Tell HN: My experience with a "Resume 2.0" site.

I think your visuals could be a lot better than what you have now. To me, you have an odd choice of colors and fonts. I also hate reading thin columns of text, your layout is very taxing for the reader because they must scroll up and down for every column they want to read. That might be a design flaw.

So a bit more work into it may be needed.

*Also, getting called out on the TemplateMonster...hopefully you're the original designer? Not sure what to think otherwise.

Template monster? Where is the call out? Is there a template like this somewhere? The design is 100% original, although very simple so a similarity to a template (or several) would not entirely surprise me. As for colors, it was a ColourLovers palette and a nod to their pallete creation interface.

Thanks for the feedback, though. Will definitely take into account.

Hi, I'm not a designer, but here it goes.

1/ The vertical coloured stripes look good on the "content" part, but not on the top, as a background to the "I love ..." text.

2/ You "cut" the page horizontally below the "I love ..." text, but this seems to be dissonant with the vertical stripes. Maybe the top part should have a different background color?

3/ The vertical stripes don't go all the way down, it doesn't look right to me.

4/ The screenshots move up on mouseover, but it doesn't feel right.

5/ The actual content of your "Resume 2.0" is still too resumey. "ColourLovers.com has been a part of my creative process blah blah... I've been designing, building and writing blah blah". I'm not saying it's bad, in fact it's probably very good, it's just not that different from a regular old resume.

6/ I think that a website-as-a-resume is an all or nothing deal. I mean, the person either sees it and says "yeah I want this guy", but if not, I don't think they'll go to the trouble of actually finding your resume PDF link on the site, printing it and adding it to their stack of regular submissions in whatever system they're using.

7/ Shouldn't the "one-page resume" link to a PDF? I think it's broken, I can't get to your actual PDF resume to print it!

8/ As another commenter mentioned, you're using Wordpress to generate one page? It's even got an empty RSS feed =)

Hope it helps, good luck with your job hunting!

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I'll take this stuff into account for the code on this I end up re-purposing.

I have a gripe with this whole "resume 2.0" thing.

It's not about a flashy design. It's not about specifically targeting the company you want to work for.

It's about standing out from the crowd. Being special. Once everyone and their mother start creating a "resume 2.0", it will become a commodity, and designers and developers will need to devise new ways of attracting employer attention.

I totally agree. The first couple were novel but now we're seeing these on HN every week or so. The novelty has worn out.

Yep, pretty soon you'll have to have a resume app in the app store. ;)

That's a joke, but I guarantee we'll see one soon. It's probably already happened and hasn't been well publicized. I also recall reading a story about someone who targeted a resume promoting Facebook ad at a single person (their desired employer's creative director) in New York if I'm not mistaken.

It's an amazing time to be in publishing.

Novelty? Psh. This is old, old news in the form of a fad.

First of all, I think its a great effort. I'd keep refining it over time. I agree that maybe you would want to shift the content to a less resume-y look at your skills and work. But using HTML5 tech is cool. Targeting a specific employer is great but pull down the last one. Also a little more research into specific companies toolsets would be worth your time (ie. 37signals is a rails house, love sass and coffee-script and yeah, I would bet PHP is not at the top of their skills list (but that is just an opinion))

Take a look at prosite.com for a great way to develop a portfolio site. Consider connecting your site to your git repo or dribble, behance, or forrst accounts in a more visual way. I didn't see it here (I certainly didnt want to read it to find it).

I'm sure you will end up exactly where you want to go. Keep pushing for colorlovers. persistence is everything. Especially if you really want it.

And I see a small side business in this for you. I'm sure there are quite a few people (non-techies) that would kill for their own resume 2.0.

lots of nice (IMHO) touches like embedded web fonts, shadows, text shadows gradients, media queries, transforms etc.

Using a ton of different effects is very risky if you can't get them to work in unison. The first thing I noticed on your site was the glow on the text, making it fuzzy and hard to read. Also, the columns feel like an expanded Kuler palette, which doesn't really work well when used as the entire background. Overall the site just doesn't feel very polished.

In terms of re-purposing your design, if the latter company (or companies) finds that out, I don't think they'd be very impressed at all, as it shows a lack of effort. If you want to save yourself from having to create multiple top-notch resume sites, just make a really slick looking portfolio site that's not targeted to a specific company and give that link to everyone.

Yeah, it was kind of a shot in the dark. That's definitely what I'll end up doing.

The resume site is ok. The narrow columns are truly annoying, provide bad user experience (which is not good for a resume site, and especially not good for someone looking for ui/ux positions), and promotes horrible readability.

On a resume site, especially for companies such as colourlovers and 37signals, it's all about first impressions. You've got to include something that stands out and really catches the persons eye. Just because it's a "resume 2.0" site doesn't mean they're going to give a damn.

The header font just looks out of place to me, I don't think it's the font itself. I think it's the fact that it has a glow about the text which spans across the different color columns.

One thing that kills me about this site is the fact that your portfolio sites DESTROY this site in terms of design. Your portfolio looks great, this site should have just as good, if not way a better, design.

I would declutter it (use more whitespace for sure), tone down the colors (choose another color scheme, they don't work well in my opinion), and definitely focus way more on your portfolio than you are. My eye is drawn more to the "Hi my name is unicorn" picture than to your portfolio. That's not a good thing. Designers need to know how to draw user focus.

Is there a reason that "Hi my name is unicorn" image is there? I would personally leave stuff like that out of your resume. Just because it's "resume 2.0" doesn't mean it's ok to steer away from the professional direction.

I apologise if this came off in a bad way. I truly am not meaning to bash your site in any way. I'm just trying to provide feedback and my opinion (that's all it is, don't take it to heart). I'm also at work trying to type this out as fast as I can.

Good luck with finding a job if you decide on moving on from your current position.

as a side not to my comment. This is one of the best employer targeted (37signals actually) resume sites I've seen. You can learn a lot about what ui/ux employers want to see on a site like this.

http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/

I don't think repurposing your design is a good way to get ux/design job. You'll need a custom design to fit like a glove, see loren's " I want to work for Airbnb ". The template monster thing is a problem. Second your site feels too much like a resume. I think writing and content should have more of a cover letter + resume feel to it. Highlight all the benefits you'll bring to the company.

I concur. I liked Loren's site. That's what actually inspired me to take a crack at this.

As a UI/UX guy I don't think the site is particularly user friendly.

Examples would be nice.

I have been trying applying for jobs in a very targeted way. I have been doing personalized introductions to screencasts or sending links to things they've specifically asked for. It hasn't payed off yet, but I believe it is the correct path for me.

To me resume 2.0 websites will hurt you more than it will help. You're wasting time creating something you're not getting paid to do. And in the end it adds no value whatsoever to your overall portfolio. Why not spend that time refining your portfolio instead?

Also if you like your job, then chances are your employer like you too. You really should consider asking for better compensation instead of jumping ship onto a different company. I certainly hope you talked to your employer first before announcing on the Internet that you're not satisfied with the pay...

I have a close and very honest/open relationship with my bosses. I'm not super worried about it or I certainly wouldn't have posted this.

As for the "wasting your time" on the resume 2.0 thing, I kind of agree and kind of don't. I learned a lot during this project, as I always do when I build something with functionality that I haven't had to implement before, so I don't think it's a waste. yes, I'm not getting paid, but honing your craft never seems wasteful to me.

Disagree with your opinion on resume 2.0.

Resume landing pages are marketing plays: they're targeted advertisements meant to get you attention.

Given 10 applicants of equal talent, who do you choose to give your time and attention to? This is where one person's extra time and effort helps them stand out. They also aren't huge time investments, and seem to have a good cost/benefit ratio.

So much for creativity and art and open source. the resume 2.0 is definitely a new trend but it is not going to be saturated by any sense. It clearly shows what one is capable of doing without risk to the company looking at you. It is doing the work, to get the work. Any founder here would be happier with someone that did this than someone that cranked out a word doc.

Hello Wade, your resume really stands out! I'd like to ask your permission to use it as a template for my free resume builder app -> http://www.cvstash.com. It will be included with the free templates users can choose from, with a backlink to your site (or this particular resume page) so others can also get in touch with you. The site is completely free service for job hunters, like you and me, without ads or anything. Let me know what you think ;-)

I think the concept of online portfolios have been around for quite a while now. These are what I call Resume 2.0's http://mashable.com/2011/01/17/tips-video-resumes/

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't look good enough. The header especially is ugly. A glance and your application will go in the bin. You should work on your visual skills.

the proper spelling is 'résumé', not 'Resumé'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9

Doh! Thanks!

your colors (grays and reds) don't work for me and they are distracting. lighten up!

http://i.imgur.com/HrRuJ.png

That's a well known TemplateMonster template. Also, you're using Wordpress.

The resume site was built on WordPress (somewhat unnecessarily in the projects final iteration it turns out - hindsight) because Clourlovers was hiring for WP devs. A few things that were in at the start that would've actually taken advantage of the platform were dropped. There is other work in my folio that does take full advantage of the platform and really pushes it to its limits. (Although it seems that around HN WP's name is mud more often than not.)

As for the template monster thing and the PKDcure.org design, that design is 100% original and was part of a 9 month roll out for a huge corporate client with usability testing and extensive UX planning etc, etc... Any similarity is coincidence. The design in question was worked on by a team of designers for months so it's ironic/depressing that there's apparently a template out there for it that can be had for a few bucks (I'm assuming). Although there's literally no way it's exactly the same, PKDcure.org is a 400 page site with 10-15 unique page layouts.

Can I get a link to the template of which you speak?

Wired is using WordPress, too.

I think here, should be proof for such a statement. That was a dick move.