

JobSpice (YC S09) Makes Resumes Web Friendly, With A Facebook Co-Founder - suhail
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/yc-funded-jobspice-makes-resumes-web-friendly-with-a-facebook-co-founder-at-the-helm/

======
mattmaroon
This seems pretty cool. I actually had an idea for almost exactly this.

The revenue model writes itself too. Thousands of people pay resume
professionals for editing help every day. JobSpice could have a third party
network of resume pros ready to help, and take a cut of the payments.

So it's free to write your awesome looking resume, and for a reasonable fee
it's trivial to have a resume doctor look it over.

~~~
markm
The consumer business model that you described is a small part of JobSpice's
potential. The goldmine comes from getting companies to use JobSpice to
recruit new hires. All individuals want to create beautiful resumes but once
the resume is created there's no telling where the individual goes with said
resume.

JobSpice has the resume meta-data at its finger tips. The logical next step
would be to get companies to offer jobs to JobSpice's users.

------
conorgil145
I just checked out the site and it truly impressive. Everything looks sharp
and I like the clean design. Everything is easy to use and I can go in and
change the CSS later if I want to. I started filling out some information to
get a feel and I really liked it!

I tried to sign up, but there is no way to register! Did I miss something
there?

~~~
leif
you register when you're ready to save your résumé

~~~
conorgil145
I tried to save last night and it simply said that I had a wrong
username/password combo. The only action available was printing to pdf form. I
just tried again and it did allow me to register though. Was something changed
or maybe I missed something late last night....

I have been meaning to update my resume for a while now and this is the
perfect tool to launch me into action.

------
modoc
I think a Word export would be key here. _Many_ large firms and recruiting
agencies require you to provide Word format resumes and have large internal
systems and processes based on Word documents.

~~~
amccollum
Yeah, we'd obviously love to have this, but the Word formatting engine is
horrendous... just try taking any html document and importing it into Word and
see what it looks like.

Hopefully, we can eventually replace those large internal systems that process
Word documents with real tools that can search and categorize the structured
data.

~~~
zck
You could have some sort of "degraded" resume version in .rtf. It seems like
.rtf is decent, but doesn't have as much customization as a word document. Of
course, I could be wrong. It's not the best solution, but it is something that
can be passed around from person to person, edited, and even re-imported with
much less fuss than trying to use a Word document.

However, any time someone does that, that's a part of the process that isn't
taking place on JobSpice.

~~~
jimbokun
"However, any time someone does that, that's a part of the process that isn't
taking place on JobSpice."

This is the real reason not to offer Word export. They can try to convince HR
departments to use JobSpice for their resume filtering and searching needs,
instead of just a place to download resumes into their internal systems and
never returning to use other services.

~~~
modoc
A noble goal, but it seems very unlikely. Shifting Fortune 1000 companies or
large recruiting firms to use a whole new system would be an amazingly
unlikely and long-time framed change. Best of luck if that's your goal though,
it would be an improvement.

Until then though, lack of Word export is a liability for people who build
their resumes on your site.

------
makmanalp
Good job, looks like something linkedin should have had ages ago.

------
zck
I took some time and put my .doc resume into LaTeX, figuring that with
judicious use of functions, I could easily change styles and formatting. I
used pdfLaTeX to output to pdf. Of course now, very few job boards take a
.pdf, and of course, no recruiters do. It's a very frustrating process, made
worse by the knowledge that changing my format to something more useful for me
now requires me to keep two resumes, both the .pdf and the .doc versions.

------
sh1mmer
Lack of "register" totally threw me.

Especially when I clicked save and there was only one password field, and no
confirm.

That's never a good idea.

~~~
suhail
God forbid they make it easy =)

~~~
zck
The problem comes when you make a typo on your password at registration time.
Then you're left trying to reset your password.

------
prpon
I started thinking how hard can it be to build a web resume? But your
implementation bowled me over. Kudos guys. Great job.

I would suggest to make it obvious that users have a URL that they can share.
Give suggestions during signup for their preferred web address. eg:
<http://jobspice.com/firstname>

Goodluck to you.

------
herf
Great idea, and the editor looks nice! Really want them to hire a designer to
do some good templates...you could rock PDF output a lot.

------
leif
ass-kickingly delicious

way to go fellas

we should celebrate over beers when you're done dealing with all the traffic

------
dshah
Congrats on the launch!

Love the app, and like how you just "jump right in".

However, you might want to have some minimal information about the
company/team (even if it's just a link from the bottom right corner). That
way, if some fancy VC wants to give you a big check, they know where to reach
you.

------
babyshake
Is there a Posterous or something? The twitter account is private...how are we
supposed to learn about updates?

------
conorgil145
I think next to the button that says "Login/Logout" it might be nice to have a
simple welcome message that says "Welcome, <username>" just to reassure users
that they are in fact logged in. I didn't realize I was still logged in until
I noticed the button said "Logout".

------
cwilson
Gotta give you some Hacker News love as well. Congrats on launching dudes,
well done.

------
brown9-2
I'm really digging this, nice work!

Just one question/issue: when browsing styles in Chrome, one of the styles
seems to be cut off by the column divider, and only shows as "Impossible
I...".

------
zaph0d
Is JobSpice written in Python? If yes, are you using any framework?

------
nopassrecover
Is there any way to preview how stuff looks without having to manually enter
data first? Just so I can get a feel with some test data?

~~~
amccollum
You can look browse the available styles in the Styles tab.

~~~
nopassrecover
Yeah when I tried that it was blank unless I had already entered my personal
data.

------
mshafrir
Looks great. Is there a way to make the Experience section details project-
based in addition to company-based?

~~~
imdane
You can use the "custom" section to add subheadings -- which could be projects

------
JimEngland
I've been waiting for a real competitor to VisualCV to show up, and shown up
it has. Congrats on the launch!

------
conorgil145
Is there a link on the site or an email account where we can leave customer
comments/suggestions?

------
jessor
nice idea. awesome implementation, straight forward yet good looking. best of
luck!

------
happymonkey00
I liked the design. But i wonder how this is any different from emurse.com?

~~~
noaharc
I think execution (i.e. quality of design, ease of use, pricing -- if any,
etc.) is what matters on this one, so we'll see how they compare as JobSpice
matures. Emurse is really handy, though. I've used it before!

------
abossy
Dane and Andrew: Congrats on launching!

------
TrevorJ
Well done. I like this a lot.

------
I_got_fifty
maaan, I just started doing research into doing something like that... crap.

------
zackattack
Congratulations on launching.

I filled out my resume, and it only took about ten minutes, which is awesome.
I was actually about to hire a designer from Craigslist to spice up my resume
(no joke, I've been emailing people today) so this is a nice synchronicity.

Unfortunately, some small formatting bugs make this completely unusable. My
username is "zack" if you want to check it out.

Otherwise, an excellent product. I would like to have been able to add details
to the Achievements section.

What's the deal with the /static/{js|css}/combined.{hash} stuff? Is that part
of a home-brewed deployment solution?

------
GrandMasterBirt
I Love It!

Maybe its not as infinitely customizeable as microsoft word, but I did in 10
minutes what took over an hour of painful moving crap around in word.

Ugh HTML/CSS is just so much easier to style. Maybe I should just learn latex
and get my problems over with.

~~~
smokinn
I guess this doesn't work for the majority of the population but I have a
simple nice looking LaTeX template for my CV.

Anytime I need to update it it's usually a question of a few minutes tops. It
might've taken a bit longer for the initial setup but over time I'm sure I've
saved way more time compared to fighting Word every time I want to update it.
I highly recommend it.

------
c00p3r
Very smart way to create (and then resale) a big HR database.

It also should be integrated with HN, like standard button/link in user's
profile.

