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Resume Builder Series
By Tonya Wells – One of the corporations who has produced the most options for resume builder / resume software is Individual Software, Inc. They are the makers of ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate 4, available in a PC download version from Amazon.com here. ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate 4 was released August 7, 2009, so it may have outdated salary information. Other than that, the age of the rest of the materials is pretty much irrelevant.
This is not the most recent version of ResumeMaker. The most recent version is ResumeMaker Ultimate 6. Ultimate 6 combines all of the bells and whistles of Professional 17, fixes a bunch of bugs, and adds some new features. Ultimate 4 (the version reviewed here) is less expensive (compare $39.99 for Ultimate 6 to $23.98 for Ultimate 4), appears to be very stable, has positive reviews, and has enough features that a lot of people are perfectly content buying this version instead of Ultimate 6.
List Price: $39.99
Price on Amazon: $23.98
Availability: Immediate Download
Features:
ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate 4 comes with a Guided Resume Wizard and Cover Letter Wizard that you can utilize, or you can look through the resume samples and templates provided and put together your resume outside the wizard. It’s up to you. The import feature will import your resume from Word, PDF, or HTML. You also have powerful formatting tools available to improve your existing resume format and layout.
It also comes with a selection of over 1,300 resume samples that were written by professional resume writers. These are a good starting point, and you can customize the resume from there, combine different suggestions from different resume samples, or add whatever unique qualifications you possess yourself.
ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate 4 also comes with Power / Actions phrases and Keywords that will help you come up with effective phrases to put in your resume to describe your skills and experience.
Resumes can also be exported in Word, PDF, and HTML format, although Word is the recommended format to export and provide to recruiters.
It also offers a Targeted Job Search feature that will allow you to search all the major job sites, 50,000 corporate sites, and classified ads to locate jobs that might be a fit for you. The Mobile App feature is not available with this version. To get the Mobile App feature, you need to buy ResumeMaker Professional 17. You can also set up a Job Alert to notify you of new jobs that are posted which might be a match for you. ResumeMaker Ultimate 4 does not have the Job Applicant InfoSheet that is available in ResumeMaker Professional 17. The InfoSheet ensures you have all the information you need at your fingertips in order to fill out just about any job application.
ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate 4 also provides a Contact Manager to track the employers to whom you’ve already applied, on what date you applied, and any contact information you may have been provided from the application process.
Sample interview questions and answers are also provided so that you can make sure that you are prepared once you do snag that all-important interview!
A Salary Calculator is also provided, although I think you might be able to find more updated information on a website such as salary.com. Be careful not to rely too much on the salaries provided in ResumeMaker.
Pros:
– Has a lot of bells and whistles, although not as many as ResumeMaker Professional 17.
– Appears to be the most stable and reliable version that ResumeMaker has released. Other versions mention a lot of errors and bugs with the installation, resume wizard, and export features, but buyer reviews of this version seem to be pretty happy with it.
– Comes with a lot of resume and cover letter samples
– Interview questions and answers provided to help you prepare for your interview
– Job search tool to help you search multiple job search engines at once
– Contact Manager to help you track all of your submissions
– Ultimate 4 (the version reviewed here) is less expensive (compare $39.99 for Ultimate 6 to $23.98 for Ultimate 4), appears to be very stable, has positive reviews, and has enough features that a lot of people are perfectly content buying this version instead of Ultimate 6.
Cons
– Social Features available on ResumeMaker Professional 17 are not available on this version
– Job Contact InfoSheet available on ResumeMaker Professional 17 is not available on this version
– Mobile Job Search App available on ResumeMaker Professional 17 is not available on this version
– Salary information may be outdated since the software is a couple of years old
– Resumes might need tweaking in Microsoft Word once they are completed here
