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Wiki Resume

Submitted by: branchcut
Created: Jul 22, 2006, 10:56 am

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The Idea

A managed service for hosting resumes in wiki format. Easily update your resume from anywhere and never worry about losing it. The site will be able to export it in many different formats: Word, PDF, OpenOffice, etc. Another feature will be the ability to create cover letters: you would give out a custom URL which would first display a personalized cover letter before continuing onto the actual resume, and since it was on a unique URL it would be easy to track if and when they looked at your resume. There will be a 'download as ..' button with a choice between the different hardcopy formats. The premium accounts will have a 'one click FAX' button so the resume could be faxed to any number immediately. Premium accounts would also get their own personalized subdomain so they could give out cleaner and easier to remember URL"s.

I thought of this idea when I was...

.. almost losing my resume that I had spent a lot of time creating and realizing it would be safer sitting on a hosted web service. A wiki seemed natural because they are so quick and easy to update.

Comments Posted

Aidan Posted: August 1, 2006, 5:32 pm

Almost every recruitment agency I ever worked with (and I've worked with a lot) have demanded a resume be sent as an MS Word document and not as a link, nor any other format (some have even rejected PDF and plain text).

They get 100s of resumes in a day, so why bother going to look at some website when the next one in your inbox has the resume right there.

On top of that, many of them have built systems around parsing and storing MS Word resumes.

Finally, almost every major jobsite gives you this feature, although not quite as nicely as you've described it.

techguy Posted: August 4, 2006, 1:10 am

I think you would have to have a way for you to export the resume to word. Otherwise, this project is useless.

Also, you would want to be able to have a robust system of versions. The versions should handle
1. Changes to a resume over time(new jobs, changes of jobs, new education)
2. Multiple Resumes which target various jobs(ie. web programmer, system administrator, Managment, etc)

branchcut Posted: August 9, 2006, 11:37 am

RE: Aidan + Techguy. Agreed, the site would definitely have to have a way to export to Word, or else its pretty useless. That shouldn't be too hard because the wiki markup is very simple, and OpenOffice could probably be leveraged for generating Word files. Versioning is actually easier if it is a wiki-based format, just look at the versioning features of wikipedia. Multiple resumes could be done pretty easily using a simple "static include" mechanism in the wiki markup language.

scrollinondubs Posted: April 25, 2007, 12:48 am

for the need your describing why not just make it a googledoc and give recruiters access as viewers? has the versioning built in as well as the "save as MS word" feature...

Aidan is right that as an employer i don't want a link from a job candidate that sends me to some site where i have to figure out how to get their resume, i want one page sitting in my inbox that i can glance at immediately. i just couldn't see paying for this service especially when googledocs has the requested features and is already familiar to many people

Hello!

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