Greg Antonelle, an executive recruiter with AimHire in Bedminster, N.J., selects one of the dozens of resumes that come across his desk every day and starts reading: " 'Resourceful, adaptable, self-directed and motivated with the ability to meet and exceed even the most challenging goals.' What's that sentence doing in a resume?" he asks. "It tells me nothing."

Mr. Antonelle says he sees 50 or so resumes like this every month. They have far too many subjective adjectives, which tells him they've been written by hired resume writers, rather than by the job seekers. "Every time I receive one, I shiver," he says.

As many as 65% of job hunters seek help with their resumes, according to a survey by CareerBuilder, a job-search Web site in Reston, Va. Of those, nearly 5% use professional resume writers, paying anywhere from $50 an hour to a total of $800 for the service. It isn't hard to see the attraction. Who doesn't dread the idea of squeezing their professional life onto a single, bullet-pointed page? Who feels confident they've done it "right"? It can be a relief to hand the task to someone else, especially when that someone is said to be an expert who has "helped thousands [to] articulate their qualifications and land jobs at the nation's top employers," as one service's Web site claims.

But human-resource managers and recruiters note that for every seasoned expert who can add polish and provide editing for a reasonable price, there's someone who has never been on the receiving end of resumes and doesn't know first-hand what turns a hiring manager on or off. Recruiters and outplacement counselors, including Mr. Antonelle, say they regularly undo the work of these services before forwarding resumes to employers.

One favorite pet peeve is the type of overwriting Mr. Antonelle noted in the resume he read. Most resume reviewers ignore glowing adjectives, such as "results focused" and "detail oriented."

"The best resume is the one that fits the job description. And [because] we're so overwhelmed, we like it when you hand it to us," explains Carol Martin, a career coach in Burlingame, Calif., who provides outplacement services and reviews resumes for corporate HR departments.

An excessive amount of adjectives also can bury the facts you most want to get across. "A resume is a pretty dry document, but we know that," one recruiter says. "Bells and whistles don't change that. They just give us more to wade through."

Even the best and most conservative writers have a box of tricks they return to time and again. The danger here, Mr. Antonelle notes, is that resumes become indistinguishable as writers use the same fonts, formats and words regardless of the careers they're describing. He advises job seekers to inject more of themselves into these cookie-cutter documents, perhaps by adding words they like to use to describe their jobs. This type of personal touch will give readers a sense of who you are and help your resume to stand out among the more generic ones.

At executive levels particularly, hiring managers want to know if you can communicate, with your resume and cover letter serving as samples of this skill. But if someone else writes your documents, you aren't demonstrating this ability, says Steve Lesser, a senior consultant in New York with outplacement firm Right Management Consultants.

"If there's a disconnect between your written presentation and your verbal presentation, it's a problem," he explains. "You're not answering a question people have, which is: Can you communicate?"

For candidates with certain problems, though, seeking outside assistance with a resume is advisable. "A professional can help you smooth over a problem like a long period where you weren't working," says Robert Tenzer, senior vice president of human resources for Precision Response Corp. in New York. If you've been with the same company for a long time and haven't written a resume in 10 years, a third party can tell you if the format you're using is out of date. And if you're trying to change careers, you may need help thinking about your experience from a new angle.

For example, Shel Horowitz, a partner in the resume-writing service Accurate Writing, in Northampton, Mass., works with educators who want to move on to something new. "If you keep discussing your teaching skills in the context of the classroom, you're only going to get more teaching offers," he explains. "But if you want to go into sales, for example, you might focus on the psychology of teaching, of leading people to the conclusion you want them to come to."

You don't necessarily have to hire a professional to get help with your resume. The key to finding the right kind of assistance is to seek improvements as you go along instead of a full-blown, no-fail makeover. Think of your resume as a work in progress and find advisers who will help you to make small adjustments, perhaps by rearranging or emphasizing certain experiences to tailor your bio to the jobs you want.

Members of job-search support groups usually provide informal resume feedback to one another, which, of course, is free. Ted Susac, an information-technology management consultant based in Virginia who recently landed a new job, says the most helpful resume advice he's received came via this route. And a local HR manager attends meetings and provides free resume critiques to members of Professionals in Transition, a job-search support group in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Colleges and professional schools are another source of free, or nearly free, resume guidance. Increasingly, schools are offering career support to alumni. For example, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., offers resume critiques to alumni by fax for $20. And Stanford University's Graduate School of Business offers alumni a free career-counseling session, in-person or by phone, that can include resume advice (paying lifetime alumni dues earns additional sessions).

If you plan to remain in your field, colleagues and references can provide great feedback, says John O'Neil, who counsels executives as president of the Center for Leadership Renewal in San Francisco. "They're familiar with your work and understand where you're trying to get to," he says.

Finally, companies conducting mass layoffs sometimes offer outplacement services, "but I can't tell you how many people don't take the freebie because they're mad at the company," says Ms. Martin.

Ron Leone, an engineering executive at an industrial gas company before being laid off, attended a series of workshops his former employer sponsored. The first, a self-assessment course, "forced me to do a rigorous analysis of my career [and helped me] identify my skills, strengths and preferences," he said in an e-mail exchange. The exercise helped him decide how he wanted to express his experience and goals in his resume. After rewriting the document, a counselor critiqued it in a one-on-one session.

His search lasted four months, which he considers short given the tight job market. His initial lead came through a person he met at a networking meeting. When his new contact learned of an opening, he showed Mr. Leone's resume to the company's human-resources director and president. "My resume was strong enough to interest the company to invite me for an interview," he says in an e-mail. "If it didn't properly portray my skills and experience, I wouldn't have been invited in." He's now director of engineering technology for CDI Engineering Solutions, a builder and manager of plants and other facilities in Philadelphia.

If these sources can't help, seek a resume writer who will include you in the writing process. Be wary of anyone who won't provide examples of their work or names of satisfied customers you can contact. After all, it isn't hard to hang out a cyber shingle and declare yourself a resume writer. "I've learned from my group's experiences that there are many unscrupulous firms out there who prey on the unemployed," says Henry Bolte, a member of a technology job-search support group in New York City.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of professional resume writers nationwide. You may feel more comfortable working with a member of the three leading U.S. professional resume-writers organizations. Some of these groups offer certifications to members who pay a fee and pass various tests. There's no guarantee a certified resume writer will do a better job than an equally talented uncertified writer, but at least there's a group to complain to if you don't like the quality of the work you receive, says Kate Wendleton, president of the Five O' Clock Club, a career-counseling group in New York.

Some other red flags: Someone who won't say what the job might cost or agree up front to rework it for free if you aren't happy with the first draft. Spokespersons for the various resume-writing associations cite member fees ranging from $35 to $1,500, with an average price of about $200 an hour for executive-level documents.

Resume writers may distinguish themselves in other ways. Mr. Horowitz, who charges $50 an hour, focuses on local clientele so they can work with him while he revises their resumes on his computer. "The whole process takes about two hours," he notes.

ResumeDoctor, a service in Burlington, Vt., which for a flat $90 fee edits resumes rather than writing them from scratch, may be an option for those working virtually. "We take a customer's resume and send it back intact, with annotated notes like, take out this jargon or make this point clearer," explains Mike Worthington, a former recruiter who runs the service. The service also includes examples of how to fix a particular problem. A customer can incorporate all or some of the suggestions and return the resume for a second look.

Also, be sure you'll receive an electronic copy, via e-mail or on a disk, so you can print copies whenever you need them. You also might want to edit your editor, reworking sections that you feel miss the mark. And, Ms. Martin says, "you'll want to tweak the resume so it matches new job openings."

After all, the one thing the experts uniformly agree on: A resume is always a work in progress.