was going to choose a resume builder, I would look for two things:

A good AI content engine that can suggest ideas that make sense for my target job, not the jobs I’ve had in the past.
A builder that allows for customization.

The best resume builder I’ve found for content creation (which is the most important part of a resume) is Huntr. When it comes to AI, Huntr beats every other tool I’ve seen on the market. It can translate job experience from an unrelated job to your target job. It can blend the right amount of context with results. It’s good. They also have one of the best job search trackers (Kanban style) I’ve ever seen.

My second choice if you don’t like Huntr, would be Teal. When it comes to the ability to edit your resume and customize it, Teal is hands down the best. With their latest update, no one comes close to their ability. They have AI features as well, but I’ve had little success using them to produce something I could use.

If I could take these two tools and put them together, you’d have the ultimate resume tool. Considering you could buy them both for less than $50 and write a great resume in a few hours, it’s a no-brainer investment.

Resume Nerd Review Recommended Reading

73 Best Job Search Websites

The Best AI Resume Builders on the Market

How to Add Metrics to Your Resume [Even When You Don’t Have Any]

Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a boutique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.