Yea was thinking the same. Would be neat if this basically offered you templates to reformat your LinkedIn content. Essentially you'd then be skinning LinkedIn profiles and I think that would make it a whole lot easier for people to get started. Maybe subsequently even release a template editor so that people can customize and potentially ship their own skins. Don't know if this exists but would be great!
I link to my Linked profile now on my personal website in lieu of providing a resume, since I wanted to minimize duplicating content and ending up with an additional document that I've forgotten to update. LinkedIn profiles aren't great as one-page summaries.
Nor I. Why would you advertise so prominently on your CV something that you aren't either very good or excellent at? I mean, it'd certainly be useful to the hiring manager to know that you give your communication skills 1 star, but it definitely wouldn't do the candidate many favours...
When I interview candidates I will frequently ask them to give a rough "1-10" rating on how good they are with a particular language/technology. This sheds a lot of light when we get to the technical portion.
Someone who says they're a "5" and gets most of the questions right is a great hire. Someone who says they're a "9" and can barely answer the basics is a huge red flag.
I had an interview once where I was asked to award myself a score out of 10 in C++. I pointed out that Bjarne Stroustrup rated himself 7 out of 10 once.
I think you are missing the point. Figuring out how good you are at a skill is only 1/2 of the story.
There is also value is finding out if you think you are good at it, or if you know that you suck.
A good programmer should know what they don't know, and not be arrogant.
Years ago many candidates used a skills matrix graphic to list languages/tools, and would rate themselves 'advanced', 'intermediate', or 'beginner'. This was rather useless, though it helped candidates who wanted to list a technology on their resume without claiming to have advanced knowledge. The star system is the same thing, just perceived as more attractive I'd guess.
Usually I'd recommend candidates list items in order of their knowledge, from best to worst, and to use discretion in what to include. If you aren't comfortable having a 5-10 minute conversation about an item, don't list it.
Maybe pretty resumes are useful if you are applying for executive positions. My experience as an applicant for tech jobs is that style and beauty of resume are lost upon HR software programs that match candidates' resume to opportunities. Maybe its only here in Canada, but most major employers here use an ugly web software where they force candidates to stuff their resumes into small textareas and check off on industry buzzwords.
This. At my old job we had a repository of résumés which management used to promote the company and the people working there.
The repository was full of nice-looking and sometimes funny (in a good way) résumés. One of them even had a nice xkcd comic (http://xkcd.com/378/).
Then the company started to attract bigger customers, and these customers had their own HR departments. The next month, all résumés had to be resubmitted, no formatting, no images, table-based two-column layout.
It took the fun out of an already boring document.
The company I currently work for never asked my résumé, they saw a talk I gave at a conference, they knew my public contributions, and asked me to join them for one day. That was enough to convince them, as it should be.
My problem with these resume generators is always the same: the generated pdf doesn't hold in a single page. I don't think a resume should be longer than one page unless you're an academic and you want to list all of your publications, or you have 40 years of relevant experience for the position.
The one page resume 'standard' is a myth. Unless you're a new grad, one page is extremely difficult to do unless you shirk to a 9pt font. If you happen to have two degrees, that's already a minimum of 5 lines of space (the Education heading, a blank line and two lines for the school, plus one line of buffer after the last entry. With your name, contact info, etc, that could be five or more lines (depending on Te size of your name/heading, etc. If you have an "about" or objective section, that's likely 1-3 sentences, so about 5 lines, if you list skills, that can be another block of content. After all that, you might have room for 3 past jobs, but forget about actually describing your accomplishments at those jobs. So with clever formatting, a 1 pager is possible, but what is the reason for an artificial constraint? The one page standard is outdated as well as arbitrary. I have hired about 15 developers over the past few years and never once did I say "a two page resume!! Next! For me it's about content and not about clever formatting. I do like nice formatting, but not formatting with the intent of squeezing content into an arbitrary page.
Whitespace is your friend. It makes resumes much more powerful. Page count is arbitrary. A resume should be long enough, not too short, not too long.
The sources that tell you to have a one-page resume typically expect you to edit out anything that doesn't apply to the job you are currently applying for.
It makes some sense. You're trying to ensure that all the high points in your resume get read by making the reader's job easier. At the same time, re-writing your resume every time you apply to a new job is a tremendous burden, and simply impossible if you want a consulting agency to keep it on file.
In order for me to use this for my actual CV, at the very least I'd need to be able to re-order the sections (for anyone except new grads, education should be after experience). I'd also need to be able to get nicely formatted ascii txt version of the CV in addition to the pdf.
Being able to pull data from LinkedIn and/or Github would also be nice.
That is a good point! Reordering should be available asap. The main reason this link was posted so early was to actually see what are the features the potential users are looking for, so we can adapt the site to do just that! Linkedin integration is definitely going to be up soon and Github is also on the list. Many thanks!
The first thing I noticed from Creddle (aside from the unfortunate name -- it kinda looks like "creddie" and maybe should be) is the color scheme of the first row of sample documents -- it looks like it's custom made for Slashdot employees. To me, that makes it look more dated than it should.
I like cvtalize a lot more. I don't want to pick from a dozen options. I want to be able to able to organize the contents of my resume quickly and elegantly.
My only issue is with the name. Hard to spell & say; easy to misspell.
I did this with a PHP script / Linkedin API when I was applying to jobs while still in grad school. Saved a boat load of time because I was basically just reconstructing and reformatting my linkedin profile to match the job description each time.
Technically very nice, but please add these informations:
* who are you
* in which jurisdiction is this site located
* especially: is this site US based or in an EU country
* what happens to my data I put on your site
* please publish a general privacy policy (collection, retention, distribution to third parties etc.)
At the moment you are just demonstrating very clearly that you give a * thinking on user privacy - that is not very clever.
Isn't a resume a relatively public document already? When you apply for a job, do you ask to see the employers resume privacy policy? Besides, most of the same information is found on the average LinkedIn profile, so in the grand scheme of things is a privacy policy in this site really a battle worth creating a new HN account just to complain about it? Perhaps one of us can make a public key secured resume builder to ensure that the NSA doesn't find out you worked for McDonalds for two years. I am all for privacy, but there's also a level of common sense that ought to be used before criticizing someone's free tool that you are under no obligation to use. If it were a commercial product, then perhaps there's be a higher standard but this was some dude building a tool probably in his spare time.
Amazing first step. I made my original CV in Indesign so updating became very easy, but changing layout was hard. Would love to see "widgets" you could move around the CV. Like a new education box to drag over or move around the page. Being able to control the layout is the hard part and you have the opportunity to make it really easy here!
Interesting idea! One of the very next steps is coming up with an import feature which may include europass CV too, but Linkedin will come first though! Much appreciated!
1. Your background image previews on my "Hover Zoom" chrome extension (opens in overlay like a link to a image [1]).
2. Your star display breaks on my second monitor (19" 1280x1024) at 100% Zoom in Chrome and every setting above that[2] This is in my opinion not acceptable.
3. In "Preview Mode" you can not add anything, but you can still remove parts. Is this intended?
4. Speaking of preview mode... it is not obvious what it does. If you are looking at the button when you click it you don't automatically realize what it does.
Maybe it's different for technical positions, but most of the low-level jobs I've ever applied for have asked for Word documents to be sent. Agencies in particular get moany about sending PDFs (presumably because they want to be able to edit out identifying details of candidates, but who knows what else).
1. This format only works for EU countries. In the US this format is not appropriate. For example, in the US, education is a minor point typically put at the bottom of the resume. Experience and technical acronyms usually take up the most room.
2. While pretty, the amount of white space is wasting precious room to make an impression with. Given that for the first few years only one page is recommended of length, whitespace is very costly in terms of valuable writing real estate.
I almost think you could turn this around into a resume writing wizard which tries to extract valuable information in order to write a BETTER resume. Maybe have a formatting independent input, and then let the user choose for what country they want the output formatted. I think formatting is rarely the issue in most CVs, content however is. Maybe focus on helping people write better resumes.
Most people don't even realize how much they know until you start pointing out things such as experience in certain domains, processes, standards etc.
The sample (downloadable) resume isn't formatted well.
There's not enough space between "John Doe" and "WEB DEVELOPER..." - capital "J" almost overlaps it.
There are also orphaned lines on page two.
I also don't like the abundance of font styles (varying sizes, capitalics, bold...) on one page, although that one is subjective of course. Personally I don't find this elegant.
I hate to be "that guy", but the first thing I noticed is that this doesn't display properly with NoScript installed and enabled.
Considering that pretty much any content page (news stories, Hacker News, etc.) works just find without JavaScript enabled, this is a wee bit disappointing.
Other feedback: the "x" button that appears when hovering over a removable element seems to get more convex when hovered over, and it loses its rounded edges, turning more boxy. This is on Firefox nightly in Linux.
Also, the skills sections with stars causes the remove (x) icon to reflow the skills section, causing an unsightly jump in the skills. A solution could be to absolutely position the remove button so that it doesn't cause that jump.
Further, the subhead below the name appears to not have enough vertical whitespace separating the two -- this occurs in both the HTML representation and the PDF.
"whether" is spelled incorrectly as "wether".
While the page also seems pretty "responsive" the edit and export tools look awkward at points in between the standard mobile sizes and when it makes the jump to the desktop experience -- specifically, the widths of those panels do not match the width of the résumé preview. There also doesn't appear to be any whitespace between the résumé and further panels.
The contact section also looks awkward in the mobile view -- the icons appear to escape the left margin of the rest of the résumé, and there isn't any whitespace between the name and subhead.
In addition, the capitalization for the editing/export tools is inconsistent -- "Export controls" vs. "Edit Tools", and may be too verbose as labels.
The "ease in" effect for the "Beautiful resumes done in seconds!" seems superfluous to me.
Lastly, the sidebar could probably just stay fixed as the user scrolls through the page, so that it is always available, especially for longer documents.
Wishlist item for me would be an import/export in the native data format for this tool -- plaintext as Markdown (or whatever you are using internally) would be handy, as copying information out of an exported PDF can be challenging.
It seems to serve as an "application", but if this were to ever become a repository of résumés like Linkedin (seems obvious to me), this would become a problem.
Even given that it is an app, a static representation of the app along with a "please enable JavaScript to edit" message would be really handy -- at least I could then get an idea of whether I want to edit the document being shown.
My first reaction is: This would be really cool if I hadn't already invested the effort to learn LaTeX/XeTeX. Does this really provide anything beyond the really nice formatting?
Long ago, I wanted to adopt the HR Open Standard in XML [0] and render my resume off that using HR-XSL [1]. Well, that format didn't get adopted as much as I liked, unfortunately. Now, there's JSON Resume, but it's very limited [2]. There's also h-resume [3] (microformat). I really want a format that will allow a complex resume to fit it without compromises. It's 2014 and there's still no such one!
Does anyone know what is used to typeset this? Particularly the "star gauge" where John Doe lists his fictional skills? I'd like to be able to give similar "ratings out of 5 stars" via LaTeX.
47 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadI link to my Linked profile now on my personal website in lieu of providing a resume, since I wanted to minimize duplicating content and ending up with an additional document that I've forgotten to update. LinkedIn profiles aren't great as one-page summaries.
Someone who says they're a "5" and gets most of the questions right is a great hire. Someone who says they're a "9" and can barely answer the basics is a huge red flag.
A good programmer should know what they don't know, and not be arrogant.
Usually I'd recommend candidates list items in order of their knowledge, from best to worst, and to use discretion in what to include. If you aren't comfortable having a 5-10 minute conversation about an item, don't list it.
The repository was full of nice-looking and sometimes funny (in a good way) résumés. One of them even had a nice xkcd comic (http://xkcd.com/378/).
Then the company started to attract bigger customers, and these customers had their own HR departments. The next month, all résumés had to be resubmitted, no formatting, no images, table-based two-column layout.
It took the fun out of an already boring document.
The company I currently work for never asked my résumé, they saw a talk I gave at a conference, they knew my public contributions, and asked me to join them for one day. That was enough to convince them, as it should be.
Whitespace is your friend. It makes resumes much more powerful. Page count is arbitrary. A resume should be long enough, not too short, not too long.
It makes some sense. You're trying to ensure that all the high points in your resume get read by making the reader's job easier. At the same time, re-writing your resume every time you apply to a new job is a tremendous burden, and simply impossible if you want a consulting agency to keep it on file.
In order for me to use this for my actual CV, at the very least I'd need to be able to re-order the sections (for anyone except new grads, education should be after experience). I'd also need to be able to get nicely formatted ascii txt version of the CV in addition to the pdf.
Being able to pull data from LinkedIn and/or Github would also be nice.
My only issue is with the name. Hard to spell & say; easy to misspell.
Linkedin has since implemented something similar: http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/
At the moment you are just demonstrating very clearly that you give a * thinking on user privacy - that is not very clever.
1. Your background image previews on my "Hover Zoom" chrome extension (opens in overlay like a link to a image [1]).
2. Your star display breaks on my second monitor (19" 1280x1024) at 100% Zoom in Chrome and every setting above that[2] This is in my opinion not acceptable.
3. In "Preview Mode" you can not add anything, but you can still remove parts. Is this intended?
4. Speaking of preview mode... it is not obvious what it does. If you are looking at the button when you click it you don't automatically realize what it does.
That is all for now. Good luck.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/sKO9Xu7.jpg [2] http://i.imgur.com/CYevnvF.png
It needs to be much more customisable - moving, removing and adding sections.
Eg: I'm monolingual but can't remove the languages field.
There's no section for references.
There's no section for website.
There's no way to easily list work samples / project - much more relevant than employer if you're an independent contractor.
Really needs the ability to save and edit later.
1. This format only works for EU countries. In the US this format is not appropriate. For example, in the US, education is a minor point typically put at the bottom of the resume. Experience and technical acronyms usually take up the most room.
2. While pretty, the amount of white space is wasting precious room to make an impression with. Given that for the first few years only one page is recommended of length, whitespace is very costly in terms of valuable writing real estate.
I almost think you could turn this around into a resume writing wizard which tries to extract valuable information in order to write a BETTER resume. Maybe have a formatting independent input, and then let the user choose for what country they want the output formatted. I think formatting is rarely the issue in most CVs, content however is. Maybe focus on helping people write better resumes.
Most people don't even realize how much they know until you start pointing out things such as experience in certain domains, processes, standards etc.
There's not enough space between "John Doe" and "WEB DEVELOPER..." - capital "J" almost overlaps it.
There are also orphaned lines on page two.
I also don't like the abundance of font styles (varying sizes, capitalics, bold...) on one page, although that one is subjective of course. Personally I don't find this elegant.
Considering that pretty much any content page (news stories, Hacker News, etc.) works just find without JavaScript enabled, this is a wee bit disappointing.
Other feedback: the "x" button that appears when hovering over a removable element seems to get more convex when hovered over, and it loses its rounded edges, turning more boxy. This is on Firefox nightly in Linux.
Also, the skills sections with stars causes the remove (x) icon to reflow the skills section, causing an unsightly jump in the skills. A solution could be to absolutely position the remove button so that it doesn't cause that jump.
Further, the subhead below the name appears to not have enough vertical whitespace separating the two -- this occurs in both the HTML representation and the PDF.
"whether" is spelled incorrectly as "wether".
While the page also seems pretty "responsive" the edit and export tools look awkward at points in between the standard mobile sizes and when it makes the jump to the desktop experience -- specifically, the widths of those panels do not match the width of the résumé preview. There also doesn't appear to be any whitespace between the résumé and further panels.
The contact section also looks awkward in the mobile view -- the icons appear to escape the left margin of the rest of the résumé, and there isn't any whitespace between the name and subhead.
In addition, the capitalization for the editing/export tools is inconsistent -- "Export controls" vs. "Edit Tools", and may be too verbose as labels.
The "ease in" effect for the "Beautiful resumes done in seconds!" seems superfluous to me.
Lastly, the sidebar could probably just stay fixed as the user scrolls through the page, so that it is always available, especially for longer documents.
Wishlist item for me would be an import/export in the native data format for this tool -- plaintext as Markdown (or whatever you are using internally) would be handy, as copying information out of an exported PDF can be challenging.
Even given that it is an app, a static representation of the app along with a "please enable JavaScript to edit" message would be really handy -- at least I could then get an idea of whether I want to edit the document being shown.
[0] http://www.hropenstandards.org/
[1] http://hr-xsl.sourceforge.net/
[2] https://jsonresume.org/schema/
[3] http://microformats.org/wiki/resume-formats