One piece of feedback, and I understand you may not have decided on this yet, but it's not clear from the landing page whether this is meant to be free, a paid service, etc. I just get presented with a signup form and don't really have an understanding about whether I'll be expected to fork over payment or not.
Looking at this in the context of somebody's HN project I kept going, but if this were just another site I stumbled across, that ambiguity would make me more like to bounce than not.
Thanks for the feedback, you're absolutely right and I'll make it more clear on the landing page. There might be some new functionality in the future that would make up a paid service, but all of the current functionality is meant to be free.
One thing you might consider in the future if you're interested in monetizing is going the Wordpress route and offering the option of premium themes/templates. Have some solid core designs, but also offer some additional options as well.
It's certainly something that occurred to me looking through the options.
I agree with the commenter above me. I stopped at the sign up form because I couldn't tell if it was a paid or free service and had assumed I would start getting emails to upgrade as soon as I signed up. The "get started" copy used is a signal to me that I may be able to get started when I sign up but to "finish" I will have to pay. I think you'll get more sign ups if you're more explicit with your language that it is, in fact, free.
I hate that too. I wouldn't remove the free and put the current functionality behind a paywall, but I'd still want to leave open the possibility of new functionality as paid add-ons if I go that route (like premium themes as previously suggested). What kind of language might be able to support that without being deceitful or vague?
Just add a section under "Is Creddle Right for me?" with "Short and long-term goals for this project." Then write a paragraph or two on why you're doing it, who you are, where you're going, etc. If you're hoping to make it your startup, that's cool. If you're hoping to advertise your design skills, that's cool too.
I'd also put that information on your "about" page. (Only on the about page, if you want to keep it off the front page.)
I like it, it seems very easy to use. Not sure what the best UI for this would be, in addition to setting up custom layouts I would love to have the ability to set up customized resumes for individual employers.
My typical workflow when sending out resumes is to start with a single resume, then adjust some of the wording or remove some of the content to focus on what would be most important to my prospective employer.
Thanks! It's definitely something I want to add. A UI for managing content between multiple resumes can get complicated fast, so I'm still working through the UI sketches. But I agree, I think it would be a killer feature.
As an intermediary feature, perhaps a show/hide toggle on each bit of content would allow you to customize the resume without removing the information from Creddle. Then after exporting the resume, you could modify what content is hidden for the next employer.
I feel bad this never crossed my mind. The formatting adjusts to whatever bounds are set, in this case 8.5 x 11, so theoretically it shouldn't be hard to add the ability to choose a paper size. I'll look into it adding it soon.
I think the designs look great, but it's a bit jarring to see them in a very unfamiliar aspect ratio (also it'd be weird if printed because it'd incur a large margin at the top and bottom).
Do you mean for hire one for Creddle or hire one to design your own resume? Either way, I've seen some beautifully designed resumes done by professional designers.
I've designed resumés for friends which HR managers have told me won their attention and priority simply by looking a level of craft and professionalism above the rest. The difference between a self-created Word resumé and one well-designed is exponential, especially in an environment where sensible people dwell.
Let me know if there's any way I can help with this. Cool project.
I agree. Your themes are very nice (and there are an impressive number of them), but they're missing that last bit of polish a designer could bring. For example, in Chelsea and Marianas, the big text is too big and needs a bit more breathing room.
But I also want to stress that I think this is really great.
Yes, I looked into it a few years ago when I was working on my own resume. I wanted to customize mine more and I didn't like the page breaks. It doesn't look like it's been updated since then.
Yes, I was excited when I saw JSON Resume on HN this summer. I wasn't able to fit it in with all of the other things I was working on, but I think it makes sense, especially as more people use it. JSON Resume has more in their standard than Creddle currently supports so there's work to be done too (:
This seems awesome. I keep a copy of my resume online, and I've been doing some applying lately. I inevitably am asked for a resume in a specific format (pdf/doc), once it even specified that it had to be < 200kb in size (which my pdfLaTeX middleware didn't handle). The formats also look clean and professional, and in fact one of them appears to be the one that I use. Definitely signing up for this later today
Not being defensive, but I'm actually curious about why it made you feel saddened, because maybe we share the same thought.
The headline "paper-friendly" comes from my frustration with other resume building web sites that I've tried over the years that want to reinvent or replace the resume, to the point where I'm not comfortable using it as my own resume.
I built Creddle in the hopes that people will feel comfortable using it as their actual resume - for me that meant printing it out on paper and handing it recruiters at the career fair. That shouldn't have to be a headline or a feature for a resume builder.
Is this maybe what you were trying to get at with the state of web tech?
Tooling is some of the issue imo. HTML/CSS actually includes decent functionality for targeting print in addition to desktop+mobile (not perfect, but quite decent), but the print-centric parts have fairly poor support in most tools. Afaik the only tool that really nails the print-centric parts of CSS, and produces good-looking output, is PrinceXML. It's a good piece of software, but having only one working implementation, which also happens to cost $500/seat for desktop usage or $3800/machine for server usage, isn't an ideal situation for an open standard.
The second-best seems to be http://wkhtmltopdf.org/, which is more or less a headless wrapper around WebKit's renderer. But since WebKit puts most of its development effort into interactive/screen usage, the quality doesn't match PrinceXML yet (though it's improving). As a result I think it's still more common for people who need good-looking, open-source PDF output to use a LaTeX workflow, even where an HTML one might otherwise be more natural.
I had an HTML version of my resume in 1995. The printed version looked almost identical to the MS Word version I had at the time. table, bold, italics, break are pretty much all it took. It reflowed quite well too.
Apologies if this is obvious elsewhere, but where can I make my resume a multi-page document? I'm a two-pager myself, but increasing the font size just seems to knock text off the document altogether.
No totally understandable. The biggest limitation right now is only supporting one page resumes. I want to support multi page resumes, but still leave in automatic font sizing, which can get tricky if sections span over a page break.
I have nothing against multi page resumes, I just had to limit my scope.
I hope to add multi page resumes, but I'm sorry to say that for now it just isn't built yet.
Perhaps include a way to auto-size/auto-space the resume so it can fill an entire page? I'm early in my career, and my content doesn't quite fill the entire space for most themes.
The auto-sizing can be hit or miss since it keeps font sizes relative, but there are still a few tricks that you can try. I can suggest trying the following: increase padding (under "Resume Layout"); increase nameplate and section header font sizes; use vertical configurations for the nameplate, contact, and/or skills sections; configure "Employment Details" to use more rows instead of columns.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Experiment with one column vs. two columns as well - hope this helps!
Seems like it's obvious to everybody else, but perhaps someone will clarify—how this is better than hitting Ctrl+P on my LinkedIn profile page? (Except not having to have a LinkedIn account.)
Not if you hit their export button. It creates a PDF with proper setup. In fact, they did research on default order of information as most commonly requested by recruiters / Hr. I would go as far that for a lot of jobs people hiring would prefer to get a format they know (LinkedIn export is probably known to them). Of c Course there will always be jobs where a custom resume is better, though creddle is not unique enough for that (thing art directions).
When resume appearance isn't important or applying for jobs is done primarily through online networking, Creddle isn't a good solution.
For the people for whom resumes are still an important part of the job application process, this aims to make it easier to transform your LinkedIn profile page into an appropriate looking resume, improve the design of your resume, or both.
It depends on how you go about your own job application process, and what role your resume has in that.
Thanks for clarification. Now that I think about, I used to care about my resume appearance—I guess since then I've become more pragmatic (and expect from any potential employer the same).
This is really neat! It would be really cool if there was a way to create resume's off linkedin profiles. So if I were to sign up on your site through Linkedin, I would instantly get to preview what my resume would look like.
In addition, it would be cool if you could identify target companies for a candidate based off their resume and some insights from LinkedIn (using NLP perhaps) and if I could directly apply to sites suggested by creddle as a paid feature perhaps.
You can! Creddle can import some of your information from your LinkedIn profile if you sign up with your LinkedIn account. A few users reported a 500 error on importing which I'm looking into now, so let me know if you also have trouble.
Missed that. You should expose the signup options on the main page (unless you already have and I missed it). I would have signed up if it was simply a matter of clicking to connect creddle to LinkedIn.
I think that would be better too, that's my fault for hiding it behind that extra page. I'll look into bringing those up to the front. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
You can change the section headings under "Header Value" for each section under the customizer so that "Summary" can be "Objective" or "Employment" can be "Experience", but that's my fault for not making it prominent enough.
Definitely agree on adding the missing sections as these aren't the only things you can put on a resume!
NemCV is not designed to be visually pleasing, it is designed by companies to be scanned and understand each candidate in 2 seconds. But I do agree, the Creddle CV is probably nicer for candidates, so it is a totally different market than NemCV
Wow, this is truly impressive! I would like to leave some feedback of my first experience.
Re-ordering:
I could not get this to work as intuitively as it seemed it should have been (likely user error). It would be nice to be able to shift entire paragraphs/columns/sections up/down one column/section at a time, and perhaps a 'delete' button to remove the entire section or a trash icon to drag it into on the side. (I realize that by removing content from a section you effectively remove that section, but only by publishing did I know this)
After I was finished re-ordering, I was not sure what it wanted me to do. I think it just wanted me to continue on towards viewing the resume tab to publish. Perhaps a modal could offer that guidance (save-continue to publish, or keep reordering) When I clicked on the resume tab, JS error popped up asking me to leave or stay on this page like there were unsaved changes.
Again, this feedback I mentioned is likely already considered and taken care of, but my ignorance has got the best of me. :)
So awesome though! Don't take my suggestions/feedback as anything other than compliments, as I am jealous how exceptional you made this!
Of course, thanks so much for documenting your first experience so well. If a UI causes a confusing state for the user, there's work to be done to improve it.
By moving sections up/down, do you mean reordering the "employment" section above the "education" section? Were you able to reorder schools or employment positions?
Lastly, what browser/OS are you using? I've noticed drag and drop act funky in some browser/OS combinations.
Late reply, but I was using Chromium. And yes, I was unable to move the Education above/below Employment, or something similar. When I grabbed something to move it, it would move the highlighted word (within subsection) to another subsection.
Thanks for the reply! Reordering in the content form is only meant for reordering schools within the education section, reordering employment positions within the employment section, etc. Reordering entire sections can actually be accomplished in the resume customizer, where they can be moved up and down, or to diferent columns entirely.
A few other users have mentioned the same difficulty, so I now recognize that it is a point of confusion due to a lack of guidance or clarity in the UI. I will be working on ways to reduce this confusion, and certainly the documenting of your experience will help with improving this part of the UI.
Looks great! I know the exporting features are in Beta now, figured I let you know they the docx export feature doesn't save a file with an extension, and even if you manually add the extension, an error occurs (on Mac Word 2011) - "The XML file resume.docx cannot be opened because there is no available data view (XSLT)."
Thanks, I'm hoping to make a big push on DOCX exporting this month. This bit of information will help with that goal. It works only some of the time, but I hope it's enough to help some people who must export to DOCX even in its early stages.
Creddle offers more theme customization than many other resume sites; themes are a set of customizations rather than a fixed template. Technically you can transform one theme into another.
If you want to stand out, add more customization to the base theme. But I do recognize that customization is still limited and that there's plenty more room for growth. I just hope that it's enough to get started.
Just wanted to say this is pretty fantastic. I have been touching up my personal site/resume lately and wanted something exactly like this.
Will be on the watch for any premium features you add in the future just for the sake of throwing some cash your way.
EDIT: One request. There doesn't seem to be a way to print from the private url. The page itself doesn't seem to be printer friendly nor is there an export button the page. It would be nice to be able for people to view my resume from the link and be able to download a copy for themselves.
116 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 33.5 ms ] threadOne piece of feedback, and I understand you may not have decided on this yet, but it's not clear from the landing page whether this is meant to be free, a paid service, etc. I just get presented with a signup form and don't really have an understanding about whether I'll be expected to fork over payment or not.
Looking at this in the context of somebody's HN project I kept going, but if this were just another site I stumbled across, that ambiguity would make me more like to bounce than not.
It's certainly something that occurred to me looking through the options.
It's always annoying when you signup for free stuff and then a year later they remove free completely, basically a bait and switch.
I'd also put that information on your "about" page. (Only on the about page, if you want to keep it off the front page.)
My typical workflow when sending out resumes is to start with a single resume, then adjust some of the wording or remove some of the content to focus on what would be most important to my prospective employer.
I've designed resumés for friends which HR managers have told me won their attention and priority simply by looking a level of craft and professionalism above the rest. The difference between a self-created Word resumé and one well-designed is exponential, especially in an environment where sensible people dwell.
Let me know if there's any way I can help with this. Cool project.
But I also want to stress that I think this is really great.
Let me know if and when you do import/export support and we will do a blog post also and list you on the homepage.
Look forward to adding you
Of course that commentary is more directed at the state of web tech than Creddle specifically.
The headline "paper-friendly" comes from my frustration with other resume building web sites that I've tried over the years that want to reinvent or replace the resume, to the point where I'm not comfortable using it as my own resume.
I built Creddle in the hopes that people will feel comfortable using it as their actual resume - for me that meant printing it out on paper and handing it recruiters at the career fair. That shouldn't have to be a headline or a feature for a resume builder.
Is this maybe what you were trying to get at with the state of web tech?
The second-best seems to be http://wkhtmltopdf.org/, which is more or less a headless wrapper around WebKit's renderer. But since WebKit puts most of its development effort into interactive/screen usage, the quality doesn't match PrinceXML yet (though it's improving). As a result I think it's still more common for people who need good-looking, open-source PDF output to use a LaTeX workflow, even where an HTML one might otherwise be more natural.
I have nothing against multi page resumes, I just had to limit my scope.
I hope to add multi page resumes, but I'm sorry to say that for now it just isn't built yet.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Experiment with one column vs. two columns as well - hope this helps!
For the people for whom resumes are still an important part of the job application process, this aims to make it easier to transform your LinkedIn profile page into an appropriate looking resume, improve the design of your resume, or both.
It depends on how you go about your own job application process, and what role your resume has in that.
http://screencast.com/t/bzzdsUol9CnZ
It must be due to something specific to this machine, as I don't see the issue elsewhere when using the same version of chrome.
In addition, it would be cool if you could identify target companies for a candidate based off their resume and some insights from LinkedIn (using NLP perhaps) and if I could directly apply to sites suggested by creddle as a paid feature perhaps.
Definitely agree on adding the missing sections as these aren't the only things you can put on a resume!
Creddle's default themes are far superior, and I am not taking the safe road on this one. fact. :)
Re-ordering: I could not get this to work as intuitively as it seemed it should have been (likely user error). It would be nice to be able to shift entire paragraphs/columns/sections up/down one column/section at a time, and perhaps a 'delete' button to remove the entire section or a trash icon to drag it into on the side. (I realize that by removing content from a section you effectively remove that section, but only by publishing did I know this)
After I was finished re-ordering, I was not sure what it wanted me to do. I think it just wanted me to continue on towards viewing the resume tab to publish. Perhaps a modal could offer that guidance (save-continue to publish, or keep reordering) When I clicked on the resume tab, JS error popped up asking me to leave or stay on this page like there were unsaved changes.
Again, this feedback I mentioned is likely already considered and taken care of, but my ignorance has got the best of me. :)
So awesome though! Don't take my suggestions/feedback as anything other than compliments, as I am jealous how exceptional you made this!
By moving sections up/down, do you mean reordering the "employment" section above the "education" section? Were you able to reorder schools or employment positions?
Lastly, what browser/OS are you using? I've noticed drag and drop act funky in some browser/OS combinations.
A few other users have mentioned the same difficulty, so I now recognize that it is a point of confusion due to a lack of guidance or clarity in the UI. I will be working on ways to reduce this confusion, and certainly the documenting of your experience will help with improving this part of the UI.
If you want to stand out, add more customization to the base theme. But I do recognize that customization is still limited and that there's plenty more room for growth. I just hope that it's enough to get started.
Will be on the watch for any premium features you add in the future just for the sake of throwing some cash your way.
EDIT: One request. There doesn't seem to be a way to print from the private url. The page itself doesn't seem to be printer friendly nor is there an export button the page. It would be nice to be able for people to view my resume from the link and be able to download a copy for themselves.