Share This Post

28 Comments

1. 

   Aditya Singh May 12, 2011, 9:54 pm

   Your main competitor is LinkedIn.

    

   Your product is serving the same purpose which linkedIn does. Think of differentiation.

    

   I think the product needs a lot of work.

    

   Tip – Think what people DON’T GET on linkedin. Position your product right there. Marketing will then pick up quickly. You will get a strong point when you go to a VC.

2. 

   Syed Sameer May 13, 2011, 5:37 am

   Resumer was made simply to serve one purpose, that is to have an online resume that’s easy to create and share and looks presentable. (Nothing more nothing less – as of now) LinkedIn on the other hand serves different things, with slight overlap in the resume area.

    

   However I’ll agree that the product needs a lot of work – and that means fleshing it out a lot more, not necessarily in the direction of LinkedIn but I plan to implement a hiring / recruitment aspect to the site once the current resume building functionality has evolved further in terms of features and has a significant number of users.

    

   And I’ll definitely research LinkedIn a lot more and find out if there are any gaps or pain points still that I could tackle better. That’s a smart idea. 🙂

3. 

   Satish K May 13, 2011, 10:13 am

   The role of a marketing guy is not clear. Promoting website and driving audience to become a regular user are two different things. A marketing guy cannot do the latter, and very little in the former. 

    

   1. You haven’t defined clearly the problem you are solving. Once you have done that, you will be able to get traffic to your site.

    

   2. How do you propose to generate revenue? I would assume ads. Will that suffice ?

    

   3. Where will you use the funds raised?

    

   Work on an executive summary first, that will answer a lot of questions for you. You might also have to think out of the box and maybe tie-up with a brick-mortar firm in similar or complimenting space.

    

   And yes, at least most of us reviewed your site only from a GUI/user experience perspective. I can help you for free with the coding/integrating with other sites/linkedin part. (mail me at satish@ringa.in) The most critical piece is for you to find your USP.

    

   Cheers and all the best !

   Satish

    

    

    

    

4. 

   Syed Sameer May 13, 2011, 10:30 am

   The revenue model is that once we have a sizable number of resumes on the site, the next step would be to introduce a recruitment aspect to the site and create a simplistic & efficient system that allows recruitment / HR agencies paid access to our huge database to help with their recruitment needs.

    

   I believe advertising or things of that nature won’t bring in any significant revenue, the real value would be the data we have in the form of user created resumes.

5. 

   Syed Sameer May 13, 2011, 10:37 am

   1. Resumer solves the problem a lot of freshers and other working professionals have in having to create, maintain and sending out their resume repeatedly. Right now what you’d do is fire up your word processor, use a template and then spend anywhere from 10 – 20 minutes to half an hour+ creating your resume. Once that is done you have to upload / e-mail it repeatedly whenever you want to share it. With Resumer.me, you get a neat, presentable resume in a few minutes (significantly less than time spent in a word processor doing the same), and when you wish to share it, you simply share your Resumer URL (like https://resumer.me/syedsameer) – from where people can download it or forward it as an e-mail.

    

   2. See reply to ‘Yatin Mulay’ above.

    

   3. I’m sorry if I sound a little vague about the marketing part. Simply put I want users to sign up on the site and create their resume – as many as possible. I need a decent user base to move on with the next phase of the site (the recruitment / HR aspect) – Funds will be used in achieving this goal. (Acquisition of users through advertising / promotion)

    

   I’ve noted down your e-mail address and will contact you about the integration part once I get ahead with it. I really appreciate it – thanks 🙂

6. 

   Abey John May 13, 2011, 11:37 am

   Syed, email me: abey-at-clickmantra.in. I have limited time on my hands but I think you have a winner here. Lets hammer out a deal.

7. 

   Munish Goyal May 13, 2011, 11:37 am

   As a user and much looking to getting things made more simpler in this area,..i have following ideas..

    

   1. 1st thing is make it as easy as few clicks. this will reduce inertia and interest the users to join.

    – may be you give option to upload existing resume (majority has one). then parse out and auto-fill. this shouldn’t be tough, many job sites have similar feature.

    – then guide the user into making changes. filling all things on my own.. i (again as user) dont find it worthy, given that so many related services already exist serving similar (if not exactly) purpose.

    

   2. give templates. for different type of industries (few popular ones initially) , different career stages (the resume will be very different).

    

   guide the user into incrementally getting to his best artwork. (resume design 🙂 )

    

   3. finally dont give static share-able link. i may want to have timeout period on link validity (resume visibility) . suppose i am done with my search. now i dont want to be bothered by further calls.

    

   4. cover letter options, saving custom types of resume , each different set of applications.

    

   5. linkedin, naukri etc. integration .

    

   6. give option to submit resume to all popular job sites, may be create automatic user-id on each or some such easy integration. This will be of good value. 

    

   Infact, you can target students (with CV creation) as well, and submit CV to universities for internship, RA, higher studies application etc.

    

   This space is not crowded, you can quickly make a mark and attract students (later potential resumers).

    

   But you will have to add more value by distinctive features. 

    

   7. I guess, you dont want to be competing with naukri.com etc. rather be complimentary , as an assist tool. you are resume creator. not resume searcher. (which the job sites are already for). These is just my POV.

    

   then you may form an attractive ‘takeover’ target by some of these job sites, if you wish for that later.

    

   8. slowly bring everything ‘RESUME’ under you feature offerings.

   Find out more pain points in Resume/CV market, keep adding solutions for them.

    

   I think you will do better with viral marketing, rather than paid campaigns etc. And viral will happen if user finds real value.

    

   Best wishes for the endeavor.

   -Munish Goyal

    

8. 

   SanjoeTom Jose May 13, 2011, 1:15 pm

   Hey Syed,

    

   Good work with the website. I agree to what Munish said. Rather than a marketer, in my opinion, you need a partner who can help you figure out what can be your USP and work along with you to perfect those solutions (understand market, study existing services in market, revenue model etc).

    

   You might not become a professional networking site or resume database. Offer solutions for which there is a gap existing in the market. I am working in similar areas. If you can mail me at sanjoetomjose@yahoo.com we can chat more about this.

    

9. 

   Syed Sameer May 13, 2011, 2:49 pm

   Wow, these are all very excellent ideas and while I have thought of some of them already for the next version, a lot of them are new and I’ll definitely see to it that I develop them in the next version. In fact I have taken a print out of this very post.

    

   Thanks so much for the brilliant ideas. Really appreciate it 🙂

10. 

    Mehul Mukati May 13, 2011, 3:16 pm

    Hi Syed

     

    Building up a sizable database of potential job seekers and then enabling paid access to recruiters is the same model as a number of job sites. How will yours be different?

11. 

    Dhiraj Bajaj May 17, 2011, 11:14 am

    I think what you initially thought was very similiar to emurse

    eg. resumes  https://dhirajbajaj.emurse.com/

    You just need to create a differentiator that can be your USP.

    Serving HR firms/Corporate tieups can be a great deal in with a strong user-base.

12. 

    Bharat Agrawal May 18, 2011, 3:24 pm

    Hi Munish,

     

    IMO, nice analysis and brilliant ideas…I hope it helps Syed.

13. 

    Sushant Junnarkar May 20, 2011, 6:06 pm

    hi Syed

    First of all compliments on your venture.

    A few comments based on 10 years of corporate experience (including many resumes, as an applicant and as an interviewer) before plunging in to entrepreneurship.

    Assume somebody comes on your site with following problem on hand: XYZ has done sales and operations and he wants to apply for 2 roles: Head of Sales in ABC Pvt ltd and Head of Operations in DEF pvt ltd.

    Or a fresher: Majored in Marketing and Electives in Finance (didn’t want to be left out..you see!!!). Needs to apply for a marketing role in FMCG MNC and apply for a Finance Role in Gone Bust Bank Inc!!

     

    1) Why should they come to resumer.me and not go to resume builders already present. As somebody asked earlier…what is your USP?

    2) How does your site help the above 2 people ? Will a standard format be ok for both of them or they still need to spend 10-20 minutes changing (btw…people spend much more time than 10-20 mins)

     

    3) What exactly do they need to highlight in each of these resumes (obviously factually correct info) to get shortlisted for an interview. And how does it happen on your site.

     

    4) I checked a few sample resumes e.g. Magnus and the basic format needs a lot of work.

     

    5) Who are you targetting. I saw somewhere in the reply thread: freshers and working professionals. The needs are very different and you need to have something on the site that treats them separately (unless I have missed it, i just registered).

     

    Regards

    Sushant

     

     

14. 

    VARUN MITTAL May 24, 2011, 10:24 am

    
    

    Have you tried to compare with the Visual Resume sites out there in market, https://www.visualcv.com/ ( It is not my site)

     

    Also you might like to look at https://branchout.com/  ( It is also not my site) who are trying to harness LinkedIn to do something like this instead of competing with them.

     

    The biggest issue for me is why I shouldn’t use my LinkedIn URL – https://linkedin.varunmittal.me and use yours when I get much more functionalities there.

     

    The database building is the other challenge and I had to put my company in hibernate mode because of this itself. We also planned to offer such a service though for niche domains + VAS for that sector. 

     

    The journey from ME TOO —> WHY ME is the toughest but most fruitful one 🙂

     

    
    

15. 

    Syed Sameer May 28, 2011, 6:46 am

    That was a very interesting and uplifting read Jyoti. Thanks a bunch 🙂

16. 

    Syed Sameer May 28, 2011, 6:57 am

    Thanks for the ideas Varun. I was aware of VisualCV and just checked out BranchOut – both look like great products to me. You’re right about having a real USP, a real differentiator.

     

    Also I just had a realization: Things like simplicity, good UI / design, ease of use and stuff in themselves are not a part of your USP, differentiation or even a competitive advantage at all – come to think of it, these things aren’t even ‘features’. These things are simply bare necessities that every site should have at the very least. (Be it India or America)

     

    And also, the next time I’m going to make a feature list – I’ll write features on one side, and benefits on the other.

     

    In other words, people don’t want a 3 GHz Quad core computer with a 1TB HDD. Most don’t even know what that implies. They just want a computer that is insanely fast, can store lots and lots of movies, games whatever and doesn’t drive them mad. Features = Benefits, if not, they are useless. 🙂

17. 

    VARUN MITTAL May 28, 2011, 7:07 am

    I was trying your site today and my first  feature request – My profile name need not be FirstName+LastName. Personally I don’t want that and I didn’t see any option to customize resume name. I agree I didn’t probe too deeply but for sure it was not obviously visible

     

18. 

    Syed Sameer May 28, 2011, 7:10 am

    I’m fixing that. Thanks 🙂

19. 

    Balachandran Rajaraman May 28, 2011, 7:45 am

     

    As a purely consumer focused product (people visit your site by themselves to create good looking resumes easily), your job of gaining traction might be tedious and unprofitable for a long time.

     

    Consider these ideas

     

    1. Most top colleges have predefined resume formats for campus recruitment. By collaborating with placement cells, you company can simply take away a lot of pain from the process. Templates in Microsoft Word is tedious to us. So you will be solving real problem and getting wholesale end users

    2. Try something similar with recruiters. But, be prepared to differentiate or complement with other startups addressing the campus recruitment space

    3. Think of creative ways to improve upon resumes/job applications. Why not video resumes. Why auto summerising from social behavious and reputation of candidates.

     

    All the best. I liked the neatness and simplicity of your current product.

    Bala

20. 

    Syed Sameer May 28, 2011, 7:52 am

    Thanks a lot Bala. I have been researching a lot about campus recruitment and the whole HR process in general since the past 2 weeks, and you have some very smart ideas right here. 

     

    As you and others have said, a ‘standard’ resume format that everyone has to stick to as in right now on Resumer.me is not going to work for everyone, and so what I’ve planned for the next version is different types of resume templates you can choose based on your field – and these too would be customizable to a degree. Also I’d be incorporating multimedia in the resumes, to be accessed separately though and not on the ‘main’ resume itself. (Reduces clutter) For eg. myresume/portfolio or myresume/videos/

     

    Thanks again Bala 🙂

21. 

    Munish Goyal May 28, 2011, 8:02 am

    Syed,

     

    You may like to checkout https://cocubes.com and firstnaukri initiative of naukri.com

     

    They are doing things related to campus recruitment. Cocubes especially is doing things related to documents (student resumes/cred. ) validation with help of colleges and then they act as middlemen for scheduling meets between recruiting companies and campuses.

     

22. 

    Syed Sameer May 28, 2011, 8:13 am

    Hi Munish,
    I have checked out CoCubes a long time ago and though I found them lagging a bit on the technological front, they are doing pretty good and have a massive reach with 1500 colleges and lakhs of students. I really like how they are tackling the campus placement / recruitment problem for both colleges and companies and this is more of the direction I have in mind for Resumer rather than the LinkedIn one.
    FirstNaukri.com is just like Naurki.com except it is for freshers, so I think CoCubes is really what I should be looking at.
    Thanks for the suggestions 🙂

23. 

    Sourav May 28, 2011, 5:56 pm

    Good In-depth study Munish I must say.. would love to get one for my website

24. 

    Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal August 7, 2011, 7:16 am

    Syed, how’s Resumer doing?

25. 

    Syed Sameer August 7, 2011, 7:31 am

    I have sold it to US based company called JPM Network, looking forward to doing something in the e-commerce space now (and no, not another deal site, haha)

26. 

    Jayesh Gopalan August 7, 2011, 7:36 am

    Syed congrats 🙂

27. 

    Syed Sameer August 7, 2011, 7:54 am

    Thanks Jayesh, although honestly I’d loved to have keep it with me, it was not just a site but my baby that I worked upon tirelessly night after night for almost 2 months. I still kind of feel guilty about selling it, but that’s all I could do to go forward with my other plans and without having to look for angel / VC money.

     

    My thinking is now that if you can’t bootstrap a business (assuming it is not really capital intensive like say an airline of course), then you don’t need to look for external funding either. Bootstrap, become profitable, grow steadily, and then maybe look for funding to scale up.

     

    Simply put, I’d say let them come knocking to your door when the time is right, and not the other way round.

28. 

    Jayesh Gopalan August 7, 2011, 8:35 am

    well said Syed !

    “Dont chase investors. Starting chasing customers, if you can get to the customers investors will chase you”-Sameer Guglani Co-Founder at The Morpheus

     

     

Comments are now closed for this post.