
Show HN: Real Resume Examples from 1000s of Top Paid Professionals - zthomas
https://www.visualcv.com/resume-samples?locale=en
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presty
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9109064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9109064)

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gk1
Ah, I _knew_ I saw this exact site posted just a few days ago, but searching
HN showed nothing recent. The fact that it was flag-killed explains why it
didn't show up in the search.

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zthomas
Dude, what do you have against our posts? It's a completely legit post and a
lot of people on HN clearly find it useful.

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gk1
Where did I suggest that I have anything against you?

I simply had deja vu when I saw this post (again) today, and wondered where I
saw it. Searching HN showed nothing, which surprised me because I was certain
I saw it here. The parent's link to the flag-killed post gave me an answer.

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zthomas
My bad then, it seems that this post got flagged as well. Somewhere a mod
seems to be really against us.

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fapjacks
Probably because this post is effectively a commercial for your product
without explicitly saying so. You are trying to showcase the resumes people
have built with your product in order to showcase your product. I can see how
that might grind on peoples' nerves. Plus the repeated posting.

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loumf
If you're trying to get a job as a graphic designer -- then sure, make a fancy
resume. Otherwise, it looks like a total waste of time -- I presume they just
paid someone to do it.

To me it signals that you don't know what matters -- like using a plastic-
binder on a school report.

If you could somehow use the design to communicate the content better -- then
I'd be impressed.

EDIT: I just realized that this site builds the resumes. Again, they look
nice, but other than that, I think they don't work any better as a resume than
a plain one. In general I like well-designed marketing collateral, but resumes
are things to skim and understand quickly -- I'd like to see good designs that
accomplish that.

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wongarsu
I think
[https://workstory.s3.amazonaws.com/cv_samples/2360/softwaree...](https://workstory.s3.amazonaws.com/cv_samples/2360/softwareengineerresume-
example.png) is actually a nice example of good design improving
communication.

I can see at a glance that he has experience with frontend developent, clean
code and agile development, can quickly see some keywords detailing that and
if I'm hooked by that I can then read all that text about his work history.

~~~
ashark
Ratings border on being useless to begin with, but out-of-ten? What's the
difference between a 6 and a 7? I'm skeptical that anything finer than a 5
"star" system is meaningful without hard data to back it up, and even with
that you have to divine whether it's calibrated to their best skill setting
the 5 mark, or whether 5 represents best-in-the-field knowledge (so it'll
almost never be used, so why not make it a four scale, but then what does the
four mean...)

Ratings. Ugh.

Also, is it really normal for people to list something like "clean code" as a
skill at all? Let alone one that can be rated out-of-ten? It seems like
putting "contains no cyanide" on breakfast cereal.

(it does look very nice, though—I may, um, "borrow" some of that design)

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memset
The purpose of the ratings, I presume, is to show someone's relative strengths
and weaknesses, rather than an absolute scale. "Relative to backend
development, I have strong proficiency in frontend skills." It is isomorphic
to listing technical skills under "Proficient" versus "Familiar" headings,
which is not uncommon on resumes.

With respect to "clean code", this resume lists specific skills that fall
under that umbrella. "TDD", "BDD", "CI".

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ashark
I question whether anyone would ever include something like "clean code" and
rate it under, say, an 8, under any circumstances. The backend-versus-frontend
bit is useful info, but the 10-scale isn't necessary or helpful for that.
"Proficient" and "familiar", as you put it, would suffice, or ratings on a
scale of four or five, if a scale is really a must.

My concern isn't for the interviewer, mind you, it's for the interviewee.
Including a 10-scale is just asking to have to defend it. "What sorts of
things might a person rated at a three on this scale know or be able to do?
What would be different for a four? What makes you a 9 instead of an 8?" These
questions suck. No way I'd want to open myself up to that, and IMO they're
legitimate questions. You chose a 10-scale to represent your skills. No one
made you do that. _And_ you rated your front-end skills highly! Can I expect
similar things from your level-9 "clean code"? If I ask you to put a bar graph
on a page will you zoom it to an inappropriate scale or label an axis with
values finer than we can even measure? That's the kind of impression I'd fear
giving the interviewer.

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JazCE
I never understand why people include a photo of themselves on their CV.

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mattdlondon
Agreed - what struck me with that site is that all the CVs had photos of the
applicants.

For anyone applying to where I work please please please do not include a
photo because I instantly know your age & ethnicity - things that I am not
supposed to know about you.

Obviously I am going to see your face eventually (assuming you get to an on-
site interview), but seeing it all before I get to talk to you in person can
lead unconscious bias which is not good for anyone.

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bnegreve
> unconscious bias which is not good for anyone.

A bias has to be in favour of some people. Those people are usually the ones
who include their photos.

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zthomas
We've posted our resume builder, VisualCV on HN a while back and had got a lot
of great feedback. A lot of people wanted to see some real resume samples that
others have created so we built a curated database of some of our top public
users and ran a script to take a screenshot of all their CVs. Hope you guys
find it useful.

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drivingmenuts
I note that the job titles are not correctly sorted by alpha under their
respect starting letters.

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hodder
I created my resume in notepad with no formatting. It has served me well.

With most job applications now demanding you fill out proprietary forms, I
usually have to cut and paste into the fields supplied. I also have a simple
pdf version with very minor formatting in case I am handing/emailing the
resume to a contact.

That being said, this is a cool site, and it is probably useful for people
working in artistic fields. Just remember that the content is the important
part.

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netcan
This is one of those things that's so useful it's a wonder it isn't more
common. Every job site, resume builder & such should have this.

Same goes for business plans, marketing plans, all the various plans and
paperwork you need when applying for loans, grants and such.

There's probably some benefit to be had in an 'examples or paperwork' site.

lawyer pay a lot of money to access samples of all sorts of letters,
affidavits, submissions, petitions and whatnot. They're useful.

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trequartista
Are these real resumes? I can see a resume with the headline - "Sustainability
Intrapreneur". What's the point of writing such buzzwords in resumes?

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ffn
Because it auto filters out companies, recruiters, and HR staff who like fluff
and politics, and retains the ones who are more direct and in-your-face. So if
you're a person who is very good in a rigid social structure and placating
folk's egos and whatnot, using buzzwords signals you're more than willing to
buy into company hype and that therefore makes you more employable. To many
larger / older corporations who have plenty of momentum and make money just
fine, it's more important for new hires maintain (and strengthen) company
structure than for new hires to get a lot done.

On the other hand, if you're a just-ship-it no-nonsense individual who likes
to focus more on doing things than maintaining relationships, than by all
means build that weird personal site that's nothing like a normal resume and
that showcases all your relevant skills instead of using buzzwords. Companies
with large and rigid internal social structures will probably avoid you, while
volatile newer companies will seek you out.

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zthomas
Developer here. Thanks for all the great feedback. VisualCV was actually a
really old rails project (built in 2007) that we inherited and completely
rebuilt last year.

Our goal for the project is to focus on how to present professional
information visually and with UX techniques that we've learned from web
development. To us, most resumes are stuffed with a lot of insubstantial text.
We wanted to instantly see numbers, results and achievements in a glance.
Recruiters generally take a few seconds to screen for key information and
indicators of success and we wanted to present all those info with nice visual
hierarchy and make it a pleasure to view. Admittedly, I don't think our
current designs have hit those targets as well as I've hoped but we do have
some exciting designs in the pipeline.

As you browse through the database you might notice that some of the resumes
look a bit messy (they are the black on white design with sidebar images).
These are mostly legacy users that we had to migrate to our new platform.
Their previous resumes looked something like this:
[http://legacy.visualcv.com/](http://legacy.visualcv.com/)

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smutticus
Some of these resumes are just terrible. Just look at the use of carriage
returns in Bobbie Workley's CV.

A resume should be just a clear and simple representation of you. Fancy does
not always mean better.

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icameron
No results for Programmer? Searching for .NET brings up a 404 error. Does that
mean there is no such thing as a top paying job in .NET programming? Argh, I
must be doing something wrong. Nothing for Ruby either

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zthomas
I only implemented as a simple autocomplete for a simple tag search. We
actually have over 1400 tags but only about 140 are actually active for
searching, I think that's actually an oversight on our end. You can go to
[https://www.visualcv.com/resume-
samples/directory#](https://www.visualcv.com/resume-samples/directory#) for
all the tags, rails and .net are both on there

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jpdus
I can't find any pricing details on your page before signing up - this is bad
practice in my view. I won't invest time trying out your platform if I have no
idea about costs.

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vishalzone2002
i thought most companies(at least in US) want 1 pager.. these looks really
long..

