This idea is part of the A Dollar Worth of Ideas series, with potential open source, research or data science projects or contributions for people to pursue. I would be interested in mentoring some of them. Just contact me for details.


A common problem with newcomers to job markets is the amount of information to put in a résumé (a one page CV).

People I have talked on-line want to err on the side of stuffing their résumés with as much information as possible. Their rationale seems to be that some information about their experience might click or be relevant to the hirer in a serendipitous way, so it is better to put it all out.

Sadly, they have no experience nor understanding of what it means to do a first pass reviewing 100s of résumés at once. This idea involves showing them a large number of résumés (random variations of anonymized résumés contributed by volunteers). The résumés will appear of all sorts, good looking, hard to read, with not useful information, etc. Going through the simulator should help people understand why a clear, short resume makes the difference.