Show HN: Resume maker with no sign-up or subscription
luckyresumemaker.com
luckyresumemaker.com
Resumes aren't memorable when there's a picture but rather when they are well written.
In Germany, for example, a resume without a photo will most likely not even get considered.
I'm curious about the reason.
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.
Not saying I necessarily believe that happens, but I really appreciate the logic of your point/question.
Thinking that it might as well go the other way seems to imply that there's just something weird about names, and that people don't really have racial biases. But this charitable view of the world has been shown false time and again.
In any case, a version of the study with live people, instead of photos, has also been done, and, not surprisingly, shown the same result:
> Other studies have also examined race and employment. In a 2009 study, Devah Pager, Bruce Western and Bart Bonikowski, all now sociologists at Harvard, sent actual people to apply for low-wage jobs. They were given identical résumés and similar interview training. Their sobering finding was that African-American applicants with no criminal record were offered jobs at a rate as low as white applicants who had criminal records.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-stic...
Photos are completely unnecessary and mostly nuisance IMO.
The rationale is simple and pragmatic: employers want to find the gold nuggets, but snowflake resumes scream lack of experience and can easily be filtered out in early stages of the funnel.
Inexperienced people often make these intricate resumes w/ fancy templates, but all that tells me is they're fluffing it up to compensate for lack of content - sometimes in a quest for beauty, they don't even spell out their contact information!
My advice to those people is to go talk to a recruiting agency or a local job board. They can help find and correct all of those faux-pas, catered to the local market expectations.
I suffered with 10 years of Indian recruiter spam in my voicemail. They're never getting my phone again.
If you old and look younger than you are, they are an even better idea since they distract from your age.
LinkedIn is still my go-to resource for job hunting, but I want to vomit a bit when I see people trying to turn it into Facebook. Get your validation somewhere else, and let me have a website where I can look for a job.
In truth, I really don’t know what to think about photos for LinkedIn. Both sides of the argument are compelling.
I don't have a photo on my resume and have never seen one used in the US, but my LinkedIn photo (which I assume everyone involved in hiring sees) is carefully chosen to represent the mix of attributes (friendlynes, confidence, curiosity, and many others) that I think are relevant for roles I go after. Surely my photo also 'reveals' my enthinicy and gender - but my name does too.
I had a lawyer friend who said that photos were expected on resumes and websites, something she hated despite the fact that she felt she benefited from it. Part of it is that firms and clients want to see a professional image, but yeah, it also brings in all the usual gender/age/ethnic biases.
To answer "why wouldn't they play that card" - plenty of women know their looks/gender might get them in the door when it wouldn't otherwise, and feel like imposters even if they are highly qualified and a great match for the position.
They may want to work at the kind of company that hires them because of their accomplishments, not one that says "oh, we need more women." One reason: a company that hired them because they were a woman may have done so just to fill a quota and there's no genuine interest in them succeeding and advancing...whereas another employer might see their talent and work to help them succeed. Or a company that hires just to fill quotas might put women in positions they aren't actually qualified for. Etc.
First time I heard about "minority quotas" I just didn't believe it. But then YouTube got sued for doing exactly that [0]
Do quotas actually help minorities? To me it sends the signal that everyone from a top N school who is a white or asian male is here because he's qualified. The others who knows? Maybe the recruiter was so close to hitting his incentive that he lowered the bar.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positio...
I'm a senior executive with impeccable credentials: top 1 bank, top 3 engineering school, ivy league undergrad, executive at Series A firm. top notch names on my resume.
Except on LinkedIn, the majority of inbounds i get are recruiters trying to get me to join in as entry level. I'm not speaking about mass-mailings, i'm speaking about entire screening conversations where they are telling me about this "promising" entry level role. Occasionally, i'll get a good recruiter pitching me a VP or CTO role (as I would expect) but these are rare.
My white friends say they are constantly pitched with VP and Director roles.
I have only once been pitched a position that was equivalent or higher than my highest sounding job title, and the recruiter responded with "Sorry, we reached out to you by mistake."
This is because they'd like to avoid any liability for any kind of bias, so they make it an across-the-board policy.
Source: I'm a recruiter and have worked with over 400 companies, of which about 20 have this policy.
Except when they are the standard in a culture other than yours. A CV without a picture in France is a bit suspect and it will leave the feeling of something incomplete.
When you search for "photo cv" in French, you will see a lot of sites that start with claiming that the photo is not compulsory, cannot be required and that the lack of a photo cannot be a reason not to assess your CV. Just this shows that the reality is that it is expected.
A lot of discussions is around discrimination. If your name sounds [put your most feared origin here], you can hide the picture as much as possible but this will not make a 12th generation Brittany-ion (no idea how someone from the Brittany region is called).
Then there is the address which also reveals a lot and at the end of the day the fact that you did not put a picture is likely to be against you.
Personally I'm fine with that since my end goal in life is not about bending over for others to gain advantages or avoid disadvantages.
I never use Web cam at work for example. I'm usually the only person not on camera in phone conferences. I'm sure it's a disadvantage but I'm somehow still doing fine. :)
If you are unique, sure, you can have an extravagant and highly exotic CV. It is not the reality of many people, especially when someone needs to ask whether they should put a picture or not.
As a matter of fact, photos are getting less and less common on CV's in France.
As for the photos, i am not sure how many CVs you see, but the ~100-200 I saw in tech across the last 5 years all had a picture (except a very few ones, which I noticed). I do not pay much attention to the picture because of experience (I am horribly bad on pictures, and some of the best people I worked with were extravagant), but this is me.
There is nothing legal or illegal there, just a matter of tradition and therefore not having one makes you stad out, not necessarily in a good way.
I also am often reading CVs and they never have a picture. Most of them don't even have a name, just initials.
I think I never saw a CV without a name, and rarely one without a photo. This is in high tech.
That way we make our choice based only on the person's experiences (thi also prevents us from contracting this person directly, which is fair game I think).
The only time we see names is if the person does not come from a recruiting company, and even then there are not pictures.
If you are the same 'colour' as the place your applying to (i.e. if that's relevant) it might help.
If you are physically attractive (but not too attractive) - it can help.
Basically - it allows a kind of discrimination which usually we don't want ... unless you think you're going to be on the positive end of that!
And I beg to disagree with 'memorable' - we are designed to remember faces - not resumes.
While maybe not so 'impressionable' - a nice photo definitely helps the memory.
It also adds a human connection.
For technical roles, it might not make much of a difference but for almost all non-technical roles, it will probably help if you have a 'charismatic face'.
That said, I have rarely seen a photo on a resume. Most people have LinkedIn now so hiring folks have a photo that way regardless. The only place I consistently see photos is on professional services (consulting etc.) "resumes" which are usually more a blurb about you and the kind of projects you've worked on. In that case they are standard, and they would be on a lawyer or accountants website.
There's 0 Haskell episodes so far, you'd be the first one!
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.
Just a data point
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.
I think it's fairly self-deluding to simply think you can choose not to let an unconscious bias influence you.
Because once you accept you are susceptible to a bias, and you know that a person fits that bias, -what do you do-? You can ask "if this person was (not this bias) what would I do", but -can you be sure-? Do you have an exactly equivalent data point to compare against? Of course not; everyone is a bit unique. Can you be certain, if you pass on the person, it was due solely to the heuristics you've built up around resume and etc, and not you reinterpreting them through your bias? Can you be certain, if you hire a person, it was solely due to the heuristics you've built up around resume and etc, and not you overcompensating to try and account for your bias?
It's going to influence you. It -may- not change the outcome, but if you aren't concerned about that, no matter what steps you take, then you're deluding yourself.
It must have had a valuable survival benefit when we were hunter-gatherers but probably not so much today.
To be honest, not even sure how free will would work in theory.
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.
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 :-)
Collecting data comes to mind first. If it's not the case, I would recommend to say this explicitly on the page somewhere.
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.
+ 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
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.
I'm sure it's important for the first page to be concise and eye-catching. But why would more info be bad?
I often find the just degree too vague and job titles aren't representative. So if you filled the page with that info I find that isn't helpful, either.
Additionally, the ability to summarize a highly technical and detailed topic down to a very short "executive review" is an important and sought-after job skill. Keep it short and include only the best results of your work.
My big advice is not to take resume length guidelines literally. Crafting a resume requires balancing terseness and completeness. Terseness out respect for the reader, completeness to ensure your candidacy is well represented.
It is an art to capture your essence concisely. Someone in the thread said they only list the company and the tools they use, which to me is a huge mistake. If you just say something like "Developed in Node, React, CSS" you give the reader no idea of your actual contribution. It could mean "made tweaks to existing system based on explicit direction from a product person" or it could mean "Drove re-design of the system in these technologies, achieving X improvement in performance, Y improvement in maintenance cost. Partnered with business SMEs to develop requirements, and ensured high technical standards on the team." The second is a much more senior/desirable candidate and if you are that but don't capture these ideas in your resume, you won't stand out.
On the other hand I have seen resumes where each job has a half-a-page narrative description. Almost universally, these descriptions are actually filled with job/company specific terms that are totally meaningless to anyone outside of that company. I am strongly biased to not hire anyone with such a resume because it's a sign that the person's communication ability/relevance filter is low.
Anyway, as a practical guide, I do advise people to shoot for a terse 1 or max 2 page resume, BUT if you find yourself cutting out really important points to fit the space, then don't do that.
Privacy policy TL;DR
We DO NOT collect your resume data and it NEVER leaves your device. The service DOES NOT contain ads, trackers and other such garbage.
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!"
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.
It'd be a really nice addition if the tool could output the resume data in other supporting formats (plain text, Markdown, JSON, etc.)
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).
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.