The Idea

The first draft of a new job seeker’s resume often has much room for improvement. Typos need to be removed, language tightened up, skills and keywords modified to match a target job. We confirmed with our users, and our own analytics, that being able to make quick improvements to their resumes would provide enormous value to our customers.

The Challenge

No existing products currently do this. Therefore, we had neither mental models nor common terms to leverage. We had a perfect green field before us. The only past experience we could count on was when our users built their resume through our builder. However, this would be different from that.

Explorations

Facing a substantial challenge in a relatively short design phase, we kicked off the project with a Design Sprint. At the end of the week, we had identified our primary variations.

WYSIWYG vs Report

The first explorations sought to answer one fundamental question: do users need to see a preview of their actual resume as they make their improvements?

Score variations

We determined we needed 2 scores for a resume—one that reflects a resume’s overall strength and one showing how well it is matched to a target job. Designing two separate scores whose meaning would not be confused required multiple iterations.

Copy variations

Next, we explored various copy ideas. In this example, we tried different copy approaches to describe how a user’s resume matches to a job.

The Solution

A note about visual design

The visual design standard of MyPerfectResume is admittedly dated. While a complete redesign was recommended and discussed, it was never prioritized by executive leadership. Given this limitation, our team sought to enhance this standard through the introduction of new patterns, while adhering to the overall design system to ensure a consistent experience by our users.

Results

Through this tool, a full 80% of our users improved their resumes to 85% or better. This made them into better job seekers to facilitate finding a new job faster.

As an MVP, this feature reduced cancellations by 9% and increased 3rd-month renewals by 3%.