by mikeyg on 2/5/10, 7:46 PM with 32 comments
by nfnaaron on 2/5/10, 10:42 PM
Title:
The title bar says "Praux - Welcome To Praux.com"
You're missing an opportunity to tell readers and google what you do.
Maybe instead "Praux - Your resume, your way" or something like that.
Front page:
There is no stable description of what the site does, above the fold. When I first looked at the front page (on an 800px high laptop screen), I saw:
- P.C
- login and signup widgets
- a cute phrase
- the top two thirds of a flash block
I would put a stable blurb of text, near the top (you could shove that login/signup stuff up and to the right to free up some room) that says what you do in a nutshell.
The word "resume" does not appear anywhere on the front page until below the flash block, except within the flash block itself (see below).
The Flash Block:
Lots of your target users probably block flash. Do you want to rely on flash to present your first impression to these kinds of people?
The word "resume" or even the idea of a resume does not appear until the third slide.
- 1st slide: "your content" I have a lot of that. Which?
- 2nd slide: "community" To do what? Critique my content.
- 3rd slide: We have resume! But the dudes pop up and cover them.
- 4th slide: not bad
- 5th slide: almost not bad
The flash block slides go too fast for me to think about one slide before the next one comes up. Yes, I can read them, and by now I know the site has something to do with resumes, but now I want to digest what you can do for me. I feel like I'm being rushed through a presentation, like you don't care whether I get it or not, you just want to get through the presentation. (I realize you do care, this is about how I'm reacting.)
Below the fold:
I like the graphs, they lend credibility and interest to the site.
Footer:
"I thought about this page for: 0.04645 seconds"
That gave me a chuckle, but if you must have this data, I'd change it to be more sober. But really: who cares? Only you, and other random web developers.
"3.11.31"
What's that?
Master List and Search Resumes are on the bottom line with the rest of the administrivia, but these are Features. They both need to be more prominent, and Search Resumes should be top right of the page where everyone else puts their search widget.
Help should also be more prominent, probably right up there with Search at the top, or maybe in its present location but with a bigger font size.
The Help youtube video:
The music adds nothing to the presentation, and at six minutes of trying to follow a tiny cursor around a tiny screen of tiny text fields, I'm not going to make it distracted by the music.
Maybe it's just me, but I really, really tire of faux dramatic music played over something that is not at all dramatic. E.g. when the music first crescendos, someone is typing "Objective ..." in a text field. Ooh! Ahh!
You could improve this video immensely by making it silent.
(Actually, it's cool music, just not here.)
And why is there a Russian (I guess) word at the end of the video?
The video is way too small for me to follow, even when I broke it out of the page. Maybe I don't have the right youtube skills.
About Page:
Top paragraph is not bad, but the very first thing you should say is "Praux does this and this and that for you." Probably in its own one-sentence paragraph, right at the top.
"... we want everyone to know that YOU are the owner of your identity, not us. Not Facespace, Swamptroll, or MixedIn. YOU. Sure, you can link to YOUR content hosted here from any of those sites and many others, and we encourage these sites to integrate with us ..."
If you're calling your potential collaborators "Swamptroll" I don't think they're going to be all that interested in collaborating. In general this is a mildly belligerent paragraph, which I also think would discourage collaboration.
Possible re-write:
"... we want everyone to know that YOU are the owner of your identity, not us. You can link to your content hosted here from any other social site, and we encourage those sites to integrate with us ..."
"Let's face it.. it's tough out there right now. We need to remember, we're all in this together."
The two dots should be three dots, with one space on both ends, which makes them an ellipsis (although I'm not sure if this is the correct way to use an ellipsis; maybe an M-dash?). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis
However, a little wordy, you could probably cut these two sentences.
Search Resumes:
Does Search work? I searched for variations of Alison Kroulek and got no results, but she's the first one in the Master List.
by ryanwaggoner on 2/5/10, 8:02 PM
by qjz on 2/5/10, 9:53 PM
by yannis on 2/5/10, 8:27 PM
(01) Are you aiming for people to upload CV's or for Companies to use the application to find candidates.
(02) As a candidate I would like to see how these CV's should look. (You should provide some pages with samples - before registration).
(03) Are you going to charge me?
Any application should have a prominent CALL FOR ACTION button. What must I do to upload my CV? Can I do this without registering please? After all I am bound to give you my email on the CV and you can ask me for a password at that point and do I really need to go through a captcha?
Please don't take the above as negative, disrupt the market by all means if you can, but I feel the interface needs a bit of work, it also needs to be a more serious which I believe the flash block on the front page does project a very light image. Would a financial manager applicant feel comfortable to give that link to a Bank CEO?
In my view is that you need at least two more iterations. The first one should include a more careful look at the market segment you are targeting and the second one to amend the UI to 'funnel' your visitors to immediate action.
Bonus would be to be able to alley privacy concerns and to offer a degree verification program.
What does P.C. stand for?
by petervandijck on 2/5/10, 9:20 PM
- The images (the little guy) and some of the wording is too dorky. Not saying you shouldn't show personality, but this is the wrong personality.
- "Theme your resume using CSS" - if you're aiming at regular people, forget this geeky stuff.
- I'm not clear on why I would put my resume there? I have LinkedIn set up, just seems better ("better" in this case means I'll get more professional benefit/job offers).
by mattwdelong on 2/5/10, 9:28 PM
Unlike many people here, I do like the name. I understood it immediately, and contrary to what people are saying about "buzzwords", when writing a resume you are in fact promoting yourself. If I did have a suggestion, maybe add Resume to the name? PrauxResume.com ?
You lack a call to action. I really don't know what the next step on the website is. You need to explain precisely what I need to do next. Most of your users will be fairly stupid, they need to be told!
Someone mentioned the comment bubbles in your slideshow. I also agree that they need to go, they distract me from the useful content I am supposed to be reading. The comments are cute and clever and all, but get rid of them.
Finally, I think this would be fairly useful for people looking to hire people. Perhaps you could add some useful tools for people to search for resumes based on experience and geographical location - be sure to include protection so that peoples content can't be harvested for malicious purposes. Perhaps even an opt-out of the search, which is probably an essential addition.
I like it and have added it to my bookmarks, I may use it down the road. Best of luck and hope you get all the feedback you can handle.
by semanticist on 2/5/10, 9:18 PM
I work for a company that provides CV/Resume parsing services to recruitment companies, and they all want Word documents they can reformat to their house style (and usually anonymise so the employer can't contact the candidate directly) using automated software (either ours or their CRM provider's).
Are you taking structured data from people to generate the resume? Have you considered generating HR-XML which can be passed straight to various CRMs and HR tools?
Do you provide an API to allow multi-board search tools (which we also produce) to search the resumes on your service? Recruitment companies don't want to search your site individually - they want to search everywhere at once.
You're just getting started, but trac's really not a good choice for managing your end-user help! Save it for your developer documentation and get something nicer in there, quickly!
by obsaysditto on 2/5/10, 8:52 PM
by robotron on 2/5/10, 9:12 PM
by anigbrowl on 2/5/10, 8:12 PM
The idea is very neat: I like your non-ownership approach. I think you need to show more to potential employers in terms of tools to help navigate all these very individualized resumes.
Sorry, I share Ryan's misgivings about the name. Try again.
by jawn on 2/6/10, 3:28 AM
As everyone else has already said, your messaging and initial pitch need to be cleaned up. Personally, I would stress the sub-resume's idea as that seems to be your best feature.
I'd also add an option to incorporate facebook/linkedin/twitter profiles to a resume. I did see the share buttons, but having a direct link to the persons profile would be a good feature as well.
Best of luck.
by tptacek on 2/5/10, 9:19 PM
I don't know about the job market for people from Joann's Fabric, but the little cartoon guy is the wrong tone for my market.
I feel like LinkedIn solves the problem that this site is trying to solve.
by jonas_b on 2/5/10, 9:34 PM
There are some points for improvement though. As is already mentioned, I think the faster you let people experience the ease of creating the resumes the better.
by nysauhem on 2/5/10, 9:17 PM
by aw3c2 on 2/5/10, 9:15 PM
by drewdrewdrew on 2/5/10, 9:16 PM
by jdietrich on 2/6/10, 12:40 AM
by tyrelb on 2/5/10, 9:18 PM
maybe a hide / block feature. but then this would just become another .docx/.pdf resume site.
i like the idea of being able to share/critique. sometimes people are lost for words in their own resume and need help. eg: using action words when describing their role.
good work! keep it up!
by Tawheed on 2/5/10, 8:43 PM
by mikeyg on 2/5/10, 9:11 PM
by dustingetz on 2/6/10, 1:09 AM
by savrajsingh on 2/5/10, 9:16 PM