Ask HN: Website Idea, Online resumes done right
Backstory: August of last year, after a year and a half from my last startup closing down, I decided it was time to get back to work. The time had been spent with my family, and watching my son in his first year. It was a good time. But getting back to work would mean getting a job, and at the time, I was more concerned about a solid pay check. Obviously, in this economic climate, it was a bit scary, but I had ample experience and was confident I could land a job. I went to work. I had to create a resume, and then get it up online. I bought the domain name, and put it up there. Spent quite a bit of time getting it right. In the end, this is what allow my current employer to find me. A search on Google came up with my resume as the first result, provided the proper contact information, and made it easy for them to get in contact with me. After interviews and negotiations, I got the job.
My brother is in a situation like this as well. He's part of the inspiration for this project. The idea is that I had to spend time putting together the website, the design, even as simple as it was, and making sure it got up on the search engines. None of this was difficult for me to do, but for someone like my brother, he doesn't even realize it's something he should do. A resume on Monster.com isn't geared toward the masses and SEO. It's geared toward Monster.com searching.
Since leaving school, I've gotten all my jobs because someone knew me somehow and recommended me in some capacity. Of those, 3 of them also included what I did online. One, in fact, included me walking into the interview with a stack an inch thick of what the interviewer had found online about me.
The reality is, most people get jobs through word of mouth. Someone knows someone, or their is some common ground. At least the good jobs.
So, the idea for the site is bred from some simple ideas:
1. It's good to have a website dedicated to your resume. To promoting yourself. You want a search result with your name to return your resume, your own personal advertisement, rather than some random Facebook page.
2. You want to always be promoting yourself. The job market has changed, and you want to be out there. If someone is interested in searching for you, you don't want them to have to go searching for more information. You want that information to be easily found.
3. Most people don't have the time or energy to invest in creating an highly optimized online resume. Couple this with the cost of having to buy hosting, and the price can get a bit high just for a place to put an online resume.
4. People need jobs. In the current market, job hunting has become even more important. People are becoming aware that it's important to always be prepared to find a job. If you aren't actively pursuing a better job, you're hurting yourself.
5. For far too long, job hunting has been employer-centric. Advertise a job, receive resumes. People are coming to accept that advertising their own skills is becoming important. Social networks are, in a way, teaching people to put their lives online in an orderly fashion; a personal resume.
6. Employers focus too much on accepting resumes instead of getting what they want. It's difficult for employers to find people with the skills they need on their own, without going through an agency. Even then, it's still focused on hiring unemployed people or people that are actively looking.
These are pretty broad ideas, but rather simple. They describe the problems, the issues at hand. The service seeks to solve these problems in various ways, to service not only the potential employees, but the employers as well.
1. Simple to use. The site is focused on providing an efficient, professional resume. You fill in the blanks. The goal is to be fast, painless, and get up something good, quick.
2. The service is meant to be long term. Year-long terms here. The idea goal is for the resume to be a "living resume." It updates itself, or you update it, with the current status. It's smart. A year goes by, and 5 years of experience becomes 6, for example. You are encouraged to update.
3. Everything is optimized. The page itself is optimized for search engines. The design will be optimized for easy viewing. Easy printing. Easy sharing. SEO will not just be on the resume itself, but also for searching. Need a Rails Developers in Atlanta Georgia? We'll make that easy to find.
4. You're always promoting yourself. The goal is to make a search for your name appear at or near the top of the search result. This is, after all, your page with your professional information.
5. No ads. I mean, the entire site is basically an advertisement, each page for a particular person, if you want to get technical, but no flashing banner ads, text ads, etc.
6. Low cost. Pay a yearly fee, something reasonable.
There is a lot of potential for expanding the services offered. Being able to put up a portfolio would be important. Pictures of yourself if you wanted. Customization through CSS.
Standards would be important. Exporting contact information as well as the resume itself. All the data would be used and indexed on. Searching and pages could be made on anything.
Anyway's, that's a brief overview of the idea. There are tons of other specifics, and other ideas, as well as ways to go about marketing it and getting users. My questions are simple:
1. Would you pay for a service like this? 2. Do you know others that would pay for a service like this? 3. Have you ever built an online resume/portfolio? 4. Would this service benefit professionals in industries outside web developers? 5. Would businesses outside web-based/focused companies use such a means to find employers?
I'm sure there are other questions, I'll have, and frankly, you don't need to answer these questions point by point. Just wanted to give you an idea of some of the initial questions I might have. Any input at all is encouraged.
As a final point, I've searched online for a service like this, and while I've found a few that promote the same basic thing, I haven't found anything that really capture what I would want in a service. In tech-terms: a Web 2.0 Online Resume site.
I've put a lot of thought into this, played around with some initial designs, hacked up some code, but at this stage, I'm more eager to gain some initial feedback before investing heavily into this idea. So, have at it.
And thanks for reading.