staffing agency told me to pay for resume help before applying

staffing agency told me to pay for resume help before applying staffing agency told me to pay for resume help before applying A reader writesI just had a question regarding an email response I received after submitting my resume for a job posting I found through a job posting website.It turns out that the posting was from a job agency. The only requirement was to email him a copy of my resume. I did so, and received the following as a responseYou have a lot of strong, relevant experience and are an excellent candidate although it would be best to improve your resume before doing anything with it. I can refer you to a resume writing expert that can improve your resume to the standard we are looking for and I believe he charges around $150 or so. Please let me know if I can forward your resume to the expert so you can get in contact with them. Once your resume has been improved please resubmit it ASAP.Im notlage quite sure how to take this. Is this some sort of scam or is he being legi timate? Or could this scam actually have good merits?I did research the agency, and they do seem legit, but they are definitely not one of the top ones here in Canada.Do you have any thoughts?Scam.Unless your resume is really, truly terrible, in which case I suppose its possible that hes trying to do you a favor. But Id lean toward scam.I then asked the reader if I could look at his resume, which leads to part 2 of the answerOkay, your resume isnt great but its not great in the way that most peoples resumes arent great its certainly not horrific. Get rid of the objective,focus on achievements rather than job duties, and get rid of the personalattributes section where you list subjective traits instead, show that you have those traits by listing accomplishments that demonstrate them. (And read this recent post on improving your resume.)But again, this looks like the majority of resumes out there. Its not doing you any favors, but theres nothing here that should cause a staffing age ncy to refuse to accept your resume until its professionally redone because if thats their standard, theyd need to be telling most applicants that. And while it would actually be fantastic if they were explaining to most applicants why their resumes were weak and giving them pointers on redoing them (because most people do need it), simply directing you to a paid resume consultant is too scammy to seem legit to me.