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How do you make people aware that there are better alternatives to doc resumes?

5 points by cvsintellect ↗ HN
We at cvsintellect knew the power of LaTeX. LaTeX based resumes were just stunning. Could beat anyother format hands down. We realized that its hard for non devs to use LaTeX for their resumes and wanted to make it easy for everyone to use LaTeX. We built a web app which anyone can use to create LaTeX based resumes. You do not need any programming experience. You just need to fill in data, choose template, select font - color - spacing etc to configure it to your liking and you are done. Whoever has used it to create resume was really happy with the result. They actually got back to us saying recruiters / managers were really surprised the resume looked so "neat" / "professional". We are really exited by it :) Now that we are doing everything for free we dont want to spend a lot of money on marketing it. We are kind of puzzled how do we spread the word that people can now get LaTeX resumes without too much hassle.

Please drop in your feedback / ideas here.

website: https://www.cvsintellect.com blog: http://cvsintellect.tumblr.com/ appreciation: http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/08/22/this-week-in-web-2-0-14/

12 comments

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nederdirk
you should probably post this as a Show HN-thread and work on a simple yet comprehensive title that catches the attention of the HN public. Then be an active participant in the discussion and ask people for feedback.
cvsintellect
im not able to create a thread. because my account is new? i will try to find out how to create a thread & a good title for it. thanks for your time.
amair
The problem is recruitment consultancies. They take submitted cv's and may put their own headers on them before passing them on to employers. So a candidate may submit a nice pdf, but they may then be asked to supply the cv in word format.
cvsintellect
yes. we know of this problem and are actively thinking of finding a solution. may be create a recruiter login which allows users to share resume with recruiters and they tailoring it to their needs. its a far fetched thought though.
ig1
You need to start by asking the question "whose problem is this solving ?" - presumably the answer is "people who are failing to get interview because of poor CV presentation" so you need to figure out who those people are, what they do and how you can reach them.

Are they students ? - in which case student forums, partnerships with careers services, etc. may be the way to go

Are recruiters seeing a lot of candidates who fit this category ? - then maybe you should partner with recruiters

And so on...

cvsintellect
precisely what we have been thinking..now the problem is we aren't so big that we would talk to recruiters directly..while we hv reachd 1000 users in a month we still have a long way to go before we bring recruiters into picture..we are thinking of doing demos in colleges since they would be our early adopters..n talking to LaTeX devs on how we can shape this platform better..we are brainstorming on which direction to grow and how to spread the word while we stay free for users..
ulisesrmzroche
I don't know if you can compete on looks because they look much the same as any other resume template in google docs.

Have you tried doing some a/b testing to see if people can tell the difference between a google doc resume and your latex templates, and actually determine which one is more effective?

cvsintellect
LaTeX is used for publishing papers & books. Hence it needs to be of extremely high quality. Here are a few reasons why LaTeX is better: http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX The difference will be all the more apparent when you will take print outs of LaTeX based pdf and see the results on paper! We recommend you give it a shot.

These are sample resumes we created to compare results: http://www.cvsintellect.com/img/home/sample-resumes/Modern.p... http://www.cvsintellect.com/img/home/sample-resumes/Leadersh... http://www.cvsintellect.com/img/home/sample-resumes/Euro.pdf

The templates that are currently available on our website are the most easily creatable through LaTeX. There are LaTeX templates available for each of the them. We intend to write custom LaTeX templates if the idea is well accepted by users. According to us we have not shown half of what LaTeX is capable of and yet we are getting a lot of positive response.

bjourne
I already have my cv in LaTeX so I don't think I'm in the target audience for your product. :)

However, if I were you, I would try and market this product to smaller consulting companies. They present candidates to the customer, either by sending in the consultants personal cv (with contact details redacted) or by having the consultant create a new cv using the company's word template. In either case, it results in badly looking cv:s.

Some consultancies use application tracking systems (ats) which generate the cv:s for them. But they also look pretty shitty compared to how beautiful LaTeX documents can be.

cvsintellect
we would like to think that people having LaTeX resumes are more probable of accepting our product since they already know of the quality. Now why would they use us instead of making it themselves. primarily 2 reasons: 1. LaTeX is code and you will need to maintain it, while on our system it would just be data you will need to update 2. changing template of your resume would mean rewriting the whole thing while on our system it would mean 2-3 clicks (it is our responsibilty to give you that good a template that you are willing to change :))

and for small consultancies. sure, we wil try to talk to them, try to sell it to them. Thanks.

bjourne
I tried it, but I'm very picky. :) For example you don't support Swedish so the Ö in my name gets replaced with OE which is not ok. Then for good paragraphs you also require Swedish hyphenization. Lot's of small details like that so for me, right now, using your system is not an option for my latex cv.
cvsintellect
yes. we will look into each issue and try to iron it out. we are in beta. (about a month that we became public). will get back to you when the issue is fixed. thanks for your time.