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Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

blog.doddcaldwell.com

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Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#41

Post by res »

ErrantX wrote: post #31

They look nice. In my experience clean/light CV's are by far the best for almost every job - particularly engineering jobs. The exception being designers. What sort of CV's are you seeing come in? I know quite a few HR types who will find a snazzy looking CV and instantly demote it, on the basis that the sizzle is probably hiding some inadequacy (this is not necessarily a bad marker in my experience). It would be int…

I was curious about this. As a student who will be applying for an engineering job one day, I'm not sure what the rules are when it comes to resumes, but I had a feeling that flashy was not the way to go.

That said, some of these look really good. My favorites are the Stars and the Shearling Point options, both of which are just subtle enough for my tastes. Best of luck to Mr. Caldwell in his future endeavors.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#42

Post by underwater »

dcaldwell wrote: post #18
andre wrote: post #4

Are you producing the resumes manually? or do you have software that handles it?

We have graphic artists that custom typeset the resumes manually. There are 2 revision rounds included in each purchase (additional revisions/edits/versions can be purchased) so there's back and forth with our artists.

You should mention his on your homepage. I assumed that the $99 got me a fill-in-the-blank Word template. Having a designer do the heavy lifting and polish sounds much more appealing. You could also easily upsell to editing and review too.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#44

Post by dominikb »

coderdude wrote: post #40
dominikb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more likely - that you go to a resume builder website when your mate recommends, or download an app? What would you recommend - a cool app, or a website? Apps are physical and cool. CVs should be fun to do. That's the future. Assuming that the desktop is a primary device for people in 2012 is just wrong. Also, CVs don't need to contain huge amounts of text; better keep it simple.

Probably the website since it's more useful for the task. Plus apps aren't cool or physical (unless you mean the touching your phone part). I could see the word-of-mouth factor being higher for an app, but the app would have to work very well for the task and I don't think that's something that would be easy to achieve with the form factor and the fact that most devices deny you a physical keyboard. So maybe somethin…

I see your technical point of view, but the average user market shows something else. People couldn't imagine doing stuff they do on a phone before iPhone. Now they do all sorts of mass content creation and they prefer it.

UI is just a matter of how much energy you put into it. It's not easy, but can be done. See iMovie, mobile bitmap editors, Garage Band... Difficult and unbelievable 5 years ago, but clearly doable.

If not phones, then at least tablets.

I do admit that I am a post-pc era freak though.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#46

Post by calvin »

dominikb wrote: post #34
ErrantX wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a CV is something you have more investment in; I don't think as many people would be searching on their phones for an app... especially as writing a CV generally happens on a PC. You're more likely to be sitting in front of a word processor bleakly wondering how to prep it up - and go do some Googling for CV tips...

What's more likely - that you go to a resume builder website when your mate recommends, or download an app? What would you recommend - a cool app, or a website? Apps are physical and cool. CVs should be fun to do. That's the future. Assuming that the desktop is a primary device for people in 2012 is just wrong. Also, CVs don't need to contain huge amounts of text; better keep it simple.

You're right about apps being popular and continually growing in importance.

However, you're talking about a task (creating/updating a CV) that takes a lot of manual work and editing. It could certainly be automated to a large extent by grabbing existing information from LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever. But when you get down to the details, there's a lot to write. That will never be fun to do in an app.

I can't imagine people caring how "fun" a CV app/website is so long as it helps them get the resume updated and get a new job.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#47

Post by Katelyn »

- I can really see this type of service blowing up, once you find the right product/market/fit.

- The slider above-the-fold on the 'shop' tab distracts me from the rest of the page. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could scroll down to begin shopping.

- A simple filter would be a great addition to the 'shop' page. It'd be nice to filter by type (e.g business, creative, etc.), price or design (rustic, elegant)

- I wonder if you would see more sales if you tried a/b testing your pricing model a bit. Is there a reason why you charge the extra $5.00 for edits? If the shopper pays $99 to own the theme, shouldn't he be entitled to edit it as much as he pleases?

- You're looking for resume writers. Have you connected with Hagan Blount? I believe he designs Infographic resumes. (http://haganblount.com/resume). Some of your designs require users to highlight a quote, etc., and I wonder if they could use help writing out these areas.

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#49

Post by [deleted] »

Katelyn wrote: post #47

- I can really see this type of service blowing up, once you find the right product/market/fit. - The slider above-the-fold on the 'shop' tab distracts me from the rest of the page. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could scroll down to begin shopping. - A simple filter would be a great addition to the 'shop' page. It'd be nice to filter by type (e.g business, creative, etc.), price or design (rustic, elegant) - I won…

[deleted]

Re: Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000

#50

Post by dcaldwell »

Katelyn wrote: post #47

- I can really see this type of service blowing up, once you find the right product/market/fit. - The slider above-the-fold on the 'shop' tab distracts me from the rest of the page. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could scroll down to begin shopping. - A simple filter would be a great addition to the 'shop' page. It'd be nice to filter by type (e.g business, creative, etc.), price or design (rustic, elegant) - I won…

Thanks for the advice.

- Any suggestions on how to make it intuitive to scroll down?

- We've thought about filtering but we've honestly seen no trends in which professions pick which designs - it's been all over the board.

- The shopper doesn't own the theme. Due to the copyright agreements that we have with the designers who created the resumes and the font foundries who created the typefaces, we aren't able to release the source files to be edited. Also, most folks don't have or can't use inDesign, which is what we use to typeset the resumes. We've tried to keep the price of edits low at $5 as a service to our customers because in early testing, we came across this as an objection. People need to revise their resumes or have different versions. We wanted to reduce friction there. We obviously don't make money on this but we just think it makes good business sense and is good customer service.

- We don't want to get into writing resumes. Instead, we'd rather partner with resume writers. They have a captive audience that's shown they're willing to pay for resume services. We'd rather get referrals from them than compete with them.

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