More than anything, what this makes me want to do is lay out some cash to have an actual designer work on a resume for me. I like nice looking resumes, I kind of want a nicer looking resume, I wouldn't mind paying for a nicer looking resume, I don't really want one that looks like those that hundreds of other people are using.
Perhaps a nice direction for a project such as this is to become more of a marketplace, similar to what you have with WordPress templates. This would mean more template diversity with the ease of use that you probably already provide with your CMS.
LaTeX has a lot of excellent resume templates that don't look cluttered or messy and feel pretty clean, IMO. In that vein, WriteLaTeX is a great and free/cheap online tool that I think does a fantastic job of getting you up and running with editing: https://www.writelatex.com/
I found shareLaTeX's collection to be great.[1] The sources of them are available with some Googling and slight modifications should give anyone the difference to stand out provided someone else used the same template.
Even if it is not lies. I have seen several legitimate cases:
1. The agent reformat you resume in a common standard.
2. The agent add a custom section with the result of their "screening" and other client specific requests.
3. The HR of the client needs .doc
4. Client want to receive a single file with everything for a single candidate.
Agent is a shitty job. Sure when you place a candidate, there is a huge payday, but you still need to get through a lot of boasting candidates and clueless customers for which you will make no money at all. Also most companies would not be able to recognize that a candidate that is like Linus for a linux kernel job.
edit: not defending them. But I have some sympathy - they hear me whining about a company giving me an extra 5K a year when I make 4 times more than them.
IMHO LaTeX is better than an ASCII resume, but it really isn't very good for the task. Resumes, because of their length and size constraints, really benefit from some careful massaging of layout.
Not that fancy engineer resumes are needed with the market being what it is these days, but you would probably achieve much better results by using a design-oriented tool. Even Word and LibreOffice allow you to arrange things with more precision these days.
It seems the best way to go get a clean a resume is to subscribe to adobe CC and us inDesign. Although it costs money, it really is the best solution, and I think it is well worth the marginal cost. I was very excited to click on your link showing free resume templates, but the templates are way too over the top and there are too many design elements which get in the way of the crucial information. I would argue the templates make it harder to understand the applicants experience, and that is the antithesis of what you want in a resume. I would have to believe those templates would cause eye-rolling in potential HR departments.
I think you can use mostly anything that will do proper text kerning and spacing. The rest is up to the person doing the design. InDesign is "the right tool for the job" (TM) but there is a learning curve.
This said, resumes are typically short enough that they really benefit from some hand-massaging of type and layout. LaTeX or other markup-based formats are good if your design skills are "can properly indent code" because they limit how much you can screw it up, but I don't see how you can produce a short, sweet and nice looking document with LaTeX without spending a week on it.
Yes, I've used LaTex as well. It gets the job done. But the resumes look too academic. I wouldn't use it for a technology job, unless there is an emphasis on research. However, I do think it is appropriate for more traditional workplaces as well. LaTex is good for a very professional yet formal resume. I got a job using LaTex before.
I write my resume / CV in HTML & CSS and have PhantomJS convert it to PDF. I found this gives great control and lets you style to your hearts content with whatever you can get off the web.
Shameless plug - I build a basic setup with Grunt to do live conversion so I can edit the HTML/CSS and see the result instantly on save.
It's also set up to run simple scripts on rasterising, like creating a citations list or adding a "generated on" date
https://github.com/alistairjcbrown/html-pdf-live-conversion
"Why do I have to give a reason to stop paying for a service?"
You don't have to ask to stop paying for their service. Taken from FAQ:
"Can I cancel membership anytime I want?
Yes. Absolutely. All users may cancel their membership on the site at any time. Simply go to Account settings and under Membership status you’ll see your club subscription with an option to cancel."
However, I still find it odd that you have to contact them in order to delete your account.
As someone who has built a couple service type products, I'll gain more by building out usable features in a product than building out account deletion.
I'm not say that it isn't important, or that it shouldn't be done, but when launching, there is lower hanging fruit that I want to get done first.
Beyond the concept of the app which has been touched upon, the thing that jumped out at me as I was flipping through the app site (not the resumes) is that the content is not written all that great. I'm not claiming to be a grammar nazi, but "publiched" isn't a word and I think you're missing at least one letter in "whether your resume look good".
My main assumption is that your first language isn't English, and that's fine, but maybe hire a English speaking copy-editor to help out with such issues?
While I think that the overall idea isn't necessarily a bad one, two things jump out at me with the templates that are provided:
-Do people really put their photos on their resumes??
-Given that resumes are often printed and reviewed in black and white, I think that would undo a lot of the effort that went in to the designs of the templates.
In spite of that I think the spirit of having a resume that doesn't come from a Word-provided template is worthwhile for job seekers.
I'm not in HR, but have previously heard that it's a tremendously bad idea to put a picture on a resume. The advice was all predicated on HR departments being extremely risk-adverse when it comes to discrimination claims.
A picture of someone pretty much immediately reveals age, sex, race, and could easily reveal religion (think a muslim or sikh) and disability status. Which pretty much covers the list of things you're not allowed to discriminate against.
People actually print resumes on paper these days in the tech sector? Can recruiter confirm this? I think most tech companies probably just email resumes around.
Many of my interviews started with the interviewer reading my printed resume. So while this might be useful, I'd be worried about the link not working or the person using a blackberry or IE or some other previously unknown/untested way of viewing the resume. (Yes, I know you can also print using this service, but then there's no difference between emailing pdfs/docs yourself.. )
Maybe its worth it for some. I don't think its worth $10/month or even a one-time $10 cost.
Side rant: Its seems that everyone is trying to build a subscription based business these days. What happened to just selling a product for a fixed price and be done with it.. why do people want to hook the customer onto some metaphorical treadmill. I hate that MS has started doing that with Office, adobe with Photoshop etc..
I can confirm this. On several occasions during interviews, interviewers had a printed copy of my resume at hand, as a basis for discussions of what you have already done.
I guess it really depends on the companies, but from my experience with an HR system targeting larger hiring organizations (think several hundreds to thousands of hires per year), "better batch printout" functionality is a common feature request.
When I am doing interviews I like having a paper copy of the resume to that I can get inspiration for the "discussion" part of the meeting.
All these resumes can be printed like a normal resumes on the paper with the same data. There is online version for online presence and print version for personal presence on the meeting with the employer.
In North America I would say that is discouraged from including a photo on your resume, so I would not go with that option here.
I've heard (and read [1]) that in certain European and Asian countries it's customary to include a photo with a resume, so perhaps that's why the option was provided.
When I'm asked to help screen resumes for potential new coworkers, I mostly care what skills they think they have and what they've been doing the last few years, or if their grammar is particularly bad I worry about possible communication barriers. Pretty formatting or graphics only matter so far as they make it harder to find those things.
Those are fine looking templates, and I like the idea of using a bit of splashiness to stand out from the crowd. I just worry that the end result might be that I'm taken less seriously as a candidate than the one who used the old, traditional format.
For what it's worth, I almost wish I was applying for a job at a commercial art house, just so I could use that black resume. Print that bad boy on some heavy, glossy stock, and there's no way they can turn you down!
Anyone can replicate with ease the designs being sold and launch a free competing service with the same (or better) offering. I don't see a viable business enterprise here.
I disagree - it's hard to stay in business if you don't make money. The fact that someone else might offer a similar product for free has stopped, e.g. the makers of premium website themes from making huge piles of money.
There's definitely a hurdle to be overcome in marketing products to those people least likely to have money lying around, but I think that's mostly a question of demonstrating value. People will buy it if they think it's worth it.
I could see this kind of a business working. I don't like the yearly subscription since I would only want one that I really like, not 50 meh styles. All the examples on the front page scream "21 year old hipster designer" and those actually seem to be all the templates right now.
This is really a cultural issue. In the US, pictures are a big no-no but in my experience with LATAM and European companies, pictures are common if not expected.
Design wise, the picture is a good opportunity for visual appeal.
Picture on resume is not mandatory. Users always can just to leave picture field blank and on resume it will shows default dummy/universal photo for all genders.
I don't think anyone would want a placeholder in their resume, but I agree that this being an online version, not having a picture is mostly an annoyance (you can easily find someones picture online).
Cultural point maybe. I know that I want resumes I receive to have a picture: much easier for me after an interview to remember who was who if I have a photo to remind me.
Why? Those are online resumes. Why they cannot be with pictures. These online resumes are for online presence. There is also print version of each resume.
Even for average guys, the picture is a welcome visual element in resumes. US-centric resumes tend to be very wall-of-texty because of the "ALL RESUMES SHOULD BE X PAGES LONG" (X in {1,2}) policy forbidding the use of "wasteful" whitespace.
Perhaps a nice direction for a project such as this is to become more of a marketplace, similar to what you have with WordPress templates. This would mean more template diversity with the ease of use that you probably already provide with your CMS.