ZipJob Review 2023: Worth It or Scam?

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A top quality resume can can vastly increase your chances of landing a dream job. At the very least, if can boost the likelihood of getting your “foot in the door” for an interview.

In this ZipJob review, we look at a a resume writing service that comes with a pledge to get you “200% more” interviews and get you hired faster.

That’s a bold statement, so in this review of ZipJob, we look at how realistic it is. The answer is not entirely straightforward, so you’ll have to read on to find out the full story.

Background – And Why You Should Listen To Us

Unlike many careers sites, we like to review things properly at HomeWorkingClub. That means we actually try out services before reporting on them. Many sites don’t go to the same effort.

We first published a ZipJob review a few of years ago, when one of the team submitted their real life CV for a ZipJob resume review.

We were really happy with the results, as you’ll see later in this write-up. However, it’s only right for us to mention that there are people out there who’ve been less than happy with the service from ZipJob.

We have to take that into consideration. As such, we look at what other people have had to say recently, as well as giving our own opinion.

Let’s start right at the beginning.

What is ZipJob?

ZipJob is an online service intended to help you land your dream job by reworking your resume. Professional resume writers overhaul everything from formatting and writing style to keywords.

As well as offering a range of paid services, ZipJob also offers a FREE basic resume review.

Is ZipJob Legit? Other ZipJob Reviews

ZipJob is a legit service with a fairly good online reputation. It has a 3.4 star rating on TrustPilot, taken from 1,111 customer reviews (at the time of writing in January 2023). Sitejabber has 204 reviews for ZipJob, and an average 4 star rating.

The picture isn’t so good on the Better Business Bureau. Although ZipJob has been BBB accredited since 2020 and has a B+ rating there are some negative reviews on that platform. In fairness, we should point out that ZipJob always responds to BBB complaints. People also only tend to visit the BBB to leave bad reviews – not good ones!

ATS Systems

ZipJob has a particular focus on optimising CVs for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These are automated systems that many companies use to scan through incoming applications, in order to create a shortlist of candidates.

A large number of major employers now use ATS systems to save them time and expense during the recruitment process. An ATS can filter applications electronically, based on keywords, years of experience, skills, former employers and schooling.

ZipJob states that applicant tracking systems filter out over 75% of resumes before a human ever sees them. That means that all the work that you’ve put into your resume could be pointless, unless you’ve optimised it for ATS software.

Many people who are struggling to get interviews don’t realise that it’s often NOT a human being having the first “read” of their resume. Fail to include the right information, and you could be falling at the first hurdle.

Using a professional resume support service with knowledge of ATS systems can do wonders for the number of interviews you get. 

ZipJob Interview Guarantee

ZipJob is so confident of its ability to impress, the company guarantees you’ll land at least twice as many interviews within 60 days of using its service. They pledge to rewrite your CV again if they don’t meet this promise.

How Does ZipJob Work?

ZipJob uses a collaborative process. The company assigns you a writer who works with you to rework your resume. You can chat directly with your writer using the ZipJob dashboard.

Based on your existing resume, any major projects you’ve completed, and the kind of jobs you’re going for, the writer produces a unique, fully optimised resume.

When we tried ZipJob, we felt that it lived up to it’s generally positive reputation. Our team-member found the service useful and the staff polite and professional. The resume sent in was certainly far more impressive once ZipJob had worked on it.

Pricing: How Much Does ZipJob Cost?

ZipJob offers a free review and three paid service options. The paid ZipJob service packages are as follows:

• Launch – $139
• Fast Track – $189
• Premium – $299

There are monthly payment options available via Affirm, for those wishing to spread the cost

We trialled the entry-level “Launch” service option for the purposes of this ZipJob review. The service includes:

• A professionally written resume, with unlimited revisions
• ATS keyword optimisation
• One to one communication with a resume writing expert

The Fast Track option also provides a cover letter, and Zipjob’s 60-day interview guarantee.  The guarantee states that if you haven’t had two to three times more interviews within 60 days, Zipjob will rewrite your resume for free.

The Premium option includes the cover letter and guarantee as well. It also provides an update of your LinkedIn profile (including keyword optimisation) and access to one of Zipjob’s most senior resume writers.

Premium customers also enjoy lifelong updates to their resumes. This means you can use the service each time you want a change in your career. It also comes with expedited delivery, meaning you receive the first draft of your updated resume in three working days, rather than the four to seven days the other packages offer.

It is important to note that there are some services for which you will be charged an additional fee. Unfortunately, these fees are not listed on the website and the fact that they even exist is somewhat hidden, as it is mentioned in the FAQ section.

Examples of where you may be expected to pay an additional fee for a resume is when it is a Federal resume, or it is more than four pages long. In order to find out the exact cost you will need to email the company at support@zipjob.com.

ZipJob Free Trial / Resume Review

If you’re not sure about paying for a resume review service, ZipJob’s free trial can give you a taste of the company’s expertise before you commit any money. The ZipJob free resume review service provides you with a resume review within a rather impressive 48 hours.

It includes expert insights into how you’re presenting your skills and experience, and an ATS scanning test to see if your resume can make it through the scanning software. ZipJob’s free trial also includes a design and formatting critique.

It’s a pretty impressive cost-free option, and a good way of getting a feel for working with the company. It’s fair, however, to point out that the ZipJob clearly hopes that they will “upsell” you a paid package!

Next, we move on to our account of when HomeWorkingClub team member, Louise, tried out ZipJob for herself.

How to Sign up to ZipJob

The ZipJob sign up process is super easy.

I had to enter my name and email address, plus choose a password. The site asks for payment and then you provide a few details about your background and experience.

The information you provide is in response to a few simple questions. Alternatively, if you already have a resume, you can just upload that, which is what I did.

I then had to answer four questions about the type of roles I was seeking, example jobs, my motivation for applying for these kinds of roles and my recent notable achievements or projects. It took just minutes for me to provide all of the required details – a seriously small investment of time.

ZipJob then assigns a writer “within 24 hours.” I was pleasantly surprised that my writer contacted me just five hours after I uploaded my resume. You can message the writer at that point or wait until they contact you.

My writer reached out to me promptly to introduce herself and to check a couple of details about the kind of roles that I was seeking.

She then got to work on my resume, which I received just over three working days later. This was faster than the expected timescale of four to seven days, so was another pleasant surprise.

ZipJob Review: Our Experience

Overall, I was impressed with ZipJob’s service. The site was easy and intuitive to use, and the process was efficient.

My expert writer was polite, professional and knowledgeable. She asked relevant questions that contributed to enhancing my resume while not taking up much of my time. In fact, the whole process required very little input from me – it was very slick and efficient.

Most importantly, the ZipJob version of my resume looked and sounded fantastic. There was a small glitch when I first received it, in that the writer had added the LinkedIn profile address of a different person with the same name as me, but she quickly sent me the corrected version as soon as I raised this.

One of the things that I found interesting about using ZipJob’s service was the language used on my resume. It beautifully described my skills, experience and career goals using terms that were clearly optimised for ATS software – but that also sounded impressive to a human reader.

This certainly bodes well in terms of modern recruitment processes. When you’re firing your resume off to various different companies, it’s impossible to know whether it will be read by a human or a computer in the first instance. By appealing to both, you’re maximising your chances of making it onto the interview shortlist.

Is It Worth Using the ZipJob LinkedIn Optimisation Service?

One element of the service that I didn’t experience as part of this ZipJob review was the LinkedIn profile optimisation that comes with the Premium service package.

Plenty of hiring takes place via LinkedIn these days. Personally, I’ve picked up more than one writing client through that platform, and that’s only from using it very infrequently.

It stands to reason, then, that having an optimised LinkedIn profile could well be an investment in itself. It’s also a great way to support your resume’s messages. After all, many prospective employers will start with LinkedIn if they like the look of your resume and want to know a bit more about you.

Whether you feel that’s worth the Premium service price tag of $299 is of course a personal decision.

It’s also well worth reading our recruitment expert’s article on LinkedIn profile tips in order to ensure that your LinkedIn account is doing all it should be to support your career. It may be that you feel confident in using those tips to overhaul the profile yourself.

Online ZipJob Feedback

As mentioned near the start of our review, there’s a noticeable disparity between the ZipJob reviews on aggregate sites like TrustPilot, and some of the customer feedback on the Better Business Bureau.

The services and packages offered by ZipJob have not changed since we first tried the service out, so we decided to delve a little deeper into this.

When we first published this review, the average TrustPilot score was 4.6 stars. At the time of writing, it stands at 3.4.

Clearly, 3.4 stars out of 5 isn’t a bad rating, but the drop is worthy of note, and may be due to the company having problems scaling up.

The low BBB rating does (quite rightly) provide a reason for concern, but it’s worth noting that this is only from 19 reviews and – most importantly – people do not usually go to the Better Business Bureau to leave good reviews.

Also – and we think this is significant – of all the closed complaints about ZipJob, the vast majority happened during the lockdowns of 2020-2021.

We suspect there were two possible factors in play:

1. The many sudden job losses and life changes during this period led to a big increase in the number of people looking for resume reviews.
2. ZipJob perhaps had issues scaling their team and keeping up with the work.

The vast majority of the complaints we reviewed resulted from delays in having a writer assigned, the assigned writer not having industry knowledge, or the assigned writer rushing the job resulting in typos and other errors. Some complaints cited slow responses from ZipJob support.

Based on the fact that our real-life test produced a resume our writer was really happy with, we feel inclined to give ZipJob the benefit of the doubt. Many companies dealt with some really unusual business patterns in 2020.

Most importantly, it’s important to remember that there are over 1000 positive reviews of ZipJob out there. The company didn’t achieve that by being bad at what it does. 77% of ZipJob TrustPilot reviews are rated “excellent.”

Conclusion

Many people really struggle with creating their resume. If you don’t have the “knack” for it, it can seem complicated and stressful. The increasing need to think about the computers that read applications as well as the human recruiters only adds to this.

ZipJob is a useful service if you’re job hunting and looking to improve your resume in order to land more interviews. It seems very feasible that it could boost your chances of getting through applicant tracking systems in order to do so.

There’s also the guarantee of a rewrite should you not quickly begin to land more interviews. However, you should remember that this only applies to the two more expensive packages.

The staff we encountered were knowledgeable, courteous and laser-focused on helping each user to develop the best possible resume. Plus, the whole process was fast and efficient, meaning it’s not a major distraction from searching for jobs to apply for, and polishing your interview skills.

If you decide to use the service and experience delays or are assigned a writer that does not seem knowledgeable in your field, then I recommend that you contact support@zipjob.com immediately. ZipJob does seem to be trying to resolve the issues that some of its clients have experienced, but you may still need to take action to ensure you get what you paid for.

Key Questions

Is ZipJob Good Value?

Whether or not you see ZipJob as good value really depends on how much you are prepared to invest in your own future.

If you’re job hunting and money is tight, then handing over $139 (or more) may seem a daunting prospect. However, it could be money well spent if it helps you to find work faster. Personally, we see it as a good investment in yourself and your future career – and there’s the option of spreading the cost with monthly payments.

Remember – ZipJob offers a free trial that can help to improve your resume while giving you a taste of the company’s services. As such, if you’re not happy with forking out $139+ then you can always opt for the free trial first.

Who Is ZipJob Good for?

ZipJob is a handy service for anyone who is job hunting and wants to get ahead of the crowd. It’s also well worth some consideration for anybody firing off lots of applications but not landing any interviews.

It’s a competitive world out there, so making sure your resume ends up at the top of the pile can be a tricky business. ZipJob can help you do just that.

Who Is Zipjob Less Good for?

ZipJob is perhaps less suited to those who are applying for positions at smaller, independent businesses that don’t use ATS software. The service can still be useful in terms of resume presentation and showcasing your skills. However, it’s arguably less good value for money if you’re not going to benefit from the ATS optimisation in any way.

Is ZipJob Good for Freelancers?

Many freelancers said goodbye to traditional resumes when they opted out of the 9 to 5 lifestyle. There are still some freelancers, though, who use a resume to showcase their abilities, in which case ZipJob could be of use.

If you’re a freelancer, we would advice that you give as much attention to your freelance portfolio as to your CV.

If you enjoyed this ZipJob review, here are some other articles that may interest you:

• Our review of Flexjobs – a subscription-based job finding service for home workers.
• A list of tips on how to uncover remote jobs in places you might not have considered.
• Our review of Jobscan – an online resume assessment and improvement service.