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Show HN: Pitchdeck Inspired Resume

resume.timsegraves.com

21 pointstimsegraves28 comments

Hey Tim,

I'm a little confused by the two different colored bars (blue and gray) in the skills section of your resume. What is the difference between them?

Also, it may be nice to include your name in the fixed header on the page. I think it's more important to constantly see your name rather than the navigation circles, especially if some people will simply scroll down the page rather than click on each circle.

Although people have said that resumes are no longer relevant, I'd still offer the viewers the option to print or download a standard resume from your site. Just cover your bases.

I was also confused by the bar colours.

The top is "expertise" and the bottom is "how often I use it". Not clear, for sure.

Ditto. I would include a clearer legend somewhere near the graph.

Same here. I had to view source and see that it was expertise and frequency.

Instead of being confused by the different colored bars, it caught my interest because I didn't see any legend explaining it.

After about 15 seconds of studying it, I deduced that what it must mean because of the blue text color of "beginner / expert" at top and grey text color of "rarely / everyday" at the bottom - although those color clues could be a bit more pronounced. The top and bottom placement of the labels also helped.

Some might think it lacking usability; but after figuring it out, others might think "smart".

If you think about the purpose of a resume, it's to provide your potential employer with a snapshot of your skills and experience. This presentation method is probably the most inefficient way to do it.

The reason folks recommend resumes be a one-pager is because it's the best way to quickly digest information and see if you're going to be a good fit.

If you're going to use the web as the medium for your resume, make it something like a one-page scroller with the ability to easily jump between sections, minimizing the animations and maximizing readability.

Additionally, I'm not sure who you're shooting for as far as a potential employer, but I'm personally turned off by the "Oh Hai!" It just makes me think you'll spend half your day surfing Reddit.

Apart from "Oh Hai" I like it. Do you really need to associate yourself with a meme like that? In my experience, meme-loving people aren't very interesting to be around in real life, and that opening statement caused me to instantly jump to a lot of conclusions about you that are most likely incorrect.

Agreed. If I were an HR guy, I'd reach for the X in the corner the moment I saw "Oh, Hai!".

Yeah, that was sort of the point of that. I wanted to scare off certain types of companies. I may end up removing it though just to clean things up a bit. The feedback I received on it was about 50/50.

Definitely understandable. To me, "Oh Hai" comes across as unprofessional, not laid back (which is what I assume you're going for.) The "Hi; I'm Tim." seems to work a lot better in that regard.

Personally I'd go with a somewhat better photo. It doesn't need to be a standard resume picture with you in a suit. Just something that isn't clearly cropped from a random party snapshot.

Tim it looks like you used our (Dress Rush) online pitch deck as inspiration... very cool.

http://investors.dressrush.com

Did you use the jQuery plugin we built too?

http://dressrush.com/blog/post/12506021124/dressrush-online-...

Good luck with the job hunt!

Yes Aaron, thanks for the inspiration and the great plugin. I hope you guys do great!

Nice job on the resume. It's unfortunate the applicant systems preferred by big companies (Taleo, Brassring, etc) do not give candidates a channel through which to differentiate themselves in a creative way as you have done. Of course there are ways to bypass the process entirely using social channels, but that doesn't scale from a systemic standpoint. I'd love to see someone invent a better system.

True, but it also depends on what you are looking for. This seems like the right tool for the job.

He states, "The ideal company would be a small, rapidly growing startup with a team of super smart hackers."

I think resumes like this are nice to show off your front-end design capabilities, but it takes a long time to get relevant information out of them, as opposed to glancing at a black-and-white single-sided 8x11 sheet of paper. You still need something that people can look at and instantly make a decision as to whether or not they want to dig deeper into you.

Thanks for all of the feedback already. I agree that paper resumes won't be going away any time soon so I'll definitely need one of those if I pull the trigger. I also agree on the profile photo and the experience graph. I'll try and get those cleaned up.

@Feanim, thanks for the bigger image. I couldn't find one so I had to stretch it a bit.

There is something about the progress bars (in the 'languages/syntax expertise levels' section) that just doesn't work visually. Actually it does work, but I just had to find one area for your improving it - as to offer some feedback.

Very clean and good job.

I've been debating leaving my current job (4 years post acquisition) for a smaller startup. I decided to create something a little different after all of the talk recently of resumes no longer being relevant. I'd love any feedback.

I think this is a great way to go. And any company that only accepts standard resumes that have to go through an HR department is a company you probably don't want to work at. So if your goal is to work at a smaller startup, then this seems a lot better than a resume.

I love this approach because it demonstrates what you can do. But, as others have said, I would redesign the "other skills/tools" page. I think the two scales are nice, but it needs to be more obvious upon first glance what I'm looking at. And maybe more compact.

I like it, good job!

p.s. you should use a bigger macvim image http://macin.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/macvim-7-2-icon.png

I thought blue and gray bar graph was awesome. It took me just a second to figure out what the two colors represented. I also love the fact he didn't put a facebook link.

I built mine the other week, my first time building a website: http://www.angusthompson.com/

DOA in the US corporate world because of the headshot.

If you can't find a job without a snazzy online resume, then you do not have saleable skills.

This undoubtedly seems harsh, but go do something useful and live your life.

From his listed skills he clearly can find a job, it's a matter of finding a job you want to work at with a culture that will let you enjoy the life you live. You have that option when you are in high demand.

Thanks loceng, that's exactly right. I haven't applied for a single job yet but just thought I'd try something a little different this time around. I currently manage a team of software architects and I've probably conducted over 100 phone and in-person interviews in the last 2 years. I can tell you that the resume (online or paper) never means that much.

Until you talk to someone you just never know. I've seen crappy resumes that turned out to be strong candidates and great resumes where they didn't make it past the first 5 basic questions.

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