And now for something a little different:
Resume Star guides you through the steps to create a precision targeted and professionally typeset resume. You simply fill in your information, and Resume Star produces a cross-platform compatible PDF file that you email to employers or post online.
Why did we build this App? Aren’t we better known for building creative tools?
Honor-ware
First, Resume Star has a new and experimental pricing system: It’s completely free to download and use the full App. It’s not a limited trial. You can create and send as many resumes as you need. No ads. No gimmicks.
You only need to complete the purchase (in-app) when you get an interview.
It’s a system we’re calling “Honor-ware”. Instead of users taking a leap of faith on an unfamiliar product that may or may not solve their problem, we the developers are putting our faith in our users instead.
We haven’t seen this approach used widely in the App Store, and this is a little experiment to see how well it works. Will people actually pay us? Will they prefer this approach? We’ll find out.
Don’t expect us to roll this out to our other Apps anytime soon. :) However, it might prove to be a viable model for certain kinds of Apps.
Professional typesetting
We wanted to write a better Resume App, because frankly we think there’s room for improvement in this space. In the course of hiring for our own business, we’ve come across our fair share of poorly formatted or strangely styled resumes. When we dug deeper, we found that folks were getting tripped up in a couple of ways:
1. Some were using word processing software, and getting tripped up on the formatting options. It’s surprising how easy it is to mess them up.
2. Some were using Apps that pushed their users to use gaudy styles and colors, trying to make their resumes look more like a brochure. This may have been presented as a creative way to stand out, but unfortunately not always in a good way.
So, one of the design challenges we set for ourselves with Resume Star is to only allow you to create a professionally typeset resume. It’s been an illuminating study in the art of Constrained Design.
Precision Targeted
The final straw that led us down this path was noticing that many, in fact the vast majority of resumes are poorly targeted. Once, we had been looking for a “Software Quality Assurance Tester”, and received many resumes that were looking for “a position in Software Development”. It seems like a subtle difference, but the immediate question this raises is “did this person actually read the job description? Would he actually be interested in doing this job?”.
When you have a large stack of resumes to sort through (as is always the case), this usually results in the resume being put at the bottom of the pile.
So what started off as a bit of a pet peeve ended up as a little manifesto, in the form of the Resume Star Guide, How to Score That Interview With a Precision Targeted Resume. We wanted to write an App that encouraged users to do the right thing by default.
Want to Help Us?
I’m guessing that most of you reading this are already gainfully employed. You probably won’t need a resume generator anytime soon. But there are a couple ways you can participate in our experiment:
1. If you know someone, perhaps a graduating student or a friend who is looking for a job. Please recommend Resume Star to them. They just need an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. They have nothing to lose, and we really appreciate the feedback.
2. If you are interested in the design aspects of the Constrained Design Approach, it might be interesting to run through Resume Star to see what you think. We’ve learned a lot from this project that we hope to apply in future Apps. Feel free to share your thoughts with us.
Either way, we hope you find this interesting. Find out more on the Resume Star homepage.