Requesting feedback on my startup Resumer.me

By Syed Sameer on February 28, 2011 18 Comments / 1699 views

Hello Rodinhoods,

I’d like you to check out www.resumer.me – A site that I just launched which lets a user create a good-looking resume in minutes (for eg. https://resumer.me/alokkejriwal/ – Resume of our very own Rodinhood ;)) which can then be shared as your personal URL, from where it can be downloaded as a PDF or e-mailed to someone / shared with a single click.

The site solves the problem of having to create, update, attach and e-mail your resume repeatedly and fiddling around with word processors, attaching and sending your resume repeatedly.

Site: www.resumer.me
Example resume: https://resumer.me/alokkejriwal/ , https://resumer.me/syedsameer/

Do let me know what do you think of the idea, the execution, what you like and especially what you *don’t* like about it.

Thanks 🙂

Comments

Syed Sameer

18 Comments

Abey John March 1, 2011, 7:11 am

Brilliant idea Syed. I say brilliant because it has the key ingridient for massive hockey stick growth: UGC, aka user generated content.

Features needed:

Pull resume data from linkedin, allow option to integrate facebook and twitter.

Pull pics from FB, linkedin or upload

Multiple versions of resumes

Linked in connections integration (they are allowing some funky stuff through their API I heard)

Option to Pull Linkedin recommendations or whatever it is called

Post options to twitter or fb but generally not that important.

Paid option email to fax service.

Paid option to snail mail post the resume

Show twitter and FB feed.

There is some amount of overlap with Linkedin of course but the focus should be a quickly mailable resume

All the best. UGC wins! 🙂
Syed Sameer March 1, 2011, 7:37 am

Thanks a lot for the great suggestions Abey – especially the LinkedIn integration and multiple versions of resumes. The paid options you mentioned are smart too, although way too early to be implemented at this point. Twitter and FB feed is something I’m still undecided about as I’m not quite sure if users will actually like to include that on their resume – but you’ve got me thinking again.

Some of the things you’ve listed are what I have in plan for version 2, as I’m the lone coder / designer I had to release the minimum viable product first, making it as simple as possible with the absolute required features, and now I can build upon it further in version 2 taking good feedback from you guys and the existing / version 1 users of course.

Thanks a lot once again, a lot of the features you suggested will be implemented in the next version. 🙂
Syed Sameer March 2, 2011, 8:41 am

Thanks for your feedback Yatin. I’ll definitely take this into account for the next version.
Abey John March 2, 2011, 11:08 am

If you are lone coder/designer you have a ways to go. Start eating the marketing dog food. And get your name out there everywhere. Don’t think your solution will be a ‘natural’ fit. Contact resume agencies, hr guys, everyone who you think this will apply to and pester them to sign up. Make it easy for them to refer their friends. Start with the college crowd. They’re the ones who have the time to make pretty resumes. Get pre-built resume templates. Find out good content about resumes and blog about those.

DON’t get sucked into just doing the code.

Hope you are tracking everything through some web analytics pack.

Set up goal tracking so you know what your conversion rate and work on improving that.

You have a long ways to go….so belt up, grit your teeth and dive in….

…rodinhood times up…. 🙂
Syed Sameer March 2, 2011, 11:13 am

Yeah, I’m using Google Analytics to track everything – the conversion rate seems actually pretty good so far.

Once again thanks for the brilliant ideas Abey. Just as you guessed I’m not really into the business / marketing side of things and now I can really look to expand and work upon the tips you gave here. Thanks a lot man. 🙂
Abey John March 2, 2011, 11:24 am

Yw. Your primary job now is marketing. Figure out how to palm off the coding to someone else.
Jayesh Gopalan March 2, 2011, 12:15 pm

Wow Brilliant UI.
Syed Sameer March 2, 2011, 12:17 pm

Thanks a lot man. This little word, ‘wow’, is what I’ve been longing to hear. Thanks once again. 🙂
Sachin Kamaladharan March 3, 2011, 6:31 pm

awesome stuff Syed. It is really heartening to see something like this come up for all people looking for someone to help them with a resume. Few points:
1) While trying to upload a pic, I received an error. However, it didnt tell me what to do later. It just stood there.
2) I think the work experience section should be user generated. At this point its restricted to 5. Some people may have worked for more than 5 companies.
3) Also most resumes have a section which talks about a synopsis of their professional career. Something like a free writing section which the consumer can use the way he wants. That would be your call on how you want to incorporate it.
Hope my feedback has helped in any way and thanks for getting this out for the people. Keep up the great work!
Syed Sameer March 3, 2011, 7:28 pm

Thanks a lot for your feedback Sachin. I’m going to take a look at the picture issue right now.

The work experience section and other sections are ‘static’ right now as I’m still in the process of learning jQuery (ajax) – I intend on ‘ajaxifying’ the whole resume editing process in the 2nd version so it functions much like how you’d edit your Facebook profile.

The career synopsis is also a great idea and I’ll definitely look at incorporating it in the current version itself, very soon.

Thanks a lot for the excellent suggestions and feedback once again. 🙂
Vipul Rawal March 4, 2011, 7:51 am

Liked the collapse/expand option for each section. You may also want to pick up some ideas from http://www.jobspice.com and http://www.visualcv.com
Syed Sameer March 4, 2011, 10:13 am

I’ve seen VisualCV before but Job Spice is new for me and it does look good. Thanks, I’ll check it out. 🙂
Syed Sameer March 6, 2011, 7:54 am

Thanks Yatin. I’m going to take a look at it now. 🙂
Manas Rawat March 9, 2011, 9:00 am

Syed, I love your UI.. its brilliant.
For the resume to be more useful to recruiters, maybe the following information needs to be there:
The Work experience section needs more space for project details, technologies used, etc.
Skills should have years of experience or level of expertise.
This should be a replacement of an actual resume so it should have all the content that a resume typically has. Otherwise this is just a flyer and the resume still has to be created, managed and sent.
Also, the user should be able to decide who gets to see the resume and who doesnt.

What tech platform have you used?

Good luck on Resumer.me.. great idea!
Syed Sameer March 9, 2011, 9:28 am

Thanks a lot for your feedback Manas. I’m going to add in most of the features you’ve suggested in v2 (development to start soon) but the privacy feature you suggested is an interesting one which I’m now going to think about.

Resumer.me is based on the LAMP platform.

Once again thanks for the suggestions and your feedback 🙂
Manas Rawat March 9, 2011, 9:30 am

🙂 cool.

Are you using any development framework for php.. like CakePHP or Zend?

Manas
Syed Sameer March 9, 2011, 9:39 am

CakePHP is the way to go mate. 🙂

If not CakePHP, then I believe CodeIgniter is the next best thing.
Syed Sameer April 19, 2011, 7:59 am

Its been around 2.5 months since launch now and Resumer.me has got a pretty good response so far. I’m looking for an angel investor to help me take the product to the next level.

Please PM me or contact me via https://resumer.me/contact for more information.