December 13, 2011

The Idea
The recent viral popularity of infographic rsums gave me an idea. Why not use the 99 Designs business model to create an entirely new category of designs custom infographic rsums. I believe the 99 Designs crowdsourcing, contest-based model would allow for the large scale production of custom infographic rsums and a profitable business as well. This product could be a viable business for many reasons: 1. The job market is highly competitive and unemployment is currently high. People will pay to stand out from all the other text-based rsums out there. I believe 99 Designs could easily charge a minimum $299 price point or perhaps higher. 2. Most people dont have the Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw skills to be able to produce an infographic rsum that looks good enough. 3. Most people dont have the creative mindset of a designer to create understandable visual representations of data. 4. Vizualize.me, Brazen.me and Re.vu have the right idea but the wrong execution. Their free online rsum design tools are cool but dont allow people with little design skills to produce an infographic rsum of sufficient quality 5. An infographic rsum has tremendous rich media potential pop out details upon mouse-over, video embeds are two obvious features that you could charge a premium for. 6. You could provide embed code that people could put on their blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles with the 99 Designs logo 7. You could market to University Career Centers and provide volume discounts to generate awareness 8. Developing an app for the LinkedIn platform that people can use to display their infographic in their profile would generate awareness and demand 9. Over time, you would develop a rich data set of peoples work/education/personal history 10. Rsums change. Each customer could keep their free account and login to change it. You could charge a fee for updating their rsum and/or upgrading to premium. The arguments against the business model are the following: 1. Isnt everyone using LinkedIn now? a. While LinkedIn is a great professional social network, it doesnt provide any real way for people to stand out from the crowd. Infographic resumes would compliment LinkedIn, not compete with it. 2. Will infographic rsums be a fad? a. I dont think so. As we all move into the cloud in every aspect of our lives, documents about ourselves will become richer i.e. less text, more graphics, more video etc. If anything, infographic rsums could become the norm in 4-5 years.

3. Wont people figure out how to design infographic rsums on their own? a. As infographic rsums grow in popularity, non-graphic artists will try using PowerPoint but will not be able to achieve the professional level of design possible in an Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw tool. b. Just like the custom logo market 99 Designs pioneered, people will pay for professional design because they need it and its cheaper than going to their local designer. 4. Competition a. If the business is profitable, competitors like Crowdspring will enter the market but I believe 99 Designs easily has the best brand in the space and will continue to attract the best designers and command higher prices. b. Vizualize.me and the others could improve their tools to make to make it easier to use for people with little design skills but they will never reach the same level as professionally designed custom infographic rsums 5. Some employers still require a MS Word format so that the rsum can be indexed and searchable in an Applicant Tracking System. a. Including a Word Version of your rsum still might be necessary in some cases but if the employer accepts a PDF version, all metadata can be included in the properties of the infographics PDF file. 6. Are rsums as a concept becoming pass? a. For a certain percentage of the population, your online presence blog, social network presence etc. may be replacing rsums, but not for the masses. Most businesses still require a summary document when looking at job candidates. 7. This is a new product category. How will you stimulate demand? a. Yes, a significant awareness campaign will most likely be necessary. But you can keep costs down by stimulating demand through university career centers, social networking and PR through blogs like resify.com

The Market
Simply put, the job market is huge and, I believe, willing to pay to stand out from the crowd. University Graduate Demand

Degree Type Associate Bachelor Masters Professional Doctorate Totals

Assumed Market Share 2012 Projected Graduates 833,000 1,700,000 696,000 102,333 74,700 3,406,033 Assumed Price Point Revenue Potential Designer Commission % Commission Payout Profit After Commission $ $ $ $

5% Market Size 41,650 85,000 34,800 5,117 3,735 170,302 299 50,920,193 40% 20,368,077 30,552,116

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372)

Notes: 3.4 million people per year graduate from our nations university systems making this a potential recurring revenue stream 5% market share is a conservative assumption $299 price point is a conservative assumption International demand was out of scope of this analysis

Job Seeker Demand

Age Range 25-34 35-44 45-54 Totals

Assumed Market Share Active Job Seekers Number of AJS Who Are (AJS) Sending Out Resumes 1,750,000 994,000 1,300,000 713,700 1,400,000 784,000 4,450,000 2,491,700 Assumed Price Point Revenue Potential Designer Commission % Commission Payout Profit After Commission $ $ $ $

5% Market Size 49,700 35,685 39,200 124,585 299 37,250,915 40% 14,900,366 22,350,549

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat33.pdf)

Notes: Based on 2010 data from US Bureau of Labor Number of Active Job Seekers (AJS) Sending Resumes was roughly 56% of AJSs depending on age range 5% market share is a conservative assumption $299 price point is a conservative assumption International demand was out of scope of this analysis

Standardizing the Design Brief

To scale up the production of infographic rsums using the 99 Design model, it will be important to standardize the design brief definition process. The following high-level process flow could be the beginning of this conversation.

Start
Basic Personal Info:
Name, Email, Phone, Address, Social Networks

Headshot Upload

Upload Rsum and / or LinkedIn profile

Choose Infographic Theme

Skills Education History Certifications

Languages

Work History

Recommendations

Personal Attributes Hobbies

Anything We Missed?

Thank You

Finish

Notes: Process would work similarly to how 99 Designs currently creates design projects for Web Page Design or Other Graphic Designs System would take an uploaded rsum and / or bring in LinkedIn profile info Headshot photo could be cartoonified or have another tasteful design treatment System would allow the user choose from 5-6 different rsum themes that would define a particular color/scheme and general look & feel Data from Skills, Education, and Work History would be pre-populated from the uploaded rsum but users would be allowed to change it to whatever they wanted.

The Proposal
I am currently a Business Development Director and Program Manager for a small web marketing agency Spark Inbound Marketing. While I enjoy my work at Spark, Im looking to apply my talents to a more scalable business model. I am proposing a business partnership: The product is yours. Perhaps as another product in your product line or as a spin-off company. You hire me to start, manage, market and grow the business We obviously leverage 99 Designs established designer network We work out some type of fair profit sharing arrangement

Here is my own infographic rsum. I look forward to your response. Kind Regards, Tod Hirsch todhirsch@gmail.com (415)655-1055