Been in UX design for 6 years. Portfolio is solid, my work has shipped at two companies you've definitely heard of. Last year I got laid off and figured - okay, job market is rough but I'm experienced, this won't take long. Four months later. 47 applications. 3 first-round interviews. 0 offers. I was losing my mind. My resume looked great to me - clean, structured, had metrics. I even paid for what was advertised as a top cv writing service after month two. They polished the formatting and tightened the language. Looked prettier. Didn't move the needle. Then I tried a different angle - found a cv resume writing service provider that specialized specifically in tech and design roles. Better, but still something felt off. The bullets were clean but generic. Got on a call with a recruiter from a mid-size agency - not to apply anywhere, just a general chat. At some point she asked if she could be blunt. I said please. She said: "Your resume reads like a job description, not like someone who solved problems." Every single bullet I had was basically "Responsible for designing X" or "Led redesign of Y." No tension. No before/after. No sense of what was broken and how I fixed it. Even the cv writing professional service I used hadn't caught this - they optimized the words, not the thinking. I rewrote the whole thing myself that weekend. Reframed every bullet around a problem, an action, a result. One thing I noticed: the executive cv writing service I tried earlier actually had a good structure for this - they just applied it wrong for a mid-level role. I borrowed the format, rewrote the substance. Two weeks after - 5 interviews. One offer. Accepted.
Target role: Senior UX Designer / Lead Designer. Remote-friendly, US market.