Report Card — Helping Engineers Get Hired

Karson Enns
3 min readNov 20, 2020

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This is a part of a challenge I’m doing, 28 concepts in 28 days. If you want to read about it head over to the Introduction.

I’ve had the opportunity to hire a lot of engineers in my career, which means arduously reviewing thousands of resumes. In the process, I’ve become quite skilled at reviewing developer resumes.

Resumes have evolved from something you could simply scan to get a good picture of a candidate, to merely a start of the reviewing process. Now you use their resume as a jumping-off point look at their blog, GitHub, LinkedIn, and more. With this in mind, I see a lot of common problems with resumes.

  • Listing many programming languages in the “Skills” section, oftentimes people include languages they aren't proficient in.
  • Not Including links to Github / Gitlab. As a hiring manager, I’d like to how active you are, or if you invest time in maintaining your profiles. Especially for more senior roles.
  • Not including a link to LinkedIn, this one is a bit controversial, but LinkedIn is a good way to validate what people are saying on the resume. Ensuring the certifications they claim, looking at their recommendations, etc.

Today's Concept is called a ReportCard, a resume reviewing tool that gives you information on how to improve to get the job you want!

🍎 Grading

ReportCard Will ask you a few simple questions to better understand what type of role you’re applying to. Starting with support for tech roles such as Software Developer, Data Scientist, even Product Manager, and Design positions.

The system will look through your resume and check that you have set up links properly, as well as check for grammar and spelling errors. From there it will verify that it can be scanned by common HR systems like Lever or Breezy.

It will also scrape through your Github, Gitlab, or Dribbble to determine how hirable you are based on your public profiles.

This all adds up to a Grade from A-F with recommendations on how to improve.

💾 Big Tech Report

If desired, we will also show you how to improve your resume for larger companies, such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google.

As well as showing you expected salary ranges based on your resume and experiences.

🎓 Course Suggestions

ReportCard will also ask you questions about what you know and don’t know, and help guide you down the learning path to become skilled enough for the job you want.

📌 Job Board

In addition, to resume service, you have the ability to post yourself on a secure job board that allows potential employers to review your skillset and send you requests.

ReportCard also makes revenue off this by charging the employers an access fee to review these candidates. It will be a flat fee, rather than a % of the candidate you hire to start.

Competitors

Score My Resume
An AI-powered resume tool, reviewing format, spelling, and grammar. This is an all-around tool that's not specific to engineering.

Levels
A fantastic tool tailored to help you get jobs at FAANG level companies gives you salary ranges and even helps you negotiate during your offer stage.

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Karson Enns

Writing about Engineering & Product. Redefining the healthcare experience at felix.ca