Quinncia: Resume + Interview Feedback, Feedback, Feedback (Can I Get Some Feedback?)

To be honest, I was not in the best mental place to be thinking about my resume and interview skills. I have been working hard on Swayance over the last two weeks and it's all we talk about at home these days. I've also signed a contract to teach again this Fall so immediate employment is not top of mind right now However, I will begin seeking full-time employment elsewhere come September to prepare to make a move in December or January. I will probably continue to teach a class or two, as I love teaching, but I fear there will never be a full-time opportunity in the department and I don't think it's in my best interest to wait.

I spent way too much time creating a new and beautiful resume before I realized that this is just practice and it doesn't need to be PERFECT! So, I updated an older resume that was created with a Word template and uploaded it. Two bugs I found in this process were:

• Missed two of my employers' names even though they were formatted exactly the same as the others. Quinnicia left their fields empty.
• All of the dates were updated to one month prior. For example, I began teaching at VCU in August of 2012 and Quinncia pulled it as 7/2012. This happened uniformly.

I have mixed feelings on the resume review process. While I appreciated that it recognized that I repeated some words too frequently, I disagreed with most of the other suggestions. 

• Quinncia suggested that I update my resume to a single page because it was "more than average for someone with your level of experience and education." It didn't appear to process my work history accurately. Is it assuming that all users are 22-28 years old? For context, I use a two-page format.
• It really seemed to focus on my use of dashes and recommended half dashes. My dashes were consistent, which I think is really important visually, and were the result of the template I used. I probably wouldn't change them. 
• I wish the summaries were a little more clearly explained. 
• For example, the description of why my formatting ranked low didn't make sense - it said I should have things like separate sections for employment, school, etc., which I did. Either it needs to share more information on how to improve the formatting score or it needs to give me more actionable feedback that speaks to those issues.
• Again, same feedback on the 'words' score. It only gave me feedback that I used the word 'sales' too often. To rank that low, I expect more useful feedback. 

 .                                     

I found the interview process to be much more straightforward and easy to use. Knowing that I was speaking with a bot versus a human made me feel more relaxed and I felt very comfortable answering the interview questions. I also loved the use of a timer because I answered some questions much more fully than I would have normally. I also got feedback from the program that I was doing a good job providing detail to my answers. Other than that, I didn't really get any other feedback during the interview itself. I did submit it for review so it will be interesting to see what it says but it can take 24-48 hours to receive it.

The questions were a little generic though. It seemed like they were standard questions that were updated with my chosen field - i.e. What problems do you see in the design industry? However, I appreciated that it recognized that the design industry is unique and it asked me a question that was geared more towards how I think creatively and less about my previous experience.

Overall, I think the interview tool was much more useful than the resume tool. I will definitely employ it in the future to practice answering questions and to warm up before an interview.

(Update: The feedback came in more quickly than I expected but some of the results were very strange. It registered that I was disgusted and fearful most of the time. Perhaps I have Resting Disgust Face? It did call out that I didn't sound/look very enthusiastic, which is probably true. I found it hard to feel "peppy" talking to a bot and know that I connect better in person because I feed off of others' energy. I'm tempted to take it again and smile psychotically the entire time to see what it says about my emotions...)