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Show HN: Leet Resumes – a free technical resume-writing service
- mcenedella 6y agoI’ve built a service to write technical resumes for free at www.leetresumes.com You provide your existing resume, answer ten questions, and in a couple days I’ll email your improved resume back to you, optimized for resume readers, parsers, and what hiring managers are looking for in 2021. We’re just starting out, so we can probably handle 1,000 or so resumes per week. Hopefully, as we automate, we’ll be able to handle more volume, but right now, there’s still humans in the loop to ensure quality at Leet Resumes: https://leetresumes.com/ https://leetresumes.com/ If you’re interested in our internals, expertise and philosophy on resume optimization, I’ve written our detailed technical documentation here: https://leetresumes.com/blog/leet-resumes-technical-resume-documentation https://leetresumes.com/blog/leet-resumes-technical-resume-d... And some examples of “before” and “after” are here: https://leetresumes.com/examples https://leetresumes.com/examples It might or might not surprise you that multiple colors, multiple columns, and filling your resume up with stuff other than your accomplishments is bad. We believe in being transparent, open, data-driven, and helpful, so let me know what you think!
- jedberg 6y agoOn your examples, for the first resume, your bullet points are inconsistent. Sometimes the second line of a multiline sentence has one and sometimes it doesn't. It was the first thing I noticed.
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks - rendering error in conversion from GDoc. Fixed.
- mgkimsal 6y agoI'm presuming you're the same Marc Cenedella from 'the ladders' from so many years ago? Just signed up - interested to see what your system does. :)
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks! Yes!
- notretarded 6y agoNo thanks. I am not giving you my résumé so you can harvest it for job seeker market insights.
- mcenedella 6y agoOK, I don't know what that means. More important than what users write, is what the audience wants -- hiring managers, HR departments, recruiters, to a lesser extent the ATSs that companies use. Those are the real drivers of resume-writing insights. For developer job market insights, aggregated data such as StackOverflow's annual Developer Survey are far superior to anything you could glean from a few thousand resumes: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020
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- sciencewolf 6y agoHey Marc, I'm not as cynical as notretarded, but I do wonder how you'll eventually make money. It can't be cheap to manually edit 1,000+ resumes weekly, so it does make me wonder what the end goal is and what the paid services will look like. Maybe some AI/data play? Your blueprint to good technical resumes is super useful though-- I run a technical interview course and mentor quite a number of software engineers, will definitely share out. I used to use the ladders all the time when looking for jobs, so thanks for creating that service too.
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks so much sciencewolf! Cycnicism is OK - there have been a lot of crappy products in this space and devs are sick and tired of LinkedIn spam. The plan is to become a trusted partner to engineers and technologists - helping to update their resume yearly, produce better resumes by having a deeper insight into their performance. That trust and that relationship will be super valuable and I'm sure we'll find the business model. As mentioned in FAQs -- "In the future, we will offer additional upgraded services for purchase such as resume distribution, hosting, tracking, salary negotiation, vetted job opportunities, recruiter outreach and cover letter writing." -- but at this moment we don't really know. The core product today is writing resumes and building that trust. I think if we do that very well, we'll have a lot of opportunities to make a successful business out of it. If we do that poorly, we'll have nothing.
- Kinrany 6y agoIf you fail to find a business model and run out of money, will you choose to shut down the business over extracting money from that trust?
- ben509 6y agoA helpful post might be some tips on what to track as your career progresses. Or a tool to do so might be a way to build your client base. By their nature, the things hiring managers look for on a resume are very similar to what they look for in performance reviews, so having that material always up to date is a good practice.
- mcenedella 6y agoAnother good point, Ben. You seem interested in this stuff - would love to chat further - i'm myfirstname at leetresumes dot com. We're intending to have a regular check-in to collect facts throughout the years that we then save until you're ready to update your resume. We've also thought about how we could be helpful in 1-on-1s, promotion reviews, and annual performance reviews.
- ben509 6y agoReading a few of the blog posts, and the FAQ, I'm not sure you're getting to why engineers are bad at writing resumes, what the fundamental disconnect is when they try to do situation-behavior-response type stuff. It's not because "resumes are not written in a programming language." I personally grokked it when I was writing up some peer review. I thought I was making a compelling case: I showed where he had solved a tough problem, how he worked through problems, resolved it and thought I was establishing that the guy was on an upward trajectory. My manager kicked it back and was trying to explain what he needed. We went back and forth, and finally he said, "look, I'm going to be in a room full of other managers, and I need ammo to get Chris a promotion." That was when it clicked. I had learned persuasive writing in an environment where it pays to spend a lot of time making your case. But on a promotion board, there might be a dozen managers trying to get a word in edgewise, so they need to make their case with simple, unambiguous facts. So it's a matter of it being a writing style that meets a specific need, and which engineers aren't trained in.
- mcenedella 6y agoGreat points Ben. That is persuasive :) I'll add this comment to my reminders as I update the FAQ this weekend. Thanks so much!
- Mike_Jordan 6y agoThat's a nice initiative. Any reason why you are restricting users having experience in US/Canada alone? I am from India and I do need help creating a resume.
- Thristle 6y agoAlso wondering that. If the resume is written in English does it matter where in the world it's being sent? Or it might be related to the "premium features" that are mentioned, since initially you can only monetize US/CAN based resume/employees
- mcenedella 6y agoAs mentioned in other comments, our expertise, data, and insights are based on North American hiring practices. European CVs differ in practice quite a bit - for one glaring example, the common presence of a photo of the user on the resume. Our system is not at all capable of handling that today.
- derekja 6y agoMarc had some great suggestions for me when I was last doing a resume update. I haven't used his new service, but can vouch for his knowing about resumes!
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks so much Derek. Same service, just changed the beta name from MeetLeet to Leet Resumes. People were consistently mispronouncing it - MeetLeek, for example :) - so we simplified the name to Leet Resumes.
- gurleen_s 6y agoWill you ever offer this service to students?
- mcenedella 6y agoStudent resumes are quite different - placement of education, prominence of projects, importance of specific entry-level knowledge and skills. So they really are a different category of document entirely. Our expertise is in experienced developers' resumes - two or more years of experience, up to 35+ years' experience. It's a different process, with different hiring teams at a company, and different resume product entirely from new graduates'. So, unfortunately, for now, the answer is that we have no plans to add student resumes.
- iamcreasy 6y agoThank you for your service. Do you guys help recently graduated MS student with research experience?
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks iamcreasy - again, we do not handle soon-to-be or recent graduates. Everything about the graduating student employment market is different - the process, the expectations, the communications, the resume required, etc. It's really best at this point to follow the guidance of your career services office.
- iamcreasy 6y agoThanks. It was not clear to me since you were talking about students specifically in your post.
- lasfter 6y agoFrom the FAQ, under What's the hidden cost?: "[...] we do not sell your information." From the privacy policy, under How We Use The Information We Collect: "To send [...] information about jobs and third party products and services in which we think you may be interested." So you may not be selling my information, but you're definitely selling access to it. Seems like the hidden cost is another source of spam email.
- mcenedella 6y agoDevelopers get enough job spam, and it's annoying. Our plan is to create something that users control - don't contact me unless it's above this title, or above this $, or includes these technologies. Or, simply don't contact me at all. From our research, devs aren't looking for another LinkedIn spam machine, so we're going to build something better than that. Our thought is that if we do that well, and we update users' resumes for them each year, then it will work out well. If we do that poorly, then we can't update users' resumes annually, and it won't work. But it is free, no hidden cost, no hidden spam. And if we aren't adding value to your career, then it's easy for you to simply opt out permanently.
- lasfter 6y agoThis seems like a great approach! I'm glad you're aiming for something better, and I hope you're successful.
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks so much lasfter! If you have any ideas ever, please let me know, I'm myfirstname at leetresumes dot com. I really appreciate your comments.
- systemvoltage 6y agoWe're tired of free products. Charge us transparently upfront.
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- tchalla 6y ago> Sorry, we can only complete resumes for experienced technology professionals in the US and Canada who've accepted our Terms of Use. Welp! Is there any reason why you are restricted to US and Canada? I can understand 2+ years requirement.
- mcenedella 6y agoHi Tchalla, thanks for your comment. Our experience is based on successful hiring practices in North America. We don't have enough (read: any) data on hiring practices and resume review in Europe, Middle east, Africa or Asia. We really don't want to do any harm, so we are not yet able to offer our services there. If you're based outside of US & Canada, but work remote for US or Canada office of a company, feel free to sign up. But if you're based outside of US/Canada and plan to work outside US/Canada, then we are not yet competent to handle your resume well. Give us some time! :)
- digitalronin 6y agoI really like that you mention the geographic restriction clearly, and on the landing page. I'm based in Japan, and often look at remote job boards. It's frustrating when you have to spend time digging into the content of job posting to find out you're ineligible - it's not much time per post, but it all adds up and it's annoying. So kudos for being upfront about it!
- mcenedella 6y agoどういたしまして!
- genezeta 6y agoThe "perpetual, irrevocable" licence to use your data is not compliant with European laws anyway.
- atlgator 6y agoI need resume assistance for executive (Director+) roles. Any suggestions?
- mcenedella 6y agoIn tech? Sign up!
- frompdx 6y agoWhy don't you share what you need assistance with?
- jacob_rezi 6y agoHey, we are also trying to solve the resume, since 2015 - so I'll give some advice after scaling our resume software. As far as scaling - I wrote an article on how we got our first 50k users here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/0-50000-users-candid-look-creative-growth-jacob-jacquet/?trackingId=wH6r9FlyQdmUOqXcWi7d8g%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/0-50000-users-candid-look-cre... Keep in mind: • Success will come from your ability to execute on technology, design, branding, and finding a way to scale (SEO). • Don't be discouraged by negative feedback if you believe in your idea. • Build something that people care about - people will care about your mission or approach if the experience of using your product is memoriable. • There's a lot of competition - So don't be discouraged by our progress
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks Jacob - you forgot to mention "keep an eye out for relevant Show HNs!" ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jacob_rezi https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jacob_rezi thanks for the good advice.
- owenshen24 6y agoIs there good reason to think that optimizing resumes will help with the job searching process? I've heard that many resume screens are automated these days, which has led to my hearing stories of people trying to game this by cramming keywords in invisible font and other things like that. Can anyone with experience in recruiting shed some light on this matter?
- rychco 6y agoI actually heard about this exact same thing yesterday. All the buzzwords are in white at the bottom of the page to increase the chances you make it through the automated filter. I personally find this extremely discouraging and a little bit insulting.
- mcenedella 6y agoIt's not really a thing, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it. The basics are important - get a clean, standard, well-organized resume. Include numbers that show your ability to improve things. Be explicit about titles, capabilities, and achievements. Unfortunately, a lot of urban legends have popped up over the years that really cause professionals a lot of grief for no good reason.
- mcenedella 6y agoNot really true. You want to know what the most common keywords searched by the HR team are? "Software engineer", "Java", "Developer", etc. The sophistication of the process is limited by the user, not by the capabilities of the search engine.
- rychco 6y agoI do appreciate the focus on straightforward information without stylistic fluff. Will definitely try using it when I update my resume in the next month or two.
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks very much rychco!
- city41 6y agoSome feedback: the typeform form for the 10 questions was a little hard to use. Only one question allowed using shift+enter to insert new lines, but all of the long form questions would have benefited from this. For most of the questions, I ended up writing one extremely long line, using hyphens to try and separate things. If possible, I'd explore finding a form system that allows using textareas.
- mcenedella 6y agoGreat feedback, thank you. The proper alternative is probably a Google Form, or an actual doc, I imagine. However, when tested, those long forms tend to scare people into thinking it's too much work. Which it really shouldn't be. But great feedback, and I'll add this to our product reviews.
- nosmokewhereiam 6y agoTried it out, former cyber threat intel analyst transitioned to Rec Cannabis in Oregon. I'm not sure I qualfy, but I did at least serve the minimum 2 years in tech... I Liked the process, waiting 7 days and I'm sure it'll look fine enough. I'll let it be known if I become an endless spam magnet for those still risk-adverse about it.
- mcenedella 6y agoOK, no spam magnet here. That kind of defeats the purpose of doing nice things for free up front.
- nosmokewhereiam 6y ago"We focus on experienced engineers (2+ years) in North America so we won't be a good fit for you (today)." I did classified infosec for nearly 8 years in North America and wasnt able to make the cut for a resume. Awesome.
- mcenedella 6y agoHi nosmoke - perhaps your recent non tech experience threw us off. Are you looking to go back to tech work? Ping me directly to discuss.
- tptacek 6y agoMore stuff like this needs to exist, but this product really looks like it's optimized for responding to job ads or going cold into standard recruiting funnels, which is probably not how you want to optimize your job search. A job prospect where a resume parser is make-or-break is probably not a serious opportunity. This kind of value prop ("email is clickable, job description is parseable by random job parsers") is probably not what I'd lead with.
- mcenedella 6y agoFair enough. You're right that the actual most important thing to get right is the numbers. I've written about that on our blog: https://leetresumes.com/blog/how-to-write-bullet-points-for-a-technical-resume https://leetresumes.com/blog/how-to-write-bullet-points-for-... However, these really don't reduce to nice, short bullet points on an examples screen! Thanks for your comment!
- lrossi 6y agoThis page looks very useful: https://leetresumes.com/blog/leet-resumes-technical-resume-documentation https://leetresumes.com/blog/leet-resumes-technical-resume-d... Do you mind if I share a link to it on social media?
- mcenedella 6y agoPlease do! That's why it's there! More useful information will be published on the blog regularly: https://leetresumes.com/blog https://leetresumes.com/blog
- ipiz0618 6y agoReceived my rewritten resume a while ago, would say it's definitely worth trying. It's a clean rewrite of my otherwise clumsy resume, and I regret not having found this earlier.
- mcenedella 6y agoThank you very kindly for the nice words! Appreciate it!
- arvindamirtaa 6y agoWhy only US/Canada?
- mcenedella 6y agoThanks for your comment. As I mentioned in another comment: "Our experience is based on successful hiring practices in North America. We don't have enough (read: any) data on hiring practices and resume review in Europe, Middle east, Africa or Asia. We really don't want to do any harm, so we are not yet able to offer our services there. If you're based outside of US & Canada, but work remote for US or Canada office of a company, feel free to sign up. But if you're based outside of US/Canada and plan to work outside US/Canada, then we are not yet competent to handle your resume well. Give us some time! :) "
- hatchoo 6y agoWill resumes used as examples or for any other purposes be anonymized? I.e. if you chose my resume as a "bad example" for instance, would it be anonymized? Or would it be shown as-is with my name and other details?
- mcenedella 6y ago“Stephanie Wozniak” working at One Infinity Loop is, I hope, an obviously fake name. All examples are real resume formats but fake names and representative experiences. We wouldn’t ever show a user’s resume publicly without permission.
- arvindamirtaa 6y ago> "If you're based outside of US & Canada, but work remote for US or Canada office of a company, feel free to sign up." This was the case I was curious about. Thanks for the clarification.
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- vraghu 6y agoHey Marc... Really excited to see this. I worked at the Ladders in 2017, specifically on the resume builder app. I know how much thought, cool tech and experience went into that and I am sure leetresumes will also knock peoples’ socks off. Good luck!
- mcenedella 6y agoWe still miss you Vinay! thanks!
- crmd 6y ago@mcenedella, great concept! However the TOS language seems quite permissive - you can basically do anything with my data. Can you elaborate on why such permissions are needed, for example the right to sell my data without compensation to me? >You hereby grant to Leet Resumes a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, worldwide license (including the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to use, reproduce, process, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, modify, prepare compilations and derivative works of, publish, transmit and distribute your User Content, or any portion thereof, and to publish, transmit, distribute and sell compilations and derivative works of your User Content, in any form, medium or distribution method now known or hereafter existing, known or developed, without compensation to you.
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- SrslyJosh 6y agoComing soon: Yeet Resumes - a paid service to detect ghostwritten resumes
- deanclatworthy 6y agoI don't know about this. My resume would fall into the category of some of the bad examples, but I've never had a problem getting contacted by companies or recruiters. In fact, I can count on one hand the amount of times I have not heard back from a company when reaching out to them.
- mcenedella 6y agoThe question isn't "can i get interviews with a bad resume?" The question is "how many interview requests did I miss because of my bad resume?" My company did the famous eye-tracking study that shows recruiters' first scan of your resume is 6 seconds long. In qualitative and quantitative research since then, we found what works best based on data.
- golergka 6y agoYeah, I'm not buying it. I would rather pay $100 to a professional for a couple of hours of manual work on my CV than try my luck with a free service which sells my information.
- mcenedella 6y agoMarket price is closer to $200 - $300, and from long observation, only 6% of users are willing to pay, as you are, golergka. As mentioned above, we're not selling your information, but hoping to use this as a means to grow into a trusted partner in dev's careers.
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- rswemuc 6y agoYou could have asked for permission or given feedback before using my CV design as a bad example on your site. At least you thought of anonymizing it. May i asked where you found it ? Edit: it's the blue one (-;
- danielskogly 6y agoAs far as I can see, it's the exact same as the one listed in this[0] article, and without having seen your CV design, I guess it's completely coincidental. [0] https://zety.com/blog/software-engineer-resume https://zety.com/blog/software-engineer-resume
- rswemuc 6y agowow, it seems to have made quite an impact in resume builder circles (-: On zety its listed as a good example tho!
- mcenedella 6y agoI can not believe they took your design without compensating you...
- Jsharm 6y agoAre the skill progress bars really recommended? Why is 'Adaptability' 80% full whereas 'Agile Processes' 100%?
- mcenedella 6y agoAs mentioned on our examples page, they are NOT recommended - parsers can not read graphics.
- mcenedella 6y agoOh no rswemuc! I'm so sorry. It's the top result for 'software engineer resume' on Google, and the top resume shown by Zety.com -- I assumed it was their design, copyright, ownership. This is your design and they ripped it off? I'm very sorry to say that it is an ineffective design. To understand why, you can see my interview with the CEOs and technical experts from the top 5 resume parsing companies here: https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/resume-parser-ceos-advice-for-your-resume https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/resume-parser-ceos-... Thanks!
- m0llusk 6y agoAutomated resume writers pair off with automated resume readers--begun the resume wars have!
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- heyoo 6y agoOne thing that bothers me: Why is "No GitHub" wrong? I have absolutely nothing on a public GitHub. Does that make me a worse software engineer?
- philjackson 6y agoA better way to phrase it would be "if you have an active GH profile, share it". The benefits seem obvious to me, at a glance, one can: * See what your interests are. * See what the general quality of your code is. * See how you interact with other devs. * Potentially see how you write issues and/or deal with PRs etc.
- mcenedella 6y agoPhil, you are 100% correct. If you have an active github profile, please share it, is exactly right.
- trianx 6y agoGreat service. Our startup offers a related service: we send out job applications for candidates and make sure they don't miss an opportunity: https://cvandme.com https://cvandme.com We have seen that job applicants leave so much simple improvements on the table, it is unbelievable :) The most basic thing: Give more details on your technology stack for every experience, be more concise and avoid fancy graphics and formatting.
- wendyshu 6y agoI thought managers only care about how many years of experience you have and the presence of certain technology keywords, so how hard is it to write an adequate resume?
- mcenedella 6y agoHi Wendy - when a manager is looking through a pile of 100 resumes, all with 5 years experience, all with similar dozen or so technologies, how do they choose which 10 or 15 to phone screen? The answer is: the ones with the most compelling presentations of the user's capabilities, accomplishments, and skills on the job.
- tuangeek 6y agoI submitted a resume for review last week, and haven't heard anything back yet. Now it looks like the website is down.