Show HN: Built my resume as an interactive website, version-controlled on Github

I'm sorry but I don't get it. What's interactive about it?

It looks like a fairly regular resume to me except for the fact that it's rendered as HTML, but that's not really something new. Sure, it's actually built dynamically with a few PHP functions, but the way each element is built could be smarter (e.g. you have HTML markup in the function's arguments sometimes which seems to beat the purpose a bit).

I'm not trying to be a downer but I was expecting something different and I feel I'm missing something.

If I were to do something like that, I would probably do it in Markdown with Jekyll. Right now, your index.php mixes a lot of presentation with content and I feel that one benefit of Markdown+Jekyll is that you have a readable Markdown file that can be made into a nice looking static HTML page.

First off, I am fifty years old, so I'm fond of traditional phrases like Curriculum Vitae. That being said... I suspect many people may find it a bit stuffy. Also, I don't think that you can have it both ways: If you use old-fashioned words, you should present it on high-quality paper, lovingly typeset. It strikes me as a little out of place on an interactive web site. JM2C, I'm not sure how you could meaningfully A/B test it.

Second, if you are seeking a programming job, a program is obviously a portfolio piece. Am I correct in assuming that were I to hire you for a project, your preferred approach would be to mix HTML with PHP code that in turn embedded HTML in strings?

If that's what you want to suggest, this is the right approach. If you want to present different options, I would put them to work in your résumé even if they might be a little overkill for your needs.

Shameless plug, but I used a jQuery timeline plugin to create my CV, since I found regular CV's boring. It's not that detailed, but it's less dull in my eyes. Still need o add my LinkedIn profile that will serve as the boring version. Ps. Doesn't look great on mobile yet..

http://www.samgranger.com/cv/

I still need to change a lot and I might end up taking a completely other approach. But I want to make it as interactive as possible. Probably will end up writing my own plugin.

My old CV: http://www.samgranger.com/old_cv/

If we're doing feedback on version-controlled-via-Github "interactive" resumes, my I present mine?

http://judy.github.com/

- It parses via the hResume microformat, although I've never been able to fully test that. Is there a way to do that now?

- It prints quite nicely; there are hidden sections that allow me to move the contact information up top when you're printing it, more like a traditional resume.

- It's responsive. It should look good on any phone, tablet, or traditional display.

Please, please fork it if you like it. You have my full permission. (I mean, just don't copy the content, mmmkay?)

Like a few others, I too found it an average CV (It is something very similar to what I myself have, and I consider myself an average (-; ). To be honest, there are a few others in the comments that I gravitated towards more (It's a matter of personal preference of course). Sure, the Progress bar looks new, but others too have it on them -- see v33ra's response below.

You took a chance and placed it on HN for the self-promotion/ exposure/publicity and you were (luckily) rewarded. As you can see from the comments below, there are a lot of such efforts out there and all of them very commendable as well. They just didn't feel promotional enough like you, to place it here in the first place (and all of them had also placed it on GitHub before you, so open sourcing is not an USP either).

But I felt there there was neither anything "stand-out" about the CV, nor was there anything "interactive". It is a web resume like everyone else's and that's it.

For inspiration, here's what I would consider an impressive (as in look-and-feel) web CV and something close to an "interactive" web CV: http://www.chrisharrison.net/

My two bits.

I like mostly everything I see, but I have one criticism. The bars in the technical section seem arbitrary. It seems that a person viewing this CV wouldn't know quite what to take away from it. To start, I am assuming this is some sort of proficiency. The proficiency of a skill is relative only to the proficiency of the other skills which doesn't tell a person much. Is there some way that you can give the bar a baseline to work from. Something along the lines of 'no experience' -> 'comfortable' -> 'proficient'.

As a programmer, it never occurred to me that you would not keep your resume, be it online or on paper, under version control.

Your resume looks good, but I have some (personal) objections to it.

The bright background, most people seem used to it, but I don't like it; something more subtle (gray) could make the site look more smooth.

The free space, just because you can scroll, it does not mean that you should waste screen estate like that; e.g. on a 23" screen, almost half of the screen is occupied by your name.

The skill bars are a controversial topic. I am considering them for my resume, too, but to me setting the values seems rather arbitrary.

Section priorities, visually the skill bars take up a huge amount of space, yet the projects section (which is more important, because it's providing proof) looks like some background noise due to its size and different background color.

I think it's a good start and can become a great online resume!

It's always easier to judge other people's work, so you are free to punch back, you'll find my resume at http://me73.com (WIP).

PS: If I was in the position of deciding whether to hire you or not, I wouldn't; given your experience section, you already seem to be actively holding 7 positions, how could you have any time left for my business?

Good one.

Sometime back, I designed my resume on similar lines. I used hResume microformats and some CSS goodies too.

Here's the live resume: http://veerasundar.com/resume/ and a blog post explaining the design: http://veerasundar.com/blog/2012/06/redesigning-my-resume-wi...

Great to see a fellow Wash U student on here - nice work. One thing - is there any way to export it as a pdf?

I know this kind of defeats the purpose, but some people/companies may still want to print these things out, or at least have them on file where they have a static copy (as in it won't change automatically), so having control over what that pdf looks like might be useful.

Just a minor point though, love the design.

awesome job! Looks great, just forked :) Also I was looking at the upcoming features list, and I think definitely the pdf functionality would be cool (I'm thinking the fpdf lib - know a better one?). Another idea for a feature would be to give this an REST api for xml, json, and you can then just make an appropriate call to it ( /resume.json, /resume.xml, etc). Again nice!!

Really cute, props on the originality. The general design is good (I loved the skills bars!), but your Experience sections looks a bit too wall-o-text. I can't imagine reading through all that.

If I were you I'd try reducing the word count as much as possible as well as applying a very very subtle background shade for each position to set them apart (or something similar to that).

Anyway, awesome stuff.

Cool idea. This is something I've wanted to do for a while. I'll have to fork this later for my own use.

Few things I noticed that could be improved. Your technical section isn't very clear on what the graphs mean. Do the bars mean the amount of time you've used that technology, the number of projects you've built with that technology, or your experience? It's creative, but it's hard for me to understand what they mean (especially relative to one another).

I also noticed that you didn't include a print CSS. Yeah, physical resumes are not great, but they won't go away for a while. It would be good to have a print CSS that replicates generally what print resumes looks like. Right now it doesn't look very good. It wouldn't be hard to fix.

On another design note, I think it would look better if the pill links didn't have a blue underline on hover.

1) If you're in the US like you say you are, this is a resume, not a CV. 2) The "website" link for Food Trucks Near Me does not work.

Also, I'm a bit baffled by these graphs. While they look nice, I'm not sure what they're conveying. Is there an endpoint for learning/competency (100%) like a bar graph would suggest? If anything, I think a pie chart might reflect your abilities better since it doesn't claim that a College Senior is 50% done/proficient/knows everything about Python or whatever (I don't claim that you're not awesome with Python but that's quite the bold claim, even for someone with many, many years of experience).

Otherwise, looks good and definitely beats a paper resume.

I like the way you outlined your skill levels using progress bars. I've always found it tough to describe how good you are with a certain programming language. Saying "proficient with Java, PHP, etc... doesn't really attest well to your skills.

I've read/heard that it's best to flip your experience with education unless you want to be viewed as someone entry-level. When education is the best thing you've done, sure, list that first. But when you've created things like an actual business, you want to highlight that first and foremost.

Like the inefficiencies of a call to action being hid at the bottom of a page, you want to highlight your best value proposition (most likely to be the most recent thing you've done) closest to the top.

Nice work, it looks really good.

One minor (and I mean really minor) design thought: in the section near the bottom "Selected Projects", there are grey buttons and blue buttons; in the close proximity of the blue buttons, the grey buttons sort of look like they are inactive or disabled, at first. I put my mouse over them and figured out they were indeed active links, but maybe someone non-technical might not do that.

I hope this catches on as a trend. A similar setup has worked great for me for some time now. Don't forget your print media specific styles though...

Your website - http://philipithomas.com - has exactly the same design as the - https://svbtle.com - network.

Are you part of that network (if so... how did you do it?) or are you just really copying on a grand scale?

This is very long and there is a lot of white space (hard to skim). I honestly would not enjoy having to read this, and the lengthy anti-skim style comes off as somewhat arrogant to me.

Resumes are typically one page, so you should really consider either supplementing this with a one-page version or shortening it.

The part I like is version-controlled on GitHub. Now if I can just 'git log' my employment history ...

I don't get it why you said it's interactive. But I like the simplicity of the design. I also built mine, but not in Github, well here http://jpbalb.in/resume.html

Just a thought though, is self picture important in the resume?

I'm confused about the date format. I'm British, and was expecting an American format (even though you confusingly call this a CV instead of a resume) but it looks like it's in British format. Perhaps you could remove the ambiguity by using "January 2012"?

Congrats on making Eagle. There are so few of us out there. </left_handed_shake>

By interactive do you mean you made a webpage for your resume? That's been a good idea (for tech/programming jobs) for years now.

Shameless example, mine: http://stephenballnc.com/resume/

If you are really that far along with your PHP skills, I don't think presenting an index.php as embedded HTML with a few string assisting PHP functions grants a lot of confidence to a knowledgeable employer about your skillset.

Isn't this kind of an over kill, i mean how often does one update their resume.

Great idea! I'm also working on an interactive resume, but havent finished or pushed the code to github yet. http://www.stevewight.com/resume

You inspired me to build out a personal website for my YC app.

Check it out here if you're interested: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4676920

Fantastic looking. Forked, and going to deal it with myself tomorrow!

I have my resume like this but I also made sure it is easy for others to make their own at my site's expense: http://www.cvstash.com

Cool to see somebody else who was @ startup weekend CoMo. I thought your idea was one of the better ones in terms of actually having a revenue plan. Are you still pursing it?

This is a nice start but you're missing a huge opportunity to show off your sites in a visual way. Why do you think outbound links are the best way to represent your work?

You founded two startups, you are an analyst for a VC fund, yet you are still "looking for employment after graduation"? Only on HN...

Also, to anyone who forks this and decides to use, you might want to remove the authors original google analytics!

Props for using CloudFlare.

Negative for the JavaScript error on the page. You need to load jquery before you load bootstrap.

It looks fairly average to me.. but it is great your getting exposure. I hope something good comes of it.

Live website: http://cv.philipithomas.com

This is awesome!

in your about section, why do you talk about yourself in third person?

bootstrap

I love those skill bars.

Because they say something meaningful, potentially, namely what you're relatively better or worse at, more or less experienced at. Without committing the sin of telling the world what your objectively absolute rating is in some supposedly global but in actuality undefined frame of reference.

Example: "I'm a 6/10 on Apples and an 8 on Oranges, and Bob over there says he's 9 on Apples and 1 on bananas. Turns out in actuality I'm way better at Apples than Bob, but Bob kicks most people's asses at bananas!"