How to Choose an Outplacement Company: Seven Questions Before You Sign

Choosing an outplacement company is harder than it should be, for one reason: almost none of them publish a price, and all of their packages are described with the same words. Every package promises coaching, a platform, a resume, and support. An HR lead comparing three proposals is usually comparing three versions of the same sentence at three undisclosed prices.

The way through is to stop comparing packages and start asking questions that force specifics. These seven do that. They apply to any provider, including us, and we answer each one for our own service at the end of this page.

1. What does it cost per person, and what is in that number?

Ask for the components separately: the resume, the coaching hours, the platform access, the account management, and the reporting. Two of the largest providers publish rate cards, and the shape of them tells you what to expect. One lists a resume critique tier at about $900 per person and tiers with a custom-written resume and coaching from about $1,900 to $6,500 per person. The other lists outplacement programs starting at $2,400 per person for hourly employees and at $5,200 per person for professionals. If a proposal gives you one number with no breakdown, you cannot tell whether you are paying for coaching your people will use or a platform login they will open once.

2. Is the resume critiqued, reformatted, or rebuilt?

This is the question providers answer least clearly, and it is the one that matters most, because the resume is the part of any program every departing employee actually uses. There are three very different services hiding behind the word “resume”:

• A critique. The employee’s existing resume comes back with comments. Nothing is rewritten.
• A reformat. The old resume goes into the provider’s template. The content stays exactly as the employee wrote it, including everything they left off.
• A rebuild. Someone works backwards from what the employee actually did, finds the tools, standards, credentials, and scope that never made it onto the page, and each line is checked with the employee and approved by a reviewer.

Only the third one changes what a hiring manager learns about the person. Ask which one the proposal includes, and ask how the provider knows a line is true before it goes on the page.

3. Who writes it, and who checks it?

A person you can name, a pool of contract writers, or software? Any of the three can produce a good resume and any can produce a bad one. What you want to know is whether anyone checks that a credential the resume claims is one the employee actually holds. Ask what happens to a certification the employee never mentioned. The right answer is “it gets asked about,” not “the writer adds what fits the role.”

4. How many of our people will actually use it?

Ask for the provider’s utilization rate and how it is measured. One figure that circulates, attributed to a 2009 Wall Street Journal report, is that only about 40 percent of employees offered outplacement used it; other retellings of that reporting put it the other way around, so we treat it as a caution rather than a fact. A provider who claims a much higher engagement rate should be able to say what counts as engagement: a login, a coaching session, or a finished resume. You are paying per person; the price per person who uses it is the real price.

5. What do you report back, and does it promise placements?

You will need to show that help was offered and delivered. Ask what the report contains. Usage, completed resumes, and coaching sessions attended are honest measures. Figures about how many people found work, or how fast, are harder to trust, because no provider controls those outcomes and each one counts them differently, so a provider who leads with them should be asked exactly how they were counted. Ask how the report treats people who never engaged.

6. Can we buy it in pieces?

A 5-person layoff and a 500-person layoff do not need the same program, and neither does every person inside one layoff. Ask whether you can buy a full program for some people and a resume-only service for the rest, and whether coaching can be bought on request rather than bundled for everyone. A provider who only sells the bundle has priced for its largest customers, not for you.

7. What does the employee see on day one?

Ask to see the first email and the first screen an employee gets. A departing employee is stressed and skeptical, and a portal login with a template attached reads as the company checking a box. A short, plain message that says what will happen next, and a first step they can finish that week, reads as help. In our view, this question tells you more about likely use than any brochure.

What a rebuilt resume looks like

Here is the difference between a reformatted resume and a rebuilt one, on one line. This is a sample worker, not a real person.

Before: “District manager. Responsible for store operations and staff in the region.”

After: “District manager for 11 retail stores and about 140 employees across two states: hired and developed 11 store managers, ran the region’s inventory in Oracle Retail, held shrink at 0.9% against a company average of 1.4%, and opened two new locations on schedule.”

A reformat would have handed the employee the first line in a nicer font. A rebuild found the store count, the head count, the system, the shrink number, and the openings, all of which were true and none of which were written down.

Our answers to the seven questions

We are not an outplacement company. We do the resume piece, priced per person, and here is how we answer our own questions.

1. Cost. Per person, by quote, sized to your head count. One number, and it contains one thing: the resume, rebuilt and confirmed.
2. Critiqued, reformatted, or rebuilt. Rebuilt. We work backwards from what each person actually did, and every suggested line is approved by a reviewer before it lands.
3. Who writes and who checks. Software does the digging and asks the questions; the person answers them, the reviewer you name approves each suggested line, and anything that looks like a license or certification is held until it is verified.
4. Utilization. We report resumes completed, because a finished resume is the one measure that shows the person got the thing they will send out.
5. Reporting. A per-person record of what was proposed and what was confirmed, plus a report for the employer of resumes completed for the batch. It never contains a placement figure.
6. In pieces. Yes. That is the whole offer: buy the resume for everyone, and buy coaching from a coach for the people who need it.
7. Day one. During a pilot, each person receives a link to a short set of questions about their real work, and that first step can be finished in one sitting.

Pilots are paid at standard rates and fully credited against your first contract. We do not offer free pilots.

Format notes for any provider’s resumes

Whatever you buy, check the finished resume the way the next employer’s software will: one column, standard headings, no graphics. Length should follow the person’s history, and two pages is the normal result for anyone with more than one substantive role. If anyone in the group is applying to federal jobs, the two-page cap on USAJOBS applications (an OPM rule effective 09/27/2025) is the one length rule that is not a preference. The Outplacement Resume QA Checklist below is the standard we hold every resume to, and it works as a checklist for any provider’s work. When you have a head count and a date, request a per-person quote. We never add a credential nobody confirmed, and we never promise anyone a job.