Hello! I hope I’m not asking too much, but I have an idea for a web app, and could use some feedback and some wisdom.
Me: I’m a novice to both Python and Django. For a short time in college I was employed as a student web developer (building web tools in ASP/MS-SQL) but haven’t coded since, so consider me a novice programmer as well.
Problem: In my field, a lot of qualifications expire on an annual or biennial basis. Additionally, hours of experience in specific skills is important to potential employers, so individuals typically track their hours of experience in various areas, and present that on their resume in a tabular format. I’ll also note that employment is often short-term or seasonal, and contracting (as little as one day contracts) is common. We’re often looking for the next thing.
This creates a situation where a static resume is really only good the day you send it. Professionals in my field really need a dynamic resume that they can easily keep current. LinkedIn isn’t popular in my field (probably because it’s not good at tracking and presenting the types of data that’s important to potential employers.)
My idea for a solution: I want to build a web app that will let someone easily set up a simple but professional web presence. Effectively a web-hosted, dynamic CV. When someone applies for a job or contract, they can export it as a PDF and send it in. If they wish, they can link to the web version with a statement along the lines of “This resume is also available and kept up-to-date on my website”.
Features:
- Easy to create their web presence and low-friction to keep it updated.
- Designed specifically for my field and it’s unique needs for tracking/displaying qualifications and experience
- Professional and clean in appearance, but with some ability to customize the aesthetics to their liking.
- Ability to generate a well-formatted PDF resume on-the-fly.
- Minimal branding from the platform so that it presents more as a simple, custom website (not like a profile on a social media site).
- Way down the road, support for custom domains.
- From their control panel, users can generate a QR code that they can put on a business card.
- A separate endpoint for potential employers/contractees to search for people by qualifications and/or experience, and the user can chose whether or not they want their web presence to show up in those search results.
I don’t have any plans to charge for this. I’m just trying to make it easier for professionals in my field (especially those that tend to pick up contract work) to present themselves and their current qualifications.
What I imagine is quite different from LinkedIn. LinkedIn presents as a central hub/social network where you just have a profile. LinkedIn is the only first-class citizen. What I’m imagining is a platform that places the individual and their uniqueness at the front. Any social features, if I were to develop them at all, would be relatively behind-the-scenes.
Questions:
So, generally, what do you folks think of this concept and the ability for a novice to get something like this together?
Should I start this from scratch, or are there projections out there I should use as a foundation? (For instance, should I start with Wagtails, and customize from there.)
How would you go about this?