Resume Deluxe Win9X review: Resume Deluxe Win9X
Resume Deluxe Win9X
Ready-made resumes
As soon as you launch the program, Resume Deluxe presents you with a blank resume. You can either fill it in manually or click the "Ready to use resumes" button on the right side of the screen to find a list of tailored resume templates. The wide variety of career templates to choose from includes librarian, furniture restorer, and pastoral assistant. Stylistically, all the resumes look identical: each has a name/address entry and employment, education, and reference fields, among others. You'll find phrases and representative experience descriptions unique to each profession, which you can use as is or discard.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Once you start laying out your own resume, it's easy to tweak the templates and blank resumes manually. Just click a section and, in the resulting window, reposition and reword your content. From this window, you can also access several useful tools, including WinWay's AutoWriter, which lets you sort through sample sentences specific to your type of job. A stock clerk, for instance, can choose a sentence such as "Inventoried, stored, priced, and restocked merchandise displays in retail store." And if you're not crazy about the general layout of your resume, you can try on a number of different Theme templates even after you've started. But despite all these handy resume-assembly tools, WinWay's lack of a resume-building wizard means that it won't hold your hand or give you the same range of choices as Resume Maker will.
Once you've completed your resume, WinWay's Letter feature allows you to choose a representative cover-letter template (according to profession) and a layout style that matches your resume's. Once you've picked a template, simply edit the letter to suit your specific situation. Oddly enough, the program doesn't save your user information separately, so you must open your resume to import data from it to your letter. Otherwise, you must type your name and address into the letter, which is highly inconvenient.
Interview intervention
For interviewphobic job hunters, WinWay's video practice interviews more than make up for its run-of-the-mill resume tools. To work on your interview skills, click the Interview button to pull up a window that offers separate headshots of an interviewer and interviewee. The interviewer poses a question and the interviewee, once you hit a button, gives a sample answer. A Hint button provides audio suggestions on how best to react to the question. WinWay offers a large variety of questions in different categories, including some queries that are difficult or downright illegal. If you're in a hurry, the AutoPlay feature will run through all of its questions without stopping. A closed-caption option lets you simultaneously view text versions of the interviews. For those who have successfully found their dream job, another video section offers advice on negotiating salary. Resume Maker's video-practice options aren't nearly as sophisticated.
Furthermore, WinWay's online-job-search agent is much easier to navigate than that of Resume Deluxe. You select a state and a job title, and WinWay does the rest. Our test search for an editor position in New York, for example, came up with 372 ads from such diverse sources as FlipDog and the College Grad Job Hunter. Select a listing, and a window at the right displays its contents. You can also sort the listings according to title, location, or source. One problem: while WinWay Resume Deluxe's job search is easier to handle than that of Resume Maker, you can't pick and choose your sources, which results in quite a few redundant listings.
Online support only
Since WinWay's product is so easy to use overall, you may not run into any insurmountable technical problems. But in case you do, the company provides e-mail help and Web-based support, including a comprehensive FAQ document that offer advice, upgrades, and error-message solutions. Unfortunately, unlike Resume Maker, WinWay doesn't offer phone tech support.
Close, but no gold star
If the thought of a job interview gives you hives, WinWay Resume Deluxe's excellent video interview segments could make this program worth your while. However, its merely adequate resume tools don't achieve the same high standard. To build a better resume, go with Resume Maker Deluxe.