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Show HN: Resume maker with no sign-up or subscription
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- robbiejs 5y agoI like it. Very to-the-point. One thing that annoys me is when I click "Job #5" it expands a new form and jumps to it immediately. It is very confusing. For me it would be better if the whole form was expanded at all times. Then I can just scroll up and down and know what I am editing. Same thing when I click "+ Education", it takes me out of the flow. Good job.
- tofukid 5y agoThanks for the feedback. I think that’s a good point. One reason I have collapsible work/education is being able to reorder them.
- robbiejs 5y agoAh I see. You could still offer re-ordering even when sub-forms are expanded. The sub-forms are not that tall if I am correct. Perhaps add outlines/borders around sub forms, so that users know what they belong to. I know the page looks fresh & clean now, but it takes away from user friendliness IMHO. Anyway, just my 2c :-)
- moneywoes 5y agoIs it possible to download it in word doc format?
- tofukid 5y agoJust PDF for now. I hope to offer Word format in the future.
- sparsely 5y agoVery clean, nice work! My main feedback would be to make the photo optional - it's quite culture and job dependent whether a photo is included on a CV.
- 0xfaded 5y agoAs a technical person who hires people occasionally, the one guaranteed thing that will make me read a resume is LaTeX. I dislike profile pictures because it causes me to have unavoidable bias. Just a data point
- creshal 5y agoIsn't it even illegal to have pictures in some countries, precisely to avoid such biases?
- trutannus 5y agoSometimes not even an commonly talked about bias like race or gender. It can be as simple as "this person looks annoying".
- hpfr 5y agoThis validates my LaTeX usage, but honestly, can’t you only detect it if I’m using Computer Modern? I am, precisely because of people like you, but I don’t think you could tell a XeTeX-built resume with a Unicode font from one done in Word. And conversely a Word user could simply download CM Unicode and reap the LaTeX bonus points, no? :)
- 0xfaded 5y agoI include \latex in my resume under "skills" for this reason. But I agree, it's hard to tell.
- rajin444 5y ago> it causes me to have unavoidable bias. Admitting you're susceptible to bias is one thing (we all are, I think). Calling it unavoidable makes it seem like something innate and implies you lack free will. I'm curious why you see it as unavoidable.
- SamBam 5y agoIt's honestly very self-aware to accept that there are some biases that are very hard to control, or even realize you're being influenced by, and so try to avoid being influenced at all be putting barriers between you and them, like preferring no photos. I think it's fairly self-deluding to simply think you can choose not to let an unconscious bias influence you.
- metalliqaz 5y agoNot sure what is going on in the hiring world, since I have been in the same job for a long time, but there seems to be a misalignment about the proper length of a resume. This app suggests to keep it to one page. When I've been involved in hiring new people, the resumes that get attention are the ones with detailed descriptions of project experience. They are 3 or 4 pages long. The managers want something to read because the candidates without adequate education and/or experience for the posted position will not make it into their hands. In my field (computer engineer), the "short" description that matters is 1 line: masters degree, 15 years experience, security clearance, not a diversity hire. After that, they want deep detail about skills.
- rozularen 5y agothis makes contrast with every other opinion I've ever heard about keeping the CV short and clean
- metalliqaz 5y agoThat's why I bring it up. I'm sure it's important for the first page to be concise and eye-catching. But why would more info be bad?
- yamazakiwi 5y agoMany hiring managers don't look at resumes longer than 6 seconds. More information is not necessarily better and arguably worse for competitive job openings.
- blowski 5y agoThere is a certain niche that’s impressed by a long CV, but it’s not he kind of niche I’d want to impress. They’re people who say things like “look how many versions of PHP he can use. And he knows how to use The Linux!”.
- metalliqaz 5y agoTo be clear, "not a diversity hire" above is not intended to be a positive attribute.
- shoto_io 5y agoGreat tool! What's your business model though? Collecting data comes to mind first. If it's not the case, I would recommend to say this explicitly on the page somewhere.
- tofukid 5y agoThere’s a paid download option which has no watermark at the bottom of the resume.
- metalliqaz 5y agoI had the exact same thought. Decided not to fill in with any PII for that reason.
- quaintdev 5y agoI disconnected Internet to see if it would still generate the resume. It renders on client side so preview is fine but I can't download the resume. I really loved the design but I don't want to keep resume on the site forever so I am afraid I will not be using this even though I really want to.
- esseeayen 5y agoCan you link it to LinkedIn?
- tofukid 5y agoDo you mean generate it based on a LinkedIn profile? That’s something I may add in the future. I don’t use LinkedIn, I thought they already have a resume generator, is that true?
- mikepurvis 5y agoYes, LinkedIn has a resume builder: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/94034/linkedin-resume-builder https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/94034/linkedin... I may just lack imagination, but I am struggling a bit to see the niche for the linked tool vs using LinkedIn (lower effort, consumes existing data) or a downloadable template (high/same effort, but more customizable and no leaked PII).
- qsort 5y agoHonestly, it fills the niche of not being LinkedIn. LinkedIn is by far the worst user experience of any website or application I have ever used, one of the few that deserves the distinction of being both morally and technically broken. Not everyone is as drastic as I am, but in my circle it's universally disliked.
- pfranz 5y agoI use LinkedIn as a memory dump for job history and to keep tabs on old co-workers, but I actively try to avoid it otherwise. I didn't know they had a resume builder and wouldn't have looked, but it makes sense to have one. Even knowing they have one I'd be very interested to actually build my resume outside of it, but I don't know how representative I am.
- meigwilym 5y ago"Get hired" are you offering something beyond formatting a resume? Is this strictly a paid-for resume formatter?
- tofukid 5y agoIt’s just a resume maker. Good to know that’s confusing, I’ll think about making the language more clear.
- notjustanymike 5y agoPhotos on resumes are never a good idea. They introduce so much possibly for bias, both intentional and unintentional, while adding very little benefit. They also don't print well and don't look good unless you've got a pro shot. Resumes aren't memorable when there's a picture but rather when they are well written.
- kleiba 5y agoThis is very dependent on the country / culture. In Germany, for example, a resume without a photo will most likely not even get considered.
- searchableguy 5y agoWhy do they require a photo in the resume? I'm curious about the reason.
- kleiba 5y agoThey just want to know whom they're dealing with. And I don't think it's such a big deal because once they invite you to an interview, they will know what you look like anyway.
- SamBam 5y agoIt is a big deal, though. Getting to the interview is the first hurdle. There have been several variations of a famous study where they sent identical resumes to hundreds of companies, with the single change that there was a stereotypical "white" name vs "Black" name at the top. The studies consistently find that the "white" names get far more call backs. Granted, those studies were in the US, but I'd be very surprised if a similar effect did not show up in most European countries.
- z3ncyberpunk 5y agoAlways beware 'studies' and 'experts'...
- kleiba 5y agoGreat work. Are you planning to offer more than one design to choose from?
- tofukid 5y agoIn the future I might add multiple designs/templates.
- luke2m 5y agoDown?
- tofukid 5y agoI don’t think so. Do you have trouble accessing it? The whole thing is cached with CloudFlare.
- nicholasjarnold 5y agoLooks good! An alternative is https://resumake.io/ https://resumake.io/, which also allows one to export and then later import the JSON which defines the resume.
- busymom0 5y agoHere's another alternative which I built. The exported pdf is text based and thus optimized for resume scanning softwares used by companies. https://resumetopdf.com/ https://resumetopdf.com/
- quaintdev 5y agoDo you guys store information on backend and if you do, how long?
- samlewis0602 5y agoThis is awesome, thanks for putting it together. My only request would be the ability to change text size
- busymom0 5y agoThanks, I will add that in an update. Do you plan on making the size smaller or larger?
- tofukid 5y agoAuthor here. I made this using Haskell for the web server, and Preact for the JavaScript. The resume is converted to PDF by translating HTML into canvas and using JSPDF to turn the canvas into a PDF. Hosted on Linode. Cached with CloudFlare.
- pininja 5y agoThis is neat! What was your experience like using this stack? Were any of these first-time or learning-oriented (rather than comfort) choices?
- tofukid 5y agoI’ve used Haskell and Preact before. I love Haskell. I’ve arrived at this stack after a decade of developing webapps. The foundation to my approach is simplicity. I don’t have a JS build step at all (no npm, no transpiling, no bundling, etc.), and avoid frameworks and libraries if possible. I don’t use a traditional component approach with Preact, but a purely functional approach (like Elm). I would prefer to use a purely functional type-safe language on the front end, but the friction with browser APIs and build pipelines is not worth it.
- nickjj 5y agoIf you ever wanted to chat more about how you built and deploy your app I'd love to have you on my podcast at https://runninginproduction.com/ https://runninginproduction.com/. There's 0 Haskell episodes so far, you'd be the first one!
- bredren 5y agoI enjoy your podcast.
- vishnuharidas 5y agoNice tool. If possible add a collection of random data to generate a random resume so that people can see a real resume before filling out their actual personal data.
- nacraft 5y agoNice UI but the generated PDF is an image?! That's not a good idea... the resume parsers won't be able to parse that.
- vmception 5y agoBe nice if a service like this allowed us to keep all the responses as meta data so that we can auto-fill every recruiters and job application site's fields automatically with our pre-existing answers. I'm sure there is a browser extension somewhere that does this. "Thanks for uploading your resume! Now forget we ever asked and fill all the same details out for us again!"
- dantodor 5y agoCool idea, I suggest you add some disclaimer about data policy. My first thought on the landing page was "neat way to gather some personal data" :D
- lost-found 5y agoTwo column resumes are not ideal since a lot of (shitty) resume scanners can’t figure them out.
- mccolin 5y agoThis is a slick tool. I like how the thumbnail and PDF preview is live updating with changes. It'd be a really nice addition if the tool could output the resume data in other supporting formats (plain text, Markdown, JSON, etc.)
- catchmeifyoucan 5y agoThis looks absolutely solid, nice work. Super easy to build. Only reason I use latex is for formatting and crappy word indents, this solves that problem. Would be great with a few more templates, and some way to "pazzazify" each one. Maybe a little streak of color. I did not realize you were hosting the resume as well.
- jibbers 5y agoThis looks like a solid tool. Love that there is no mandatory account creation. A couple tiny constructive criticisms: + All instances of "resume" should be "résumé" or at least "resumé". + Maybe add some help formatting phone numbers to the one true format of (###) ###-####. + Finally maybe consider adding color to the most important buttons, like the Save buttons, so people's eyes are drawn to them
- tofukid 5y agoGood points. Thanks for the feedback.