Chris Messina

Sumry - The human way to get hired

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Ryan Hoover
I barely scan resumes and don't expect them when applicants apply to join the Product Hunt team. Where they've worked and how long they've worked there is important, but I'm more interested in how they think, projects/things they've done outside of work, and their ambitions.
Taylor Edmiston
@rrhoover Do you get background from AngelList / LinkedIn, or just talk about it in an interview (or neither)?
Nate Hanson
@rrhoover Agreed. I love seeing success and failures people have had and what they learned from those. Maybe we can bring Product Hunt onto the Sumry Teams test once we're ready.
Nelson Keating
I think the design/ui looks like a great start, but similar to @rrhoover I firmly believe that resumes are antiquated, should be footnotes at best. Show people what you know don't tell them. We built the new StackStreet (https://stackstreet.com/about/) with this as a core tenet and cant wait to share it with the product hunt community!
Nate Hanson
@nelson_keating Totally agree with Ryan. We hate resumes too. 😄 There is room for a few people doing this. We just care that people are happy at work. We plan on being apart of making that happen, but if someone else does it, that's great. It's time for a change!
Roger Dickey
Hmm, the timeline view gets a little hard to parse / unreadable after a while. I think a much bigger step change to the resume is required for this to be interesting. Also you should definitely put a sample Sumry somewhere. I bounced after not seeing one (assuming you were trying to hide it because it wasn't that great), then came here & saw a few samples.
Nate Hanson
@rogerdickey Thanks for the comments, Roger. This is merely step one — giving people the freedom to share who they actually are on their "resume." The next piece is bringing on teams (http://sumry.me/teams) that want a more human/personal hiring tool. Again, Sumry isn't a resume. :)
John
@natemhanson @rogerdickey I agree w Roger on two things. 1) I scanned for an example and bounced after not seeing one. 2) I also agree that the timeline is irrelevant for sections outside of one's professional journey. The contact section is the clearest example of the mismatch of UI to UX. Not quite sure why I'd need to see a "timeline" of someone's social media handles. That said, cool concept with (relatively) easy fixes. Much more engaging than apps like About.me
Nate Hanson
@drwolanin @rogerdickey Hey John, you're right. You must have seen old Sumrys where we had a Contact section. We've done away with that and all social links now show up at the top under your bio.
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Hunter
It's an interesting alternative to a resume-builder, focused on narrative via a vertical timeline, so give a richer sense of a person. Here's an example, from the founder: https://sumry.me/nate
Nate Hanson
@chrismessina Thanks for the feature, Chris! Welcome Product Hunters! We believe the best companies want to hire all of you. Sumry isn't a resume. If the company you're applying at just wants to know where you went to school and past jobs you've had, Sumry probably isn't for them. (But you should aim at a better, higher company that really cares about who you are!) That's where Sumry comes in. We've made a way for awesome people to apply at passionate companies. These companies want you to know them and they want to know you. The real you!
Nate Hanson
Use the code "ThankYouProdHunt" to get 50% off first month of Sumry Pro. :)
Karen X. Cheng
I kept looking around on the homepage for a link to examples of sumrys before I had to sign up. It's helpful that there are examples linked in the discussion thread here - on the homepage would've been helpful too.
Nate Hanson
@karenxcheng We're working on adding that. Our developer @sebastiankade is asleep in Sydney right now, so he'll add those once he's up. :) For now: http://sumry.me/nate
Elisa Jo Harkness
Neat. I hate LinkedIn as much as the next guy, so I'd love for something like this to set the new standard. About.me's Backstory feature is a bit like this, too; I agree with the commenters who've said this could move even further from the traditional 'resume.' You guys should look into integrating with MakerBase.
Nate Hanson
@eliservescent We loved it when About.me copied us last year. ;)
Sebastian Kade
Great idea with MakerBase @eliservescent We're going to keep pushing the boundary on making hiring more human :)
Jason Pittam
I have been a LONG time user of Sumry and it's proven many times over to be useful. I have been discovered on numerous occasions via Sumry and received so many comments on the design and message. http://sumry.me/jason
Nate Hanson
Also, we're looking for funding so we can hire a team. Our dream is to fix both sides of the hiring process: The application (individual) and the hiring tool (companies.) The future is bright. Let me know if you know of anyone who may be interested in finding Sumry: nate@sumry.me
Nate Hanson
My personal Sumry stats since being featured on Product Hunt... http://nate.fm/l/htsl3
Phil Nguyen
Agreed that traditional recruiting/applying is a pretty antiquated process, great to see new solutions to address it! Few comments/suggestions: - When go to your about page (https://sumry.me/about) the header disappears. Not sure if that's just me but it's kind of annoying when the nav links go away. - Might consider renaming the "Help" nav link to "FAQ" since help implies (in my mind) that I'm an active user and am having technical difficulties. FAQ on the other hand is more open to people who are just visiting your site for the first time and looking to learn more. - For the FAQ "What jobs can I apply for with my Sumry?" and your answer is "Any on the internet, basically. Currently, you can apply for any job that allows you to apply via email or PDF." I'm kind of curious about this because if I created a Sumry and sent it in to a random company that didn't know of you guys, I wonder how they would react to it. Whereas if I submitted a normal resume I know I would receive a neutral response, with Sumry it could vary widely. What are your thoughts on how to mitigate that risk? - If I were a hiring manager, how do I understand what Sumry Teams provides? The description (https://sumry.me/teams) seems a bit vague, I gather that I'd be able to view users' Sumrys but is there anything "smart" about it or is just a pile of profiles for me to wade through? I'm sure there are some cool tools your team has built and I definitely think you should provide more details on it! - That's an impressive list of hiring companies you have on the front page! Are those Sumry Team companies or are they companies that have hired candidates who have submitted their Sumry in lieu of a traditional resume? Sorry for the long list, they're just my initial thoughts. Keep up the great work, looks really neat!
Nate Hanson
@p_ngu Thanks, Phil! To run through these: We're working on fixing out /about page and Help/FAQ page. The list of companies are ones that our users have gotten jobs at. You can apply for any job on the internet with our downloadable PDF's — I think any company would be at least neutral to those. Our goal is to do away with the PDF part of Sumry eventually. We mostly have it as a bridge from old world to new, Sumry world. Regarding Sumry Teams: It's actually not built yet. It is a well thought out idea that we're in the process of building and hiring a team for. It'll be better than just wading through a bunch of traditional resumes. But, remember, we're targeting small to medium sized startups. On average they're only getting 10-30 people interested in each job they post. That's not that many to go through. What smaller teams need isn't better applicant tracking systems (those are for the large Apple's and Google's.) What smaller teams is a more in-depth understanding of the person wanting to join their team. The person wanting to join their team also wants a better understanding of the team they're potentially joining.
Phil Nguyen
@natemhanson Thanks for the quick response - I think that all makes sense to me, looking forward to seeing your team continue to build it out!
Ali R. Tariq
Very cool. Like the clean reimagining of a standard resume. I was actually thinking of including a life timeline like this to an About Me section of my website. Would be nice if I could embed a Sumry view into a webpage :)
Sebastian Kade
@alirtariq definetly would be. We went halfway on that, you can't embed but you can use your sumry as your personal website: www.sebastiankade.com which we think is pretty neat :)
Pablo Smith
Sumry is an absolutely awesome product. I've been pretty close to Nate and helped beta test parts of Sumry. I do recommend it for anyone trying to introduce more than just a black and white job history!
Kelly Kuhn-Wallace
Fun concept. You might play with making the sections expandable. That would help quite a bit with readability/ux. It's a somewhat confusing infographic as presented because the time series data is treated on the same plane as the non-sequential data. Easy fix.
Nate Hanson
@kkdub appreciate that suggestion, Kelly. I like the collapsible sections thing. Regarding the time-spent data, that is separate from the amount of views my Sumry is getting. It's a helpful stat for making sure your Sumry is interesting. :)
Ghost Kitty
Comment Deleted
Nate Hanson
@leemalmac We're looking into this, Nodari.
Taylor Crane
Blown away by the richness of this product on launch day. You guys thought through the details, and I appreciate that, especially in a world that celebrates shitty MVPs so frequently. Great experience. Also side note, the profile page is coincidentally super similar to my personal website at taykcrane.com. Pretty funny.
Nate Hanson
@taykcrane Thank you, Taylor. Probably the most encouraging comment this week. :) We've worked hard to bring a solid MVP to market. We're doing the same with Sumry Teams (http://sumry.me/teams) before launching it. Love you site!
Steve RAFFNER
I have been working 3 years on skills based matching in my (now frozen) ex startup - happy to see you are going in that direction.
Sebastian Kade
@steveraffner Sorry to hear it's come to an end! Tough isn't it, we really think the key to it is going to be putting people back in the hiring process so that we get companies making better (not just faster) hiring decisions.
Otilia Otlacan
Great product, so may opportunities for further development! I would love an embeddable profile widget that I could use on my personal site - even the color scheme would match :-)
Nate Hanson
@otiliaotlacan We're actually building that now! Got any other suggestions on how it would look/work? hello@sumry.me
Andrew Brackin
It's a little hard to read each profile, I like the idea in concept. Getting tech companies to adopt new hiring tools is notoriously hard so I don't think this will be a good strategy until you have massive adoption.
Nate Hanson
@brackin We're focused on "the few" that think like we think (i.e. Want to protect their culture and actually know the people they're hiring.) That's why we're building our own tool for companies to hire with: http://sumry.me/teams
Alan
Just created an account, loving it thus far!
Nate Hanson
@alanaut24 Awesome! What strikes you first?
Tim Aton
I am also a long time user of sumry and it has served me well! I'm excited to see how this new process will disrupt the resume industry...