
Revitalise your CV – Simple resume-editing tool - lecss
http://cvtalize.com
======
jnbiche
Looking good.

In order for me to use this for my actual CV, at the very least I'd need to be
able to re-order the sections (for anyone except new grads, education should
be after experience). I'd also need to be able to get nicely formatted ascii
txt version of the CV in addition to the pdf.

Being able to pull data from LinkedIn and/or Github would also be nice.

~~~
lecss
That is a good point! Reordering should be available asap. The main reason
this link was posted so early was to actually see what are the features the
potential users are looking for, so we can adapt the site to do just that!
Linkedin integration is definitely going to be up soon and Github is also on
the list. Many thanks!

~~~
X4lldux
[http://creddle.io](http://creddle.io) is much better. And can reorder
sections!

~~~
yoasif_
The first thing I noticed from Creddle (aside from the unfortunate name -- it
kinda looks like "creddie" and maybe should be) is the color scheme of the
first row of sample documents -- it looks like it's custom made for Slashdot
employees. To me, that makes it look more dated than it should.

~~~
X4lldux
There are other styles to choose from.

------
hackerboos
I don't understand using a star system on a CV.

~~~
bshimmin
Nor I. Why would you advertise so prominently on your CV something that you
aren't either very good or excellent at? I mean, it'd certainly be useful to
the hiring manager to know that you give your communication skills 1 star, but
it definitely wouldn't do the candidate many favours...

~~~
remyp
When I interview candidates I will frequently ask them to give a rough "1-10"
rating on how good they are with a particular language/technology. This sheds
a lot of light when we get to the technical portion.

Someone who says they're a "5" and gets most of the questions right is a great
hire. Someone who says they're a "9" and can barely answer the basics is a
huge red flag.

~~~
simi_
Why then don't you ask the candidates to interview themselves, while you're at
it?

~~~
mkoryak
I think you are missing the point. Figuring out how good you are at a skill is
only 1/2 of the story. There is also value is finding out if you think you are
good at it, or if you know that you suck.

A good programmer should know what they don't know, and not be arrogant.

------
canterburry
Love this idea, however have a few thoughts:

1\. This format only works for EU countries. In the US this format is not
appropriate. For example, in the US, education is a minor point typically put
at the bottom of the resume. Experience and technical acronyms usually take up
the most room.

2\. While pretty, the amount of white space is wasting precious room to make
an impression with. Given that for the first few years only one page is
recommended of length, whitespace is very costly in terms of valuable writing
real estate.

I almost think you could turn this around into a resume writing wizard which
tries to extract valuable information in order to write a BETTER resume. Maybe
have a formatting independent input, and then let the user choose for what
country they want the output formatted. I think formatting is rarely the issue
in most CVs, content however is. Maybe focus on helping people write better
resumes.

Most people don't even realize how much they know until you start pointing out
things such as experience in certain domains, processes, standards etc.

------
cocoflunchy
My problem with these resume generators is always the same: the generated pdf
doesn't hold in a single page. I don't think a resume should be longer than
one page unless you're an academic and you want to list all of your
publications, or you have 40 years of relevant experience for the position.

~~~
briandear
The one page resume 'standard' is a myth. Unless you're a new grad, one page
is extremely difficult to do unless you shirk to a 9pt font. If you happen to
have two degrees, that's already a minimum of 5 lines of space (the Education
heading, a blank line and two lines for the school, plus one line of buffer
after the last entry. With your name, contact info, etc, that could be five or
more lines (depending on Te size of your name/heading, etc. If you have an
"about" or objective section, that's likely 1-3 sentences, so about 5 lines,
if you list skills, that can be another block of content. After all that, you
might have room for 3 past jobs, but forget about actually describing your
accomplishments at those jobs. So with clever formatting, a 1 pager is
possible, but what is the reason for an artificial constraint? The one page
standard is outdated as well as arbitrary. I have hired about 15 developers
over the past few years and never once did I say "a two page resume!! Next!
For me it's about content and not about clever formatting. I do like nice
formatting, but not formatting with the intent of squeezing content into an
arbitrary page.

Whitespace is your friend. It makes resumes much more powerful. Page count is
arbitrary. A resume should be long enough, not too short, not too long.

~~~
wtracy
The sources that tell you to have a one-page resume typically expect you to
edit out _anything_ that doesn't apply to the job you are currently applying
for.

It makes some sense. You're trying to ensure that all the high points in your
resume get read by making the reader's job easier. At the same time, re-
writing your resume every time you apply to a new job is a tremendous burden,
and simply impossible if you want a consulting agency to keep it on file.

------
kolev
Long ago, I wanted to adopt the HR Open Standard in XML [0] and render my
resume off that using HR-XSL [1]. Well, that format didn't get adopted as much
as I liked, unfortunately. Now, there's JSON Resume, but it's very limited
[2]. There's also h-resume [3] (microformat). I really want a format that will
allow a complex resume to fit it without compromises. It's 2014 and there's
still no such one!

[0] [http://www.hropenstandards.org/](http://www.hropenstandards.org/)

[1] [http://hr-xsl.sourceforge.net/](http://hr-xsl.sourceforge.net/)

[2] [https://jsonresume.org/schema/](https://jsonresume.org/schema/)

[3] [http://microformats.org/wiki/resume-
formats](http://microformats.org/wiki/resume-formats)

------
LoneWolf
I don't know how largely it is used but europass CV would also be a nice
option to import from
([https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/pt/documents/curriculum-v...](https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/pt/documents/curriculum-
vitae))

~~~
lecss
Interesting idea! One of the very next steps is coming up with an import
feature which may include europass CV too, but Linkedin will come first
though! Much appreciated!

------
Ra1d3n
Some things I found lacking:

1\. Your background image previews on my "Hover Zoom" chrome extension (opens
in overlay like a link to a image [1]).

2\. Your star display breaks on my second monitor (19" 1280x1024) at 100% Zoom
in Chrome and every setting above that[2] This is in my opinion not
acceptable.

3\. In "Preview Mode" you can not add anything, but you can still remove
parts. Is this intended?

4\. Speaking of preview mode... it is not obvious what it does. If you are
looking at the button when you click it you don't automatically realize what
it does.

That is all for now. Good luck.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/sKO9Xu7.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/sKO9Xu7.jpg) [2]
[http://i.imgur.com/CYevnvF.png](http://i.imgur.com/CYevnvF.png)

------
wtracy
My first reaction is: This would be really cool if I hadn't already invested
the effort to learn LaTeX/XeTeX. Does this really provide anything beyond the
really nice formatting?

------
manishsharan
Maybe pretty resumes are useful if you are applying for executive positions.
My experience as an applicant for tech jobs is that style and beauty of resume
are lost upon HR software programs that match candidates' resume to
opportunities. Maybe its only here in Canada, but most major employers here
use an ugly web software where they force candidates to stuff their resumes
into small textareas and check off on industry buzzwords.

~~~
JeanMertz
This. At my old job we had a repository of résumés which management used to
promote the company and the people working there.

The repository was full of nice-looking and sometimes funny (in a good way)
résumés. One of them even had a nice xkcd comic
([http://xkcd.com/378/](http://xkcd.com/378/)).

Then the company started to attract bigger customers, and these customers had
their own HR departments. The next month, all résumés had to be resubmitted,
no formatting, no images, table-based two-column layout.

It took the fun out of an already boring document.

The company I currently work for never asked my résumé, they saw a talk I gave
at a conference, they knew my public contributions, and asked me to join them
for one day. That was enough to convince them, as it should be.

------
UserRights
Technically very nice, but please add these informations: * who are you * in
which jurisdiction is this site located * especially: is this site US based or
in an EU country * what happens to my data I put on your site * please publish
a general privacy policy (collection, retention, distribution to third parties
etc.)

At the moment you are just demonstrating very clearly that you give a *
thinking on user privacy - that is not very clever.

~~~
briandear
Isn't a resume a relatively public document already? When you apply for a job,
do you ask to see the employers resume privacy policy? Besides, most of the
same information is found on the average LinkedIn profile, so in the grand
scheme of things is a privacy policy in this site really a battle worth
creating a new HN account just to complain about it? Perhaps one of us can
make a public key secured resume builder to ensure that the NSA doesn't find
out you worked for McDonalds for two years. I am all for privacy, but there's
also a level of common sense that ought to be used before criticizing
someone's free tool that you are under no obligation to use. If it were a
commercial product, then perhaps there's be a higher standard but this was
some dude building a tool probably in his spare time.

------
V-2
The sample (downloadable) resume isn't formatted well.

There's not enough space between "John Doe" and "WEB DEVELOPER..." \- capital
"J" almost overlaps it.

There are also orphaned lines on page two.

I also don't like the abundance of font styles (varying sizes, capitalics,
bold...) on one page, although that one is subjective of course. Personally I
don't find this elegant.

------
topherjaynes
Amazing first step. I made my original CV in Indesign so updating became very
easy, but changing layout was hard. Would love to see "widgets" you could move
around the CV. Like a new education box to drag over or move around the page.
Being able to control the layout is the hard part and you have the opportunity
to make it really easy here!

------
Gdiddy
I really like the clean design. But...

It needs to be much more customisable - moving, removing and adding sections.

Eg: I'm monolingual but can't remove the languages field.

There's no section for references.

There's no section for website.

There's no way to easily list work samples / project - much more relevant than
employer if you're an independent contractor.

Really needs the ability to save and edit later.

------
willejs
This is cool, it would be great if it had linkedin integration so that you
could pull dates and companies into it too.

~~~
kartikkumar
Yea was thinking the same. Would be neat if this basically offered you
templates to reformat your LinkedIn content. Essentially you'd then be
skinning LinkedIn profiles and I think that would make it a whole lot easier
for people to get started. Maybe subsequently even release a template editor
so that people can customize and potentially ship their own skins. Don't know
if this exists but would be great!

I link to my Linked profile now on my personal website in lieu of providing a
resume, since I wanted to minimize duplicating content and ending up with an
additional document that I've forgotten to update. LinkedIn profiles aren't
great as one-page summaries.

------
MistahKoala
Maybe it's different for technical positions, but most of the low-level jobs
I've ever applied for have asked for Word documents to be sent. Agencies in
particular get moany about sending PDFs (presumably because they want to be
able to edit out identifying details of candidates, but who knows what else).

------
na85
Does anyone know what is used to typeset this? Particularly the "star gauge"
where John Doe lists his fictional skills? I'd like to be able to give similar
"ratings out of 5 stars" via LaTeX.

------
toomuchtodo
Is there any way to save drafts for further editing in the future?

------
jlink
I am not convinced by the star rating. But neat UI!

~~~
Khao
I'm wondering why it's using 6-star rating. It got me really confused for a
moment since my mind is used to ratings out of 5 stars, not 6.

~~~
briandear
I actually love it just because I'm a fan of arbitrary cognitive dissonance.

------
yoasif_
I hate to be "that guy", but the first thing I noticed is that this doesn't
display properly with NoScript installed and enabled.

Considering that pretty much any content page (news stories, Hacker News,
etc.) works just find without JavaScript enabled, this is a wee bit
disappointing.

Other feedback: the "x" button that appears when hovering over a removable
element seems to get more convex when hovered over, and it loses its rounded
edges, turning more boxy. This is on Firefox nightly in Linux.

Also, the skills sections with stars causes the remove (x) icon to reflow the
skills section, causing an unsightly jump in the skills. A solution could be
to absolutely position the remove button so that it doesn't cause that jump.

Further, the subhead below the name appears to not have enough vertical
whitespace separating the two -- this occurs in both the HTML representation
and the PDF.

"whether" is spelled incorrectly as "wether".

While the page also seems pretty "responsive" the edit and export tools look
awkward at points in between the standard mobile sizes and when it makes the
jump to the desktop experience -- specifically, the widths of those panels do
not match the width of the résumé preview. There also doesn't appear to be any
whitespace between the résumé and further panels.

The contact section also looks awkward in the mobile view -- the icons appear
to escape the left margin of the rest of the résumé, and there isn't any
whitespace between the name and subhead.

In addition, the capitalization for the editing/export tools is inconsistent
-- "Export controls" vs. "Edit Tools", and may be too verbose as labels.

The "ease in" effect for the "Beautiful resumes done in seconds!" seems
superfluous to me.

Lastly, the sidebar could probably just stay fixed as the user scrolls through
the page, so that it is always available, especially for longer documents.

Wishlist item for me would be an import/export in the native data format for
this tool -- plaintext as Markdown (or whatever you are using internally)
would be handy, as copying information out of an exported PDF can be
challenging.

~~~
pc86
Not the author, but while I agree that it would be nice if NoScript didn't
break the site, isn't this closer to an application than a content page?

~~~
yoasif_
It seems to serve as an "application", but if this were to ever become a
repository of résumés like Linkedin (seems obvious to me), this would become a
problem.

Even given that it is an app, a static representation of the app along with a
"please enable JavaScript to edit" message would be really handy -- at least I
could then get an idea of whether I want to edit the document being shown.

