I had a hard time getting a first job, especially as I am not good at the sort of bullshit (for want of a better word) you need to put in job applications.
I treated the task as a full time job handing in many applications per week. The ones that asked for a CV were easy (but generally had a low chance of a reply). Or a CV and cover letter (similar reply rate). Then you had the corporates, who wanted an individually tailored example of when you showed leadership, or solved a difficult problem despite many setbacks. (These were a pain in the arse to fill out, but generally I got a far better response rate from these applications). I hated them. That why I studied computers and science. But for every 9 bad days where I couldn't think up anything to put as a good response top these stupid questions, I had a good day, where the "bullshit" would flow. I would come up with a good answer. Not lying, but "bigging up" what I actually had done, and making it sound good.
Once you have done 3 or 4 of those applications forms, the questions they ask aren't so different. So guess what, you can reuse the answers. OK, the answers will need tweaked, but that's what I did. I had a file where I had 20 of these questions, and looked for the most similar and tweaked it to the job description.
Now. I managed that with a text file from what I remember. Is there really a need for an app to do this?
Also, polish beyond a certain level is a negative for me. It's sort of like Calvin and Hobbes and the clear plastic binder: http://stephen-coley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Cal...
Basically, the harder something is marketed to me, the more I assume that the marketing is a necessary cover-up for a flawed product. There's a reason McDonald's spends circa 10% of revenues on advertising. Hint: it's not because there are a lot of people in the US who haven't heard of McDonald's yet.
That's an interesting comment. I understand where you're coming from to a certain extent, and I'm not going to suggest that hiring is easy, but you can only be so skeptical or cynical about candidates by nature before it starts to negatively impact your process.
I'm of the opinion that a candidate who has taken the time to put together an impressive, polished showcase of their work, where the showcase is something he or she built (not a third party SaaS service), should start out as a more appealing prospect than a candidate who isn't trying to knock your socks off.
If it's a choice between somebody who's focused on making great stuff because that's what the company needs and somebody who is crafting another showpiece for their trophy case, I'll take the one who's less excited about self-promotion. Some of the best people I've hired are terrible at marketing, so I feel like my anti-marketing bias is a way of leveling the playing field.
"flick" makes me think you're seeing this in a mobile context.
I'd be curious to hear more on the market research you did that suggested pursuing a causal, mobile model for consumption of job applicants' materials.
And my latent tech writer OCD-ness compels me to suggest dropping "flick" from your vocabulary in favor of
[...] with actual evidence that you can interact with.I still think, however, that as a potential employer I would have a hard time getting over the bias of thinking "oh, he just used a tool to generate this." Not sure how you could escape that outside of allowing users to heavily customize the appearance and experience, as well as self-host the end product and remove any links or references back to Accredible.