By MELISSA DIPENTO
Sean Weinberg and his business partner Gerritt Hall didn’t quite have that “aha” moment that you hear about when a good idea comes through the pipes.
The two met when Hall was working on an undergrad project with a friend of Weinberg’s.
Weinberg, now 25, in his second year of Law School at Rutgers-Camden, told the pair their project was a terrible idea.
And from there, a business relationship blossomed.
“We became friends against all odds. Sometimes we fight, we have really different views of the world and we try to convince each other that we’re right,” Weinberg said.
After his undergraduate career, Weinberg, of Cherry Hill, started Freedom Resumes, a professional resume writing service. He said the web site didn’t see too much traffic.
Weinberg went on to be a recruiter and then the director of Business Development at AC Lion, a recruiting firm in New York.
Meanwhile, Hall was pursuing his own dreams.
Weinberg said Hall appeared on Jeopardy at age 17 and was a finalist on American Inventor, a reality show where contestants vie to become America’s best inventor.
“He’s a classic wizard,” Weinberg said.
Once Weinberg and Hall met and decided to work together, they came up with a new spin on what can be a daunting task for many.
Their goal became searching for a way to help job seekers easily perfect their resumes.
Soon after they began collaborating and swapping formulas and algorithms, the pair launched Rezscore.com, a free online tool to help job seekers grade their resumes.
The web site went live earlier this year and has already had about 70,000 resume uploads, Weinberg said.
Weinberg said his background in recruiting naturally led him to seek ways to improve how people find jobs.
“As a recruiter, I saw a need for efficiency,” Weinberg said.
Weinberg and Hall spent months collecting data from employees in human resources, managers and business leaders. Real resumes, Weinberg said, were given to unbiased graders to assess the resumes, with three different people grading each individual resume.
Resumes, he said, were graded on three dimensions; brevity, depth and impact, as well as spelling and grammar.
Weinberg and Hall then took the resumes that were given A’s to use as the benchmark for grading resumes on Rezscore.com.
The founders also tweaked what is called the Bayesian Algorithm, which uses pattern recognition through text to compare A resumes to user-submitted resumes.
“If you submit a cookbook on our site, you’re going to get an F,” Weinberg said. Using the site is simple, Weinberg said.
Job seekers can upload their resume and await their grade.
There is no physical person grading each resume; it is all based on the algorithm, Weinberg said.
Through his studies of resume writing and having more knowledge on what employers are looking for, Weinberg said he’s come across a few common roadblocks to resume success.
“Objective statements are so common. But the data is so explicit; just those two words and labeling it as your objective is a major turnoff to employers,” Weinberg said. “References upon request is also a major space waster.”
Currently, Weinberg said, the algorithm is set to look for what a generic hiring manager is looking for.
In the near future, Rezscore.com plans to add a drop-down menu where job seekers can identify what field they are wishing to apply to.
New algorithms will be created to address the variations and nuances in resumes, such as ones with a less formal tone, or ones that are a bit out of the box, Weinberg said.
With area students graduating and beginning to get their feet in the door this month, Weinberg said the time is right for college graduates to utilize the web site.
“College students are definitely our best audience. We’re providing value psychologically,” Weinberg said.
“They could be applying to jobs for 6 months and not heard back from anyone. ‘Oh, my resume got an F, that’s why.’”
