One piece of feedback, and I understand you may not have decided on this yet, but it's not clear from the landing page whether this is meant to be free, a paid service, etc. I just get presented with a signup form and don't really have an understanding about whether I'll be expected to fork over payment or not.
Looking at this in the context of somebody's HN project I kept going, but if this were just another site I stumbled across, that ambiguity would make me more like to bounce than not.
It's certainly something that occurred to me looking through the options.
For the people for whom resumes are still an important part of the job application process, this aims to make it easier to transform your LinkedIn profile page into an appropriate looking resume, improve the design of your resume, or both.
It depends on how you go about your own job application process, and what role your resume has in that.
But I also want to stress that I think this is really great.
It's a short-term solution. If I can recall correctly, I tried both wkhtmltopdf and PhantomJS and was able to succesfully export maybe 60-70% of resumes properly. But I ran into numerous differences with fonts and spacing that sometimes caused weird page or section breaks. I ended up scrapping that method in favor of working on DOCX exporting, because at least there was some method of printing a PDF, even if it was a workaround.
I do want to go back and re-explore PDF exporting, but other requests are taking priority at the moment. I do have guided help on printing as a PDF for a few browsers and OSs in the "Help" section.
Creddle's default themes are far superior, and I am not taking the safe road on this one. fact. :)
In addition, it would be cool if you could identify target companies for a candidate based off their resume and some insights from LinkedIn (using NLP perhaps) and if I could directly apply to sites suggested by creddle as a paid feature perhaps.
Let me know if and when you do import/export support and we will do a blog post also and list you on the homepage.
Re-ordering: I could not get this to work as intuitively as it seemed it should have been (likely user error). It would be nice to be able to shift entire paragraphs/columns/sections up/down one column/section at a time, and perhaps a 'delete' button to remove the entire section or a trash icon to drag it into on the side. (I realize that by removing content from a section you effectively remove that section, but only by publishing did I know this)
After I was finished re-ordering, I was not sure what it wanted me to do. I think it just wanted me to continue on towards viewing the resume tab to publish. Perhaps a modal could offer that guidance (save-continue to publish, or keep reordering) When I clicked on the resume tab, JS error popped up asking me to leave or stay on this page like there were unsaved changes.
Again, this feedback I mentioned is likely already considered and taken care of, but my ignorance has got the best of me. :)
So awesome though! Don't take my suggestions/feedback as anything other than compliments, as I am jealous how exceptional you made this!
By moving sections up/down, do you mean reordering the "employment" section above the "education" section? Were you able to reorder schools or employment positions?
Lastly, what browser/OS are you using? I've noticed drag and drop act funky in some browser/OS combinations.
-With the Reorder capability, it took me a bit to realize that the left-side menu had changed to Done Reordering. I was hunting for the Done button at the top and bottom of the page; I didn't expect the menu to change. So maybe add the Done button to the bottom/top or change the color of the left-side menu when Reordering.
-Maybe additional sections for awards, publications, languages, certifications, etc.
-Easy to add skills by TAB+TAB+ENTER but simply pressing ENTER would be nice. So... type the new skill "Ruby", press enter, then the current new skill is added and the user is taken to a blank skill field. (Hopefully that workflow makes sense.)
-If you want to really get clever, perhaps add a way to version resume content for specific job applications, e.g. Software Developer vs Software Consultant vs Software Tech Support. Each of those positions would have some technical overlap but the applicant would do best by tailoring the resume to the specific position.
Additional sections are in the pipeline behind bug fixes and improving DOCX support.
I agree with pressing ENTER to add the skill and I believe it can use the same mechanism as is currently being used for capturing TAB. I'll look into adding that soon.
Lastly, versioned resumes are a killer feature requested by a few others that I'm hoping to add in the future.
For example, click Reorder, move things around, then click on Summary/Education/etc to finish Reordering. Could also click on Resume (at the top) to finish Reordering.
What I like about this approach is that it removes a click from the workflow.
-Another idea would be to make double-clicking into a content block finish Reordering, and then enter the edit mode, e.g dbl-click to edit text for a job.
Just some ideas... Best of luck.
I have nothing against multi page resumes, I just had to limit my scope.
I hope to add multi page resumes, but I'm sorry to say that for now it just isn't built yet.
Will be on the watch for any premium features you add in the future just for the sake of throwing some cash your way.
EDIT: One request. There doesn't seem to be a way to print from the private url. The page itself doesn't seem to be printer friendly nor is there an export button the page. It would be nice to be able for people to view my resume from the link and be able to download a copy for themselves.
My typical workflow when sending out resumes is to start with a single resume, then adjust some of the wording or remove some of the content to focus on what would be most important to my prospective employer.
I get it - it's about 10,000X better than Word format (esp. if you don't particularly like Word) and a 9,000X better than PDF (which I prefer over .doc), but if a recruiter/agency/employer won't accept it in lieue of a Word file, then I'm not sure it has a future.
Any plans to get around that issue?
I'm not too knowledgeable on the DOC format other than it's a binary format and it's much harder to export to (AFAIK Google Docs can't even export to DOC).
The best workaround I can offer is to export to DOCX, open in Microsoft Word, then save as a DOC. If the DOCX exporting is misbehaving, sit tight, it'll improve slowly but surely.
http://screencast.com/t/bzzdsUol9CnZ
It must be due to something specific to this machine, as I don't see the issue elsewhere when using the same version of chrome.
Of course that commentary is more directed at the state of web tech than Creddle specifically.
The second-best seems to be http://wkhtmltopdf.org/, which is more or less a headless wrapper around WebKit's renderer. But since WebKit puts most of its development effort into interactive/screen usage, the quality doesn't match PrinceXML yet (though it's improving). As a result I think it's still more common for people who need good-looking, open-source PDF output to use a LaTeX workflow, even where an HTML one might otherwise be more natural.
The headline "paper-friendly" comes from my frustration with other resume building web sites that I've tried over the years that want to reinvent or replace the resume, to the point where I'm not comfortable using it as my own resume.
I built Creddle in the hopes that people will feel comfortable using it as their actual resume - for me that meant printing it out on paper and handing it recruiters at the career fair. That shouldn't have to be a headline or a feature for a resume builder.
Is this maybe what you were trying to get at with the state of web tech?
If I add many skills to a skill list and attempt to delete the skills, a skill further down the list is deleted instead of the one I am clicking. If I delete all the skills in that list, finish and wait for the "Saving..." dialog, upon refresh half (if not more) of the list that I deleted will reappear.
Also, on that note, it seems counter-intuitive to me to have the check (for confirmation) to the left of the x (for decline to save changes) when dealing with the dialog to add specifics to a group (in my case, skills to a skill list). Many times I meant to save changes, and hit the X on the right rather than the checkmark instead of the check on the right, because for some reason I was stuck mentally with thinking 'confirm dialog on the right'. X on the right is intuitive for closing a window, but less so when accompanied with a confirmation checkmark (of course, opinion)
Linux x64, Firefox 32.0
P.S. tried this in another browser (Chromium), same behavior. Account was effectively broken til I deleted the skill list itself which contained the problem container.
Side note, I didn't manage to integrate bug reporting in time (even though I really should have because there are a couple of good, easy options). For the time being, I can give support via contact@creddle.io!
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Error><Code>NoSuchKey</Code><Message>The specified key does not exist.</Message><Key>1o4ez4ueoao.docx</Key><RequestId>20D1570494140710</RequestId> <HostId>VdnBAhqGiwEkrJPk9rsrf95eNZFqMih//UuNCMBcLUyt7HhqP0ulrJnlFfwMypQyPqGs+L2iuik=</HostId></Error>
I think the same goes for an open API - a poorly supported API can be very frustrating to use. If Creddle and the team continue to grow, I think that these two things would come naturally.
If you want to stand out, add more customization to the base theme. But I do recognize that customization is still limited and that there's plenty more room for growth. I just hope that it's enough to get started.
A third of my iphone screen was blocked by this message. That alone made it not work for me.
Is it that hard to get things to look decent on a smaller screen?
Creddle relies heavily on the browser for positioning sections and calculating font sizes. The work required to get rendering working on mobile isn't trivial and it's not a priority since most people would prefer to type up a resume on a computer.
That being said, there's nothing to say that responsive resumes can't be done. In fact, Creddle resumes are built in Bootstrap with this in mind. Resumes would still be designed on desktop, but exported to be viewed on mobile. I've just found while 80% of resumes might look okay condensed to a single column view on a phone, the last 20% would need some extra formatting decisions specific to mobile to be made by the user, which means designing and building a UI for that as well, so I scrapped it for the time being.
But mobile resumes have been requested by people before and I think it can be done, it's just not a priority compared to other requests.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Experiment with one column vs. two columns as well - hope this helps!
Definitely agree on adding the missing sections as these aren't the only things you can put on a resume!
It's a strategy investors also typically use to make you feel like you need something from them and set the power dynamic early.
