A couple of years ago, I posted information about a scam focused on bogus venture capital (or other) job opportunities, which forwarded folks to “fake” ATS scoring systems, and then to bogus resume services to “fix” resumes. At that time, many resume writers got messages from their clients that their resumes were not ATS-friendly – along with many job seekers, even though they were. One of these fake scorers was Resumeterpro (not Resumeter).
When I posted that online, I received hundreds of calls and postings from job seekers who were taken in by this scam. However, after receiving threats, I took down my posting at that time.
As of today, the FTC is shutting this scam down. Nick Corcodilos (Ask the Headhunter) followed up on this. See the following posting: https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/12779/ftc-halts-sevenfigurecareers.
The FTC has halted this operation. It took awhile, but there is hope in shutting down shady operators.
BELOW IS THE POST I MADE IN THE PAST ON THIS.
This is a post I put to private when threatened by the scammers. It was originally confirmed as a scam on sites such as Fortune Magazine: Venture Capital Recruiting Scam Resurfaces | Fortune.com, and shut down. ResumeterPro no longer exists.
When job seekers apply for jobs, more than 80% of employers use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to screen out resumes. Since 2011 or so, several companies have offered job seekers (and resume writers) the ability to determine the score the resume would likely get when submitted to an ATS, along with suggestions on how the resume can be improved to more likely “pass” the ATS.
Per their website, LinkedIn company page, and press releases, www.resumeterpro.com is such a system. They state in their LinkedIn company page:
We help applicants review their resume through proprietary technology against most commonly used applicant tracking systems (ATS) to help improve a candidate’s chances of getting an interview and securing an offer. Our goal is enable our users to own their careers and help get their resume through the computers so it can get the attention it deserves.
However, my investigation indicates their system may not be working in the way job seekers and resume writers think it should. This article (which is long) details the results of my investigation.
Introduction
Since May 23, 2016 at least five resume writers have been contacted by worried clients after their clients were supposedly contacted by a recruiter via email, using the following message:
I have been having problems getting your resume in our applicant tracking software. For some reason all your past experience is not being scanned correctly resulting in a lot of missing information. I contacted our software provider and was told that the issue is due to your resume using styling that converts the text to non-readable format, the file type is not the issue since our system accepts all file types. They instructed me to ask you to check your resume through a free online tool they work with (https://www.resumeterpro.com) and see if you can identify and fix the problem.
The resume writers had attempted to fix the resumes for their clients by using the instructions in https://www.resumeterpro.com but were unable to do so. The resume writers were frustrated (as were their clients). Two resume writers have indicated to me that the interaction with their clients and their inability to fix the resumes to pass the www.resumeterpro.com “engine” destroyed their clients’ trust in them and in the resume writing industry in general.
A sidebar about me: I have been researching and writing about Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) for nearly 5 years. I am considered an expert in the industry on ATS, with many honors, including publishing an academic paper on ATS in the Career Planning Journal (www.careernetwork.com), contributing to the most recent Resumes for Dummies book, providing instructive webinars on ATS for several national-level venues for both job seekers and career professionals, and being invited to present on ATS at two national resume writer organization conferences, including Career Directors International [CDI] (www.careerdirectors.com) and the National Resume Writers Association [NRWA] (www.thenrwa.com).
Based on my expertise, three of these writers asked me for help to use the www.resumeterpro.com website, since they could not modify their clients’ resumes to fix the problem. After they contacted me, I investigated and found many issues, which to me are red flags, as I tried to use the program.
Hopefully, the results of my investigation will restore job seekers’ trust in resume writers and the ability for resume writers to help their clients get the jobs they want.
Red Flag 1 – Recruiter’s email
I asked the resume writers who contacted me to get the email from their clients that they got from the recruiter. Each one of the emails to their clients from supposed recruiters were identical to the above message. Let’s break this email message down to see if it makes any sense:
I have been having problems getting your resume in our applicant tracking software.
Why would a recruiter even have your resume on their desk if it did not come from their ATS? Most recruiters only access the ATS for a given position, to find those resumes with the right keywords or those that score highly for a given position. They do not have the time to enter the hundreds or thousands or resumes they receive each day into the system and contact those folks who have a problem getting the resume into the ATS.
Also, if your resume is good enough when they initially read it to be a job fit, in general they will reformat it to fit – since if you are the right candidate, they will earn thousands of dollars if you get the job. When they contact clients for a rewrite, they generally are very specific with what they want.
For some reason all your past experience is not being scanned correctly resulting in a lot of missing information. I contacted our software provider and was told that the issue is due to your resume using styling that converts the text to non-readable format, the file type is not the issue since our system accepts all file types.
Why would a recruiter contact a software provider? I have not heard of anyone in all my years who has done that (I have 15 years of experience as a resume writer, and more than 20 years of experience prior to that, including experience in developing software).
In addition, based on my experience, not all ATS accept all file types, so the last statement does not fit my understanding of how ATS works.
They instructed me to ask you to check your resume through a free online tool they work with (https://www.resumeterpro.com) and see if you can identify and fix the problem.
Why would a software provider recommend you check the resume using a tool that claims to work with 49 additional systems that compete with them?
Question
Why would jobseekers get the same exact email from different recruiters that contacted their software provider and recommended www.resumeterpro.com?
Red Flag 2 – Product Name
Several years ago I worked with a legitimate company, Preptel, which at that time, had a very good product, ResumeterPro. Preptel’s technical staff (consisting of former Taleo software engineers) developed their product through reverse engineering of the Taleo engine for evaluating resumes on how well they would pass ATS based on applicant resumes and job announcements. It offered the resume writer specific suggestions on how to improve the resume to score higher for Taleo-based ATS – using an easy to use interface allowing resume writers and job seekers to fix resumes to pass ATS. They developed the system after consulting with various resume writers, including me. It was a very good product – I endorsed it and used it extensively to help my clients. However, Preptel shut down in 2014 after Taleo was acquired by Oracle and the license for the engine was no longer available.
The name of this new website is the same as the former Preptel product – ResumeterPro. I contacted the Preptel’s founder directly to ask about www.resumeterpro.com. He indicated he did not know anything about www.resumeterpro.com and had not heard of it. Generally, in my experience, reputable companies do not reuse previous product names without permission or knowledge of the original company. ResumeterPro is not a common name or word that others would just stumble upon.
Note, it is common for fake websites to use common names to confuse folks using Google for searching. Since ResumeterPro previously was a legitimate system, the use of www.resumeterpro.com may be a ruse to confuse folks.
The website, www.resumeterpro.com claims to have the access to 50 ATS API to score resumes. Many systems do not offer access to their API for reverse engineering (including Taleo since 2014 and iCMS [I asked them about it for my research on ATS a couple of months ago]).
I know the cost for Preptel to gain legitimate access to the Taleo API engine was extremely expensive when it was available. I am sure the cost to obtain legitimate access to 50 separate ATS would be multimillions of dollars – if not more. I am not sure a $500,000 angel investment (see below) could cover the cost of accessing all 50 systems’ API, engineering a system to properly run each ATS system and obtain the results, and then develop their website system to report the results to the public.
Questions
Why would a legitimate company copy the same name as a previous, legitimate product?
How did www.resumeterpro.com reverse engineer 50 ATS in just 1 or 2 years? Note, it took the Preptel engineers a year to correctly reverse engineer just the Taleo system – and they had worked on the system prior to doing so.
How does www.resumeterpro.com get access to the API for 50 separate systems?
How does www.resumeterpro.com afford to reverse engineer 50 ATS with only $500,000 in Angel investment?
Red Flag 3 – Limited results on Google for www.resumeterpro.com – with a negative result found
There are only limited results on searching “resumeterpro.com” on Google, most related to Whois and a couple of self-serving articles. The company is listed on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/resumeterpro) – with 306 followers – but it has no one listed as working for them. They state they started in 2014 in their company profile.
Here is an article online about ResumeterPro, posted on examiner.com (http://www.examiner.com/review/resumeterpro-review-helping-job-seekers-get-past-the-ats-sytems) on May 26, 2016. Note the comment about ResumeterPro being a scam posted under the article:
Gregg Tushaus
ResumeterPro is a scam. Review the source code and you will find the free “reviewer” generates random, meaningless results in an attempt to scam users into paid subscriptions.
Questions
Why so few references to the company?
Why would someone post on a website that www.resumeterpro.com is a scam, with random, meaningless results in an attempt to scam users into paid subscriptions?
Red Flag 4 – How it works
Legitimate engines which “grade” resumes at least need to know the career field a person is applying for. Resumes for different jobs require different keywords, skills, and length. The best ATS grading engines use both the resume and the actual job announcement to determine the resume score. Every ATS operates slightly differently in reading and scoring resumes. No resumes fail ATS systems, they just score too low to pass the threshold for a given announcement for a resume to be selected to be forwarded to the recruiter.
ResumeterPro only asks for the resume, your name, and your email address. It does not ask for the job announcement. It is impossible to grade a resume for an ATS without a job announcement. The www.resumeterpro.com website, then does calculations, says your resume needs help, and asks you if you want it to email you the score and information. You then are sent to a screen where you wait for about a minute or more, as it reportedly sends your resume through 50 separate ATS. It generally comes up with errors for some of the systems each time – stating formatting errors. It does not provide information for how to fix these errors.
It also provides a score on top, with generic information on how it scored, including contact info, summary, skill, accomplishments, job description, grammar, phrase check, accented characters check, length, and formatting. It is using generic comments which seem to not make sense to the resume writers. You need to click on down arrows to see what it thinks you should do for the errors, with those supposedly impacting the score in red. The information is generic and not terribly informative on how to fix it.
I have run several resumes in the system, including mine and a resume I know passed the ATS and got the person who used it a great, 6-figure, job. I fixed resumes using the suggestions from ResumeterPro, and could not up scores greatly. I used an example from a site they provided (see below), and even that resume failed several ATS systems and had a low score.
Note, I have run the same resume on different days and have gotten different scores. For 5/23/2016 the score seemed to be in the 60’s, for 6/7/2016, the score seemed to be 79 to 80. The resumes failed different systems and a different number of systems on the different days.
Questions
Why is www.resumeterpro.com not using actual job announcements, like the ATS use, to score resumes?
Why would fixing resumes using suggestions from www.resumeterpro.com have no effect on the score or resume performance?
Why does the same resume run on www.resumeterpro.com get a different score on different days?
Red Flag 5 – Email response
Above, I indicated they sent me an email with the resume score:
Thank you for uploading your resume at ResumeterPro.
Your resume has scored 79 points out of 100 and failed 9 Applicant Tracking Systems.
A well optimized resume should score between 90-98 and should not fail any ATS system except for connection errors. We highly recommend you optimize your resume for the major Applicant Tracking Systems.
Many of our users have reported having success with getting their resume optimized for ATS systems by <redacted website name> and they also provide free ATS Proof Resume templates and a short guide on how to make your resume ATS Proof which can be downloaded at <redacted website name>
We strongly recommend you download the free guide and compare your own resume against their template to see whats [sic] causing the failures in your resume.
We hope that our free tool and the resources listed above will help you optimize your resume for ATS systems. Since this is a free tool at this time, we cannot dedicate time for one-on-one support and apologize if you are not able to get timely response to any emails
Best Regards,
ResumeterPro Team
https://www.ResumeterPro.com
Questions
Why would an email from a resume company that grades resumes recommend another company to fix the resume?
Why is there a grammar error in the email response?
Red Flag 6 – Problems with <redacted website name of resume company>
Note how job seekers are referred to another website to “fix” their resumes. Referring folks to another site can, in some cases, be a bait and switch to get one to spend money. The email does not really offer you help on how to fix your resume (despite sending a template and a generic guide).
When I go to the <redacted website name> site, it does not indicate anything about the company or who to contact, only a generic contact form.
It offers various resume formats (which seem, based on my experience in the industry as dated and cannot be read by ATS), along with an ATS <redacted> Resume Optimization. Various costs are associated with each resume format and the optimization service.
In addition, some of the formats have graphics and pictures, including headshots of applicants. Unless you are applying for a job which requires a headshot (acting and modeling), a resume with a headshot will most likely be rejected in the United States.
Questions
Why would a website claiming they make ATS-friendly resumes offer resumes that are likely not ATS-friendly, based on my expertise, for sale?
Why would a website catering to United States ATS users sell resume formats that are potentially illegal in the United States?
Red Flag 7 – Problems with the “so-called” ATS-friendly resume
I downloaded the “guide” as indicated in the email above, and it had a sample resume available – supposedly an ATS-friendly format that the<redacted website name> website produced. The site itself claims:
We have tested our ATS <redacted> resumes on more than 50 ATS systems which cover more than 95% of all job applications and every single one passed with flying colors.
I put this claim to the test on the sample resume they provided on 6/7/2016. It failed, as noted below.
I changed the name and email address on it to my name and email address and ran it through the ResumeterPro system. It indicated the same errors as my own resume had in Skill and Job Description.
I got the following email indicating it had failed in almost the exact matter my own resume had failed. Note this was a different resume which had nothing to do with my resume. I again got an email indicating I scored a 79, despite it indicating an 80 score on the website page:
Thank you for uploading your resume at ResumeterPro.
Your resume has scored 79 points out of 100 and failed 9 Applicant Tracking Systems.
A well optimized resume should score between 90-98 and should not fail any ATS system except for connection errors. We highly recommend you optimize your resume for the major Applicant Tracking Systems.
Many of our users have reported having success with getting their resume optimized for ATS systems by <redacted website name> and they also provide free ATS <redacted> Resume templates and a short guide on how to make your resume ATS <redacted> which can be downloaded at<redacted website name>
We strongly recommend you download the free guide and compare your own resume against their template to see whats causing the failures in your resume.
We hope that our free tool and the resources listed above will help you optimize your resume for ATS systems. Since this is a free tool at this time, we cannot dedicate time for one-on-one support and apologize if you are not able to get timely response to any emails
Best Regards,
ResumeterPro Team
https://www.ResumeterPro.com
Note, I retested the same file again on 6/8/2016 and got a score of 83, and it only failed 4 systems.
Questions
Why would the resume created by the website recommended by www.resumeterpro.com fail their system and have an identical score to a resume created by me on 6/7/2016?
Why would the same resume created by the website recommended by www.resumeterpro.com fail their system on 6/8/2016 with a different score but the same failures as on 6/7/2016?
Red Flag 8 – Unable to contact www.resumeterpro.com
I filled out the contact form on the resumeterpro.com website inquiring about their technology on 5/23/2016, indicating that if it worked, resume writers would be interested in using it. As of 6/8/2016 I have gotten no response back from the company.
Note, I have contacted several other legitimate companies over the years about their technology for testing resumes and providing feedback to job seekers on how to improve their resumes. I have had excellent feedback from many of them, including detailed information on their techniques and technology.
Question
Why did I not get an answer back from the folks at www.resumeterpro.com?
Red Flag 9 – Domain information
Most legitimate websites do not hide their ownership information.
The domain information for www.resumeterpro.com is hidden using GoDaddy’s Domains by Proxy, LLC. This is a relatively new site, formed 12/5/2015, with only a 1-year registration.
The domain information for <redacted resume company website> is hidden by WHOISGUARD PROTECTED – a company in Panama (not the US). This website is also a relatively new site, formed 1/7/2016, with only a 1-year registration.
Questions
Why are these sites so new?
Why would legitimate sites hide their registration?
Why is the resume site not based in the United States?
Red Flag 10 – Press Release
There are press releases on ResumeterPro – using the exact wording as in their generic recommendations:
https://www.accesswire.com/436847/72-of-Resumes-are-Never-Seen-by-Employers and
http://www.bizjournals.com/prnewswire/press_releases/2016/01/11/MN95346
They are posted by various people (Ramona Owens and Jim Cobb), who all use the same email address (admin@rocketfactor.com) and use the same unreachable phone number: 949-555-2861. This is a phone number used on many press releases for many companies with different email addresses for the company posting (including rocketfactor.com). Rocketfactor.com is currently not even set up as a separate website and gets a 400 error when addressed.
When I checked the domain www.rocketfactor.com, again, I found that this is a private registration, through PrivacyGuardian.org. The website, unlike the other two is old – it was created on 6/9/2006 – but it was set up at that time as a website hosting company. It no longer appears to being used for hosting.
Note, in the press release, they claim www.resumeterpro.com has $500,000 in angel investment funding with no details provided on the funding, other than this is why they can offer their product for free to the public. This makes no sense to me, since angel investors generally want a return on their investment. Here is the quote from the bizjournals.com/prnewswire press release on 1/11/2016:
As a spokesperson for ResumeterPro noted, the creators of the resume check and optimization tool have also secured $500,000 in funding from multiple angel investors, which will allow them to keep the tool completely free.
Questions
Why are they using a company with hidden information to do their press releases?
Why are they using a website for press releases that previously was a website hosting company?
Who are the angel investors?
How did the company find angel investors who require no return on their investment?
Red Flag 11 – Address listed on the website
On their privacy page they have an address: 3920 FM 1960 W, Houston, TX. It does not have a zip code on it, which is standard for addresses in the United States. When I googled this address, I found out it is mail drop address – not a location with actual offices.
Question
Why is a company with $500,000 angel investment using a mail drop in Houston as their address?
Conclusion
There are other red flags I have not mentioned here, but I have posted some of the more obvious ones.
I invite the owners/developers of www.resumeterpro.com to answer the questions above. In addition, I invite job seekers, recruiters, and other resume writers to comment below on their experiences with www.resumeterpro.com to see if they have had a similar experience to mine. In addition, I am curious about which job announcements folks are applying for or which recruiters are sending job seekers to use www.resumeterpro.com.