
Show HN: VisualCV – A simple way to build parsable resumes for web and print - zthomas
https://www.visualcv.com
======
zthomas
Sole developer: VisualCV has been around since 2007, we recently acquired it
to tackle some of the major pain points we had with resumes. Resumes currently
have terrible formatting and can't be parsed very accurately.

Most people don't know this but recruiters in large corps rarily read through
any of the resumes that comes in. Almost all applications are first parsed by
one of the four major resume extraction vendors (sovren, resume mirror,
burning glass, daxtra) then dumped into an applicant tracking system. Usually
a resume is looked at only when someone does a keyword search on their
database. While the process does extract majority of the content it still
garbles up a lot of sections that people have spent hours painstakingly
editing.

The industry seems to be stuck in a crazy process where it takes structured
data turn it into a generally unstructured format (pdf, docx) and use another
set of service to try to parse it back again.

We have a unique opportunity to actually work with one of the major resume
extraction vendors and start to embed hrXML meta data into a pdf resume so
that it can perfectly extracted. We are giving all our pro designs away for
free for the next week and we'd appreciate any feedback!

~~~
collin128
My About.me just expired, I think I just found my replacement. Looks good so
far.

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Legendin
@TOS linked from sign up page
([https://www.visualcv.com/www/site_information/professional_t...](https://www.visualcv.com/www/site_information/professional_terms_of_use.html)):
404...

@CV samples ([https://www.visualcv.com/cv-templates/best/resume-
samples](https://www.visualcv.com/cv-templates/best/resume-samples)): layout
borked in horizontal view on chrome 38.0.2125.114 for android 4.4.4. Ref:
[http://imgur.com/x105xgA](http://imgur.com/x105xgA)

General thoughts: it wasn't (or rather isn't) immediately obvious for tipsy-me
what payment model you are going for (subscription I persume?) or how much
this service is going to cost me. I'd rather not have to sign up to acquire
this information. If this service is free, please state it clearly on the sign
up page and tell me what your business model is. If on the contrary it is not,
tell me what you plan to charge me before I sign up.

~~~
zthomas
Thanks for the feedback. We normally charge subscription but we took off the
pay wall this week for promo reasons.

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xissy
What a great idea & execution.

As a programmer, I manage my resume on my github pages where can bring many
benefits. - eg. make a new branch for a new company, easily add/remove related
projects, install google analytics for checking who is interested in me, and
so on.

Recently I've needed to submit my resume to several companies. What I
surprised is that they, HR people, wanted only pdf/doc formatted resume even
they work for software companies. What a silly.

VisualCV can be a proper solution between a old-fashined pdf resume file and
too much opened LinkedIn page.

~~~
groby_b
I'm curious - why _branch_ for new companies? Your resume represents the
linear flow of time, it's not like we get to try out alternate versions of
ourselves :)

~~~
xissy
I'm from South Korea.

To apply for a Korean company, they usually require a formal photo, SSN,
parents' jobs, house income, written self introduction, etc. No kidding. And I
have a few years military service experiences as a Korean army that might be
not related with software engineering.

So for those reasons, I had to split branches to appeal myself to diverse
companies properly. I don't want to make companies confused with unnecessary
info.

------
zifnab06
Just duplicated the resume I've been passing around to people that was
generated with Word (bad idea, I know)

A few issues I noticed:

* Line breaks are not kept in a few areas (contact information specifically, might effect other areas)

* Free design has a header showing where it was made; PDF has a footer. Is there some way to remove this?

Overall, I like it (excluding the two issues shown above). I keep meaning to
redo my resume in LaTeX for a while, I'll probably do that still at some
point.

------
jessedhillon
I scrolled all the way to the bottom and tapped on the names I saw, but didn't
find a link to an example CV. Seems like you should have a link to a demo CV?

~~~
zthomas
Thanks, I was just about to add a quick comment with our link. Here are some
samples: [https://www.visualcv.com/cv-templates/best/resume-
samples](https://www.visualcv.com/cv-templates/best/resume-samples) Also a
list of our designs: [https://www.visualcv.com/cv-
templates](https://www.visualcv.com/cv-templates)

There are more resources and links at the footer

~~~
cr3ative
This example:
[https://www.visualcv.com/robcraig](https://www.visualcv.com/robcraig)

Has UTF-8 encoding errors:
[http://i.imgur.com/H0ko8iT.png](http://i.imgur.com/H0ko8iT.png)

~~~
zthomas
Thanks, will look into it.

------
hoodoof
So who owns the resulting CV?

Are users free to export their data or have some third party service import
it?

Or is it more of a roach motel?

~~~
zthomas
The user owns it. One of the core philosophy for us is that we don't monetize
user data (ie opening our database for recruiters to search through).

Right now the user can import through PDF / Linkedin and export to PDF. We'll
add more export formats in the future, I think hrXML and json endpoints would
be pretty cool

~~~
hoodoof
So how do you make money?

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alexchuang72
pretty neat, could I have multiple versions of my resume?

