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Students at Ivy Plus schools such as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford make up the first class of users. These students have significant computer skills, a deep drive to land a great internship or job opportunity, and hectic schedules. Underclassmen at these schools typically have an array of experiences and skills from high school, but have not had to organize these items in a traditional one-page resume. In contrast, Ivy Plus upperclassmen have generally found a method to make an effective resume, but have difficulty maintaining different resumes versions for a range of job and educational opportunities. Moreover, they are uncertain that they are presenting their experiences most effectively
Recruiters are the other user group we envision for IvyPlusResumes. Recruiters would like to connect with all students at Ivy Plus schools, but need an effective way to screen these candidates. One recruiter mentioned that she was "worried" she might not interview the best people for the job. These users generally have less computer experience, unless they are at a technology-focused company, and have had bad experiences with enterprise human resources software. They dedicate a large portion of their time strategizing about the best way to get in touch with students and struggle to only use insure that employees' limited recruiting time is used to interview the best candidates.
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As students develop professionally, they maintain a log of their experience and activities for themselves, and to present to potential employers. This professional journal allows an undergraduate undergraduates to generate different resumes as needed. The log will be online, so a user can access and edit it from anywhere the user has internet access. The application asks the user to take his or her knowledge and store it for him or her to see. The user can update this journal as frequently as the user would like, whether it be once a week, once a month, or once a year. Also, since the user can add and edit an entry at anytime, the user can simply put something small in his or her journal, and then return at a later date and expand on and update it. For example, if at an event, a my project is praised, I can make a note of it in my online journal and then later elaborate on it. The UI will be designed so that the user can understand how to use the web application simply by interacting with it. We will have a manual and FAQs as well. With regards to safety, a user may input the wrong information. All entered information will be editable and removable, so that should not be a major concern. A user could however delete something that the user did not mean to delete. This can cause problems. Anytime a user is deleting a full item with other sub-items such as “Summer Internship at Google” and all the bullet points it contains, there will be a confirmation screen asking, “Are you sure you want to delete this?” If they still accidentally delete this bullet point they may have to reenter the information.
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