After months of work I've launched my startup. Any critiques? (dropjobs.com)

linked: http://dropjobs.com

Elevator Pitch: Hiring is a pain in the ass, juggling resumes and getting feedback from interviews, dealing with PDFs and Word Docs and keeping track of who interviewed for what. Dropjobs streamlines the entire process from posting jobs on your website to reviewing and managing the applicants who apply for your positions.

So, caveats right out of the door. Yes, of course someone "did it before". Applicant tracking systems have been around for quite a long time. However there are a few things that we're differentiating on:

1) Up front, easy, cheap pricing. No sales people. Most heavy ATS systems I looked at require you to call a phone number to find out how much it costs. 2) Simple. Does this one thing and thats it -- so we're targeting the people who don't want a taleo hire-to-fire HR enterprise solution. 3) Has an embedded widget for letting people apply for your jobs straight from your own website. 4) Uses scribd to display people's resumes directly in the Dropjobs website, so you aren't constantly downloading and opening adobe acrobat and crap like that.

I think the market is there. It's good enough that I've launched it as a 1.0, so... any advice on next steps? Should I just drop a few grand on advertising? Unfortunately the world of hiring and HR management isn't all "web2.0" and glitzy, so I feel it will be hard to build any buzz through traditional social media channels.

It's not clear to me on the initial screen why I would use this service over managing it myself.

Looks quite promising.

A few things that struck me quickly:

Why make Enterprise limited at all? No one's really going to fill up 1000 jobs in a hurry.

I understand that you'd prefer people to go pro, but the "standard" label is difficult to read (white on grey). Also, make the "select" buttons the size of the whole option, not just the buttons.

I don't like the full-stop in "Hiring. Made Simple" - but that's personal preference.

International pricing? $£€ options?

You like your capital letters! Try removing them from words like "the".

"Free trial" might work better than "Sign up".

Of course, these are only my opinions, and you should definitely try some A/B testing to see if I'm talking sense or not.

Hope that helps, good luck!

1. It's missing polishing. I mean make it look sleek. That's in the first place.

2. Make me understand better your features.

Looks good, graphically!

Are you focusing on medium to large corporate customers, or on small businesses?

A problem I foresee with larger clients is that changing the website (even to paste in some script) is a Big Deal. They also probably don't care about the pay-as-you go offering. They have money to spend and might prefer to go with predictable costs.

So, why not explicitly market this to small businesses? Pay as you go is nice in that it doesn't require a huge initial commitment, or endless meetings to secure buy-in. I.e. a proactive HR person might be able to use this and look good to their boss. OTOH since changing the website at a larger shop is such a big deal, there's no benefit to them of low barrier to entry.

- take out testimonials link if you don't have any - differentiate from theresumator and countless others in one strong sentence at top - keep going with it!

I remember an article I used to read gave the advise that you should focus on features in the price sheet instead of costs. In your case, I'd say use a smaller font for Price per month and a bigger font for all the features. This way costumers tend to get swayed by more features, not by lower costs.

This is one of those things that makes me slap my forehead and ask why didn't I think of that. :)

It looks good. The main thing I would critique is that it looks like there is a price barrier to entry. I'd change the 'Sign Up' button text to 'Try it FREE for 30 days now!', also the 'select' text in the price area to 'free trial'. Other minor knick knacks like adding the word 'password' in the second top box? Finishing up the FAQs section etc.

Edit: It's interesting that some constructive looking comments on this thread are downvoted...

It might help if you add this benefit: "Automatically post to SimplyHired"

This is a good description of what you're doing, but it needs to be made more prominent.

Try it directly under the "Hiring. Made Simple." header instead of where it is now:

"Stop collecting resumes in your email inbox. DropJobs organizes all your applicants into an easy to use interface that lets you make better decisions. "

The business side I can't really comment on, so best leave that to someone else more capable. UI wise I would suggest you really work on your typography to improve the overall feel. At a glance a few pointers would be:

1) far too much of the real information is off the bottom of the page... I don't really care so much about a screenshot of a fairly dry and grey page product shot.

2) the vertical space above and below the yellow sign up button is different and is slightly awkward because of it.

3) right aligning the features|pricing|signup text needs rethinking, also give it vertical space away from the image.

4) you need more variation in your headers/body/navigation text styles. The features|pricing|signup and also the pricing structure table really need more impact and are currently let down by how they look.

5) be more generous with the padding around the text in the pricing table.

6) using bold white on the blue is completely lost.

7) your underlying grid changes between the light and dark sections and needs to be rethought. Overall I think you need an extra column so you can get more relevant info into eyeline.

8) your remember me option needs styling and also be more generous with the space around it

9) the space between headers and paragraphs should not be the same (it's fine below headers, tighten up between paragraphs in my opinion) also the space below "Great Features" is not the same as other headers.

10) you have too many font styles and sizes in the blue BG area which is making it feel unstructured and hard to read.

It's a good start, and any design can be picked apart so hopefully any design comments will be taken as my own subjective feelings rather than true criticism, but if I was to say any 1 thing really needs attention I would get an extra column in there first and foremost.

Personally I like screenshots, and if they're there, I don't see them. If there was a "tour" or "screenshots" or "demo" or something, you might convert me.

I think that it looks overall very good- but under "Great Features" the page doesn't look very polished. The white on blue headings don't differentiate well from the italicized white on blue. And, it's tough to get a feel for the main features at all. Clicking the "Features" link only takes my to this cluttered section. I think if you had a link to screenshots/ more clean features page that would help.

Also- I think the "Integrates Seamlessly" section is too wordy. Simply saying "If you can copy and paste, you can use DropJobs. Similar to Google Analytics, simply copy and paste the DropJobs widget code into your company's existing website and we do the rest. Listing jobs and accepting applications has never been easier."

With a link to your other features somewhere would get the major points.

Overall, I think this is a really nice idea for small to midsize businesses and seems like a really great service!

You should put together a screencast demonstrating the product. A few paragraphs and a brief, general description of the product didn't convince me to sign up to check it out. People will want more information on what they're signing up for. You should put particular emphasis on how easy it is to review resumes.

Also, make sure you point out what differentiates you from Monster or Dice. You don't offer job listings, just application tracking, and people will be unsure of why they should use your service rather than a job board.

Great idea though.

1. The tagline "Hiring. Made Simple." communicates well.

2. Add a newsletter subscription field at the bottom of your front page.

A bit confusing: You click on pricing, and see the pricing table. You click on signup, you see the same. I realize it was your intent, but it feels broken, especially since the table has "Select" buttons, not "Sign up".

Regarding the signup form: The hints' font size is too small unless you have perfect vision. You can increase it by 50% without changing the layout. Also, I think you can drop this: "First user's personal information.", "You can add additional users once logged in." seems enough.

"No files to manage or download, view applicants right with their resumes online."

This sentence doesn't make sense.

1 picture = 1000 words!

Start work on that picture.

Edit: Oh by the way I love the concept!

Business critique:

My advice would be to concentrate on the SME market, to sell into the enterprise market requires sales people and a much higher price.

You could target your enterprise product to freelance recruiters though.

Also if you're going for small companies it might also be worth offering pricing on a per-job rather than time basis.

Also my gut feeling is that the pricing is wrong, talk to your customers and find out how much they save by using your product and use that as the basis of your pricing.

Website critique:

The features list looks a bit of a mess, rather than talking about features (of your product) talk about the benefits (to your users). Accepting CVs in JPG format might be a feature for you product, it's not a benefit to your end user though.

The features list should describe how you fix the pain-points the user is currently experiencing.

http://www.dropjobs.com/frontpage should be at http://www.dropjobs.com . This is probably a technical limitation, but you're hurting your SEO something fierce.

Title tag of front page should probably be "DropJobs | Keywords Go Here" rather than "DropJobs | Tagline"

Search for the word "features". Features do not sell software. Benefits sell software. You mention benefits, but only briefly, and they're given short shrift.

Similar to Google Analytics, simply copy and paste the DropJobs widget code into your company's existing website and we do the rest.

People with hiring authority typically don't use Google Analytics, and "easy installation" is not what pushes the PHB's buttons about this feature: it is that it looks like their software, on their website, with their branding. Many of them also think this actually means the data is on their Googles instead of on your Googles, and what they don't know won't hurt them.

Screenshots of software -- particularly software which is not visually inspiring -- do not push the reward receptors in the brains of people who do not make software for a living. Show a representation of the hiring manager achieving success instead. Your software will make him the hero, get him the promotion, get her home to her kids faster, clean up this effing mess in the inbox, whatever the value proposition is.

The idea of allowing HR to post job vacancies without having to involve IT for every update is good.

However, this isn't a problem the IT department are likely to search for, and this isn't the type of thing TechCrunch is going to be buzzing about.

I'm guessing your business model is predicated on a self service solution where people click on your Google ads and sign up. I don't think this will work well for you.

I'd increase your pricing to $xxx/mo upwards, and make cold calls all day to HR departments pitching them a cheap and easy solution that will help them post ads without involving IT to constantly push new HTML to their website for each job.

You won't be selling the HR department in isolation. On your sales call, you need to convince them it's a good idea and to arrange a follow-up call to get the person that manages their website into that call. Only if both HR and IT are convinced will you achieve a sale.

If this model works, hire more sales staff to pump up sales volume.

Congratulations!

You definitely need a tour page where I can take a closer look at your software without using it. Something like http://basecamphq.com/tour/ or http://supportbreeze.com/tour (to put in a personal plug). I can't get a really good idea of the app from the text; show, don't tell.

Your pricing is at 5 jobs for $20/month, 20 jobs for $50/month. I think you can increase that pricing. Maybe sometime down the line.

You've got aliasing in your rounded corners that you should fix. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Show me an example page that I would see if I were a job applicant.

Your site has too much small text. Condense your copy and make it bigger.

Otherwise, great work! Best of luck :)

the name... drop a job? drop the application? also, it's too similar to dropbox.

something like jobqueue sounds better to me.

but, now, it's probably too late for this.

Just something to be aware of, you already have competition:

http://www.theresumator.com/

But remember that just because you're not the first, doesn't mean you have to jump ship. Good luck!