

Show HN: My first web app - Resumonk - A beautifully simple resume builder - bharani_m
http://www.resumonk.com

======
trun
I tried it out - very nice work! I really like the design of the landing page.
A few comments...

LinkedIn doesn't seem like a great reason to "Go Pro" since I've likely
already copied all of my info from LinkedIn just to try it out in the first
place. However, the other features, such as analytics and additional templates
_are_ awesome additions that I might want after I try it. If I were you, I
would seriously consider baking in LinkedIn support to lower the friction for
new users and then upsell them with the other features.

You should allow creation of the resume in smaller chunks and save as you go.
I get very nervous when I have to type more than a few sentences in an unsaved
document.

I don't really need a big description box for every skill I want to list.
Actually, I'd rather just list them all (LinkedIn does this).

My profile page says "Howdy Trevor.rundell", which I assume it pulled off my
email address. You should just pull my first and last name off of my resume
instead.

You should definitely allow users to create their own short URL (/r/trun is a
lot better than /r/bejeya). Maybe this is a Pro feature.

~~~
SeoxyS
> You should allow creation of the resume in smaller chunks and save as you
> go. I get very nervous when I have to type more than a few sentences in an
> unsaved document.

This. I avoid web editors like the plague, unless I know with certainty that
they have no-reload auto-save.

~~~
bharani_m
The form data is being auto-saved to Local Storage using the Sisyphus jQuery
plugin. So if you are using a modern browser, you don't have to worry about
losing any unsaved data.

~~~
damncabbage
You need to tell the user that, though, even if it's just a calming progress
indicator or "Saved." label that appears a little after making changes, or a
dummy "Save" button they can click.

People have spent years developing habits to defend themselves from crappy web
forms. They're not going to let go of those habits without a long adjustment
period.

------
gergles
You could also add (at the pro tier) the functionality to generate custom URLs
for a resume that contain a tracking string, and then send email alerts or
something like that when that version of the resume is viewed. Simple
analytics of "your 'HN posted' resume was read at this time from this IP"
would be a huge value-add to justify the pro cost.

(To be clear, I meant to do this without having to create a bunch of different
copies of the resume, though it's not really that huge of a difference, I
suppose. The email notifications would be a nice touch, though.)

~~~
wolfram
I am always excited to see similar ideas executed as well as this. Currently,
I am also working on a resume builder web app like this but with the tracking
features you just mentioned as a core feature. However, it's not yet ready for
prime time. Drop me a message if you are interested to check it out.

------
dm1222e
I read the T&C page but didn't see any words that promised that my resume
remains private and protected, under my control to share and display. Did I
miss something? Actually it looks like from the T&C page that any resume
entered becomes your property to do pretty much anything with. This doesn't
encourage me to use your site, I'm afraid.

------
damir
Here's what I like: 1\. Simple to use. 2\. Easy on the eyes. 3\. Actually
useful app & it solves real problem. 4\. Like go-pro page copy and how you
place it under my resumes so it's always visible.

Do-better's IMO: 1\. No way to contact you. 2\. I'd make the "go-pro" button
the same as "your resumes" & "sign out" but different bgcolor to stand out.
3\. Filling just personal details & saving gives 500 error when viewing
resume. 4\. $9.99 is one-time or recurring? 5\. No way to share my resume (no
social/web2.0 buttons)

Keep pushing, don't give up!

EDIT: Just saw social buttons on the left... Wide monitor & it was out of my
sight...

~~~
evoxed
I was scanning to see if anyone had already said it. Agree with all of the do-
betters. #4, whether the charge is one-time or recurring is the most important
to me and takes just a tiny edit.

~~~
bharani_m
Just updated the text to clarify that it is a one-time payment. Sorry for
taking so long to make such a minor change.

------
dotmartyr
Sentence on your Go PRO! page:

"Check out the PRO version, we are sure that you'll love it."

The fact that you don't contract "we are" and then later in the clause
contract you will to "you'll" sounds weird.

Also, you may just want to rewrite that whole bit. It comes out like a ShamWoW
ad or something..

------
Casseres
I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the small link to preview
the templates. Before I sign up for something, I would want a better idea of
what it was I was signing up for.

You may want to make the Preview Templates link a little more prominent.

~~~
winkerVSbecks
Actually I couldn't even find the link even after reading your post. I'm on an
iPhone and that might have something to do with it, but still needs to be more
visible.

~~~
tjoff
Neither could I, was about to mention that he should have a page with the
samples so that you can inspect them before signing up. Then I read that
comment and still couldn't find it, I searched for templates it and then found
the links at the bottom that has almost the same color as the background...
(on win+chrome at least).

~~~
bharani_m
I'll fix the links shortly.

------
chris_wot
This is quite interesting... but can I suggest you try to sell _why_ you'd
want to go Pro? There's a button that says "Go Pro", but there's nothing that
explains what extra features I'd get with an upgrade.

~~~
bharani_m
I am not sure which page you are talking about. Here's the link to the page
that explains all the Pro features - <http://www.resumonk.com/pro>

~~~
chris_wot
If you navigate to:

[http://www.resumonk.com/users/<username>/resumes/new](http://www.resumonk.com/users/<username>/resumes/new)

There's a link that says you can import your LinkedIn profile if you go pro -
as a suggestion, add a link to the other reasons why you should go pro (I
don't use LinkedIn).

~~~
bharani_m
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll add the link shortly.

------
BasDirks
Buddhist monks and the pursuit of a career are to me a weird match, but an
inversion of values is not an uncommon marketing approach. As for the design:
it's not consistent enough just yet, do you know what you want? Right now
you're mixing smooth and pixelated in a weird way. The font for "Get started
with your resume" clashes with the enormous Open Sans.

~~~
bharani_m
Thanks for your inputs. I just wanted to get the first version up and running
quickly so I believe that I still need to fix a lot of things. I will
definitely pay more attention to the consistency and the overall look and feel
of the design in the next iteration.

------
arunoda
Nice App. But adding a Buddhist monk is very bad. You can't do that. It's
shame. You may not be an Buddhist. But for us this is like jesus as my mascot.
This is shameless marketing you are trying to do with insulting a religion.

I don't like to discuss here something like this. But this is bad.

~~~
iamdave
_But for us this is like jesus as my mascot._

....what? Excuse me for coming off as blunt here, but are you _actually_
Buddhist?

~~~
arunoda
Yes. I'm a buddhist and yesterday was our Vesak Festival where it is our holy
festival. I feel so bad by looking this.

You all might seems this is not a bad thing. Because what I was talking here
is not your culture. If the author of this product is a real buddhist he would
understand this.

~~~
gnaritas
You don't sound like a Buddhist, and you certainly aren't acting like one.
You're acting like what a Christian would think a Buddhist would act like.
Holy festival... that is not the language of a Buddhist. Nor would a real
Buddhist blame someone else for how they feel, nor would they treat Buddha as
if he were Jesus; Buddha is not a god to be worshiped.

If this upsets you, and you're really a Buddhist, then go meditate on why
you're allowing your mind to make you feel this way and leave this guy alone.
Trying acting less like what you think a Buddhist is and more like Buddha
would. Buddha would not feel insulted by a cartoon of a Buddha, Buddha would
probably laugh.

~~~
demigod
Forget his language, he may not be a native English speaker and the difference
in the way he acts, that based on our perception of how a Buddhist should be.

I may not be a Buddhist but as some one who love Buddhist philosophy, I find
no reason to get offended at the picture, Actually I myself love seeing
pictures of Buddha at more and more places (as long as its not used in profane
ways) It actually cheers me up.

~~~
nakkiel
The whole thing here is that profane has many different definitions and
someone who is an actual Buddhist has reported that this is profane for him.

As I said above, Buddhism is only a philosophy in the western world.

Buddhists may not see much of a difference between a Buddha (or a monk) and a
Jesus.

It's not an issue with Buddhism only, some muslim in France eat pork and drink
alcohol and don't see why it should be an issue with their faith. They
wouldn't be offended to see a cute pork on a website called resumepork.com
still millions other muslims may be offended and would leave the page right
away.

------
orky56
Great idea and execution! The Go Pro option to autofill LinkedIn seems very
odd. When a user is completing a crucial first step, such as filling out the
necessary resume info, you should make that process as simple as possible,
such as using LinkedIn info, even if it means free. I came to the predicament
early on and decided between going pro and not completing the fields at all. I
think you're going to lose a lot of people at this point. Instead going pro
should be for versions (word/pdf) and analytics after the fact, when the user
already has a great impression of the service and has already received the
minimum level of satisfaction to continue using it.

Here's my online resume/portfolio: <http://www.ideaember.com/resume> &
<http://www.ideaember.com/portfolio> I use piwik (<http://piwik.org/>) for
analytics on it.

Feel free to check out what worked for me and contact me if you'd like to have
a conversation about the subject. Perhaps a portfolio builder could be your
next project. I've spent a ton of time going over the subject and my current
implementation is just one of many iterations.

------
jmitcheson
You did a good job with the landing page. Mind sharing how you got it done?
Ie. how did you go about finding a designer, have you written design briefs
before, etc.

~~~
bharani_m
Thanks. I designed the site myself.

------
jonny_eh
I think the Pro and free version should be reversed. Curious people who want
to try it out and get their resume up and running and seconds could just
import from linkedIn. Pro users who want to fuss over the details should pay
the $10.

How it is now doesn't make much sense. I'm not going to pay the $10 until I
see it in action. And if I input all the info myself, then by that point I
won't need to import from linkedIn.

~~~
tjoff
Not everyone has linkedIn and I'm not exactly going to sign up there just to
test this out...

~~~
bharani_m
You don't need to have a LinkedIn account to try this out. LinkedIn import is
just an additional feature that you might want to use in case you don't feel
like copy-pasting your resume information.

~~~
tjoff
I was commenting on the suggestion to make LinkedIn a requirement for the free
account.

------
memset
Super cool! A few thoughts, in addition to everyone else's:

1\. When I try to preview the HTML, I get a 500 error! ("We're sorry, but
something went wrong")

2\. Possibly do a better job telling us which fields are required. For
example, I had to click the "save" button before finding out that my address
was a required field.

3\. The URLs are generally pretty and intuitive - thanks for that.
<http://www.resumonk.com/users/9999-username/> shows me a list of my resumes.
Nitpick: <http://www.resumonk.com/users/9999-username/resumes> gives me a 404,
maybe make that a listing page, or something?
<http://www.resumonk.com/users/9999-username/resumes/123.html> is fine, though
"123.html" is not a "pretty" url. Room for improvement there?

At any rate, this is really very well designed. Cool!

------
mfieldhouse
What languages, libraries, hosting and database did you use? What editor was
it created in and on what operating system?

~~~
chris_wot
Looks like Ruby on Rails... that's all I've got :-)

Love the Robert Frost poem, btw.

~~~
bharani_m
Yes, I've used Ruby on Rails and it is hosted on Heroku. The pdf is generated
using wicked_pdf(wkhtmltopdf).

I really love looking at the poem as soon as I open up Firebug :-)

------
lancashire
Great job! I recently created a similar service:

<http://cvlift.co.uk>

Your application is much better though. I used prawn as opposed to wicked_pdf
to generate the PDFs. Did you do any handling of content spilling over onto
multiple pages?

------
sondh
It's unclear $10 is monthly, yearly or just a one time payment for now. Other
than that, very nice work!

~~~
bharani_m
It's a one-time payment. But thanks for letting me know. I need to make that
clear on the PRO page itself.

------
jimmytucson
Great job. Direct to the point, easy to use, allows me to download as PDF...

I had an idea for a site exactly like this except I couldn't have executed it
as well and I gave up after I saw these: <http://startupstats.com/resume-
builder-startups-2012-03/>

I regret that decision now that I've tried yours.

------
tokyotribe
Love the little monk mascot.

------
Orf_
This looks really interesting and something I have been wanting to find for a
while. However, I broke it - if you don't fill in education or employment
details generating the resume gives a 500 error.

Stuff like that makes me a bit nervous in giving my details to your site, what
other errors and issues are there that might leak them to a 3rd party?

------
armenarmen
Very pretty! How long have you been building this? and what tools did you use?
I'm working on my first web app now too!

~~~
happypeter
As to web dev, different people tend to use very different tools to build
something looked exactly the same for end-users.

Very Often, it depends heavily on what language you use, java, php, ruby,
python...? I love Ruby on Rails.

~~~
armenarmen
Thanks, I'm using python right now, a buddy of mine is a python evangelist and
got me hooked.

------
matteodepalo
Great web app, very simple and intuitive. A piece of advice: you should allow
hyperlinks. I'd use them to link to my GitHub profile and the websites of my
previous works. Also the possibility to manually change the ordering of both
the skills and the previous experiences would not be bad.

------
DrewChambersDC
Your slider slides too quickly, it doesn't give readers time to actually look
at the images.

Also, there should be a way to preview your service without having to sign up.
You're going to lose users by forcing a sign up without being able to see the
product.

------
leeny
This is awesome. Just quick suggestion. In your deck that shows sample
resumes, the user's title is "Webdesigner [sic]". It should be 2 words.

It's a minor point, but the spelling error detracts a bit from the
professionalism of the site.

------
robotmay
I like it; I've had a need for something similar recently (though I settled on
SO Careers). Slight layout error on the homepage in Firefox 12 (OS X):
<http://i.imgur.com/ZlTi3.png>

------
Juha
I think this is great idea. Some things I'd want to see there: Gallery of
templates before signing up and possibility to manually edit the templates.
Seeing a list of features might also help getting people to sign up.

~~~
bharani_m
Here's the gallery of templates - <http://www.resumonk.com/resume_templates>

I have also updated the landing page to include a link to this gallery.

------
bm1362
You might be interested in your competition:

<http://www.jobspice.com/home>

They started out with a pro service and then changed models to a template
store.

------
rukkyg
There doesn't appear to be a way to add any formatting, even end-lines, in the
description of a position. When you've worked somewhere for 5 years, a wall of
text isn't the best way to present that experience.

------
martinshen
DESIGN SUGGESTION: For all screenshots, scale it in even proportions to reduce
aliasing. The resumes shown in the previews all look blurry.

------
sampad
One of those products which is super simple yet solves a deeper pain point for
job seekers. Have used it & can recco it too.

~~~
johnobrien102
I don't understand. Is resume formatting that big of a deal for job seekers? I
assumed (perhaps wrongly) that formatting a resume was trivial, but that
managing your job search effectively was hard.

~~~
chris_wot
It's actually surprisingly difficult to do if your skills in design aren't
that crash hot. That's why templates in Word are so popular around this area.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Is the formatting of the document really that important. I would have thought
the employer would be focussing on your qualifications/experience rather than
your design skills in MS Word.

~~~
chris_wot
Haven't applied for many jobs lately, huh?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Not in a while :) If I'm honest I do pay attention to the design/formatting of
my résumé, I still would hope that a good employer would be more concerned
about the information on the page. It can't always be counted on though.

~~~
chris_wot
The _employer_ will, but the recruiter may not :-)

------
johnnyjustice
Put the Go Pro higher on the page like towards the top cause some of us want
to give you are money as easy as possible!

------
valceder
Great idea! Like the nice clean design, keeps the message prominent. Is it
supported by all browsers?

------
anantzoid
The site is really nice as a first application. Btw, are you a modernite by
any chance?

------
rafa3rafa
nice work, like the simplicity. I agree with some of the users that the
messaging can be massaged further but overall like where you're going. I've
sent a link to your to a few folks including my little sister. Good luck!

------
blahbap
The social buttons are aligned to the left on an IPad, this does not look so
good

------
dpsahoo
Love the design of the app. How long did you take to get the MVP done?

~~~
bharani_m
Thanks. It took me about two weeks to get the MVP up and running.

------
happypeter
Simple, beautiful, useful. Thanks.

------
shpoonj
<http://i50.tinypic.com/2q863dl.png>

I like the website, but you're not getting much information above the fold on
ye olde MacBook.

