More on Emurse: Q&A with CEO Alex Rudloff

I recently reached out to the Co-Founder & CEO of the new online resume tool Emurse.com, below are some interesting details on the new job search tool.

1. What is your background and why did you decide to start Emurse.com?

Vocationally I'm a Software Engineer, educationally I have a business degree. I was working as a software consultant on a government contract. It wasn't the most thrilling thing in the world, and to stay sharp I started taking classes again and doing some hobby software development. My big focus was (is) on information systems in the work place, specifically human resources.

Around that time, my business partner Gavin Hall was starting a job hunt, my brother was job hunting and my girlfriend was job hunting. Witnessing how painful it was to manage the whole process, and knowing how many resumes I had been asked to review for people that were truly awful, there just seemed like there had to be a better, simpler, way.

Gavin and I exchanged a few e-mails back in forth regarding what we thought a solution needed to do, and we just hashed it out then and there. Once we had defined our mission, we were able to create a series of tools to help us all out.

We kept it in private beta for a long time. Mainly because we both found exciting positions we wanted to pursue elsewhere, notably Weblogs, Inc. and the new Netscape project. I should note that we found these positions using the Emurse system, which makes it even more of a personal success for us. We grew the user base by an invite system only. A few weeks back we decided to open up the system publicly, and next thing you know it's all over the place.

2. What are your goals for the site?

Our mission is to improve people's job hunt. I think that while technology has done a great deal for job seekers, it's also complicated things. I think there are better applications of technology that can really aid job seekers and we want to be the folks who create them.

People, especially people starting out their careers, are particularly intimidated by resumes. They are a reflection of the owner, they're largely subjective, and they are hard to keep up to date. We want to help people create a resume that suits them and we want to help them keep it updated. Along the way, we can give them tried and true tips for success and help guide them into becoming their own experts. Really, that's where the job hunt starts. It's square one. Once you have the confidence in your resume and in your presentation, it gets easier. When it's no longer intimidating and you have a higher degree of confidence, that's when you can really focus on finding your perfect career.

3. What's the public response been like so far?

Incredible. A few of our users orchestrated our first series of reviews, which took us somewhat by surprise. Once the word got out that we were publicly accepting sign ups, things just exploded. We're looking at 500% growth week over week. Obviously that's not sustainable, but our daily traffic numbers are climbing, which is a great sign.

Another great sign is the sheer amount of passion some of our users have shown towards the service. I answered e-mails for over 4.5 hours on Saturday, a great deal of it simply people thanking us for the service. It really feels good to know that we're helping people.

4. I see you use indeed.com for recommending jobs, what's your relationship with them (if any) Do you just use their API?

We wrote it in a way that allows us to use any API we'd like to plug in. Indeed's just happened to be the one we picked, it could have just as easily been SimplyHired's.

Both are great sites, both provide excellent service. We're in talks now with a few different groups looking to display their results, so we'll see what the options are. It's all about displaying the best, most relevant results for our users though.

5. When will SYNC work with job boards? What job boards will you allow people to sync with?

We have a number of really cool features in the works and some are available in private testing already. It just depends on ensuring the quality of our new features, and with something like Sync, making sure that we've explored the different relationships that are possible. I'm really excited about it though.

6. How do you see Emurse evolving? What kind of new features, etc?

We've announced an upcoming resume review service recently, and it's already available in private testing. We've added, and will continue to add, more sections that users can use. We will soon have more customization options available to make things a bit more flexible, which will be great.

I think in terms of evolution, it will come down to the users. We read every e-mail that comes in and we catalog the requests. We try to gear our road map based on what people are actually pining for.

7. There are a number of online resume tools out there, who do you consider your biggest competitor?

Being that we developed this service to solve our own needs, we didn't initially search out the market. I really think the biggest competing factor we face is people settling for jobs that they aren't happy with. We spend the majority of our life, especially here in the United States, working jobs that many of us don't like. If we can help people be prepared for that random opportunity that comes up when they least expect it, we'll be in good shape.

8. How do you plan on making money?

The resume review service will be a revenue outlet. We're planning on doing a "plus" level account that allows for hosting multiple resumes, has more templates, access to more features like fax (something else that's currently available in private testing). There are also a handful of other exciting things that we haven't announced yet, all of which are designed to generate revenue, and all of which are things that our users will really enjoy.