Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing. I didn't sign up for gigtide, because the killer feature for resume sites like this is to be able to send out via email in all of: text, rtf, word, pdf, html. Having a nifty profile with a sort of interactive resume feel to it is good (and right up LinkedIn's alley), but it has to export in all those formats seamlessly or it defeats the purpose (yet one more resume format).
I always send out my resume in whatever format is asked for, however I make sure that the cover letter, email and resume include links to other formats for convenience.
I assumed that there was therefore no way that I would meet someone who hadn't been able to read it. Even after it had gone through a recruiter and HR to get to an enginering manager they would still be able to grab a PDF/HTML version if they wanted to.
Turns out that this was over optimistic. A recruiter modified my CV before sending it on, stripping out the links at the same time. So I turned up for an interview where the first questions was:
"Oh, yeah, it was a pain reading your CV, this is a UNIX shop. Are you ok with that or do you only do Windows? We really weren't sure if we should get you in at all."
It got worse from there - the second question was about a non-existant qualification (in a totally different field!) that the recruiter had added in.
Yeah, recruiters - especially the ones that troll craigslist - are a real pain. Most of the things I've responsded to have turned out to be fake. The recruiters just make up jobs and post them to get your resumes, and then they give some excuse like "oh, that company has a hiring freeze now" or "you're not really a fit, but I might have something else for you". The longer posts with overly grandiose yet vague descriptions and very vague candidate requirements are a dead giveaway.
Hah! I was working on something almost exactly like this as a personal project.
Wonder how they did the doc/pdf creation? I thought about using LaTeX, and there are (commercial) html renderers, but I was trying to keep it cheap and easy.
Yeah, I've used that...but the problem I was referring to is more general, and more difficult: given blocks of plaintext that compose a resume, how do you render these blocks into any popular format (i.e. Word, PDF, text, HTML) in any of a number of different styles.
HTML and text are easy. PDF is do-able through several different tools (including LaTeX). Word is hard. Supporting multiple resume styles is harder still.
(1) I can totally see LinkedIn buying this a year from now.
(2) I would be less likely to hire someone if this was the only way I could see their resume.
(3) The front page doesn't address my most immediate objection, which is "how does it produce email-safe resumes in plain text?".