Shutting Down Not Another CV

A few years ago I excitedly launched a new personal project, called NotAnotherCV. It was a web app that was designed to be a place where you could manage your CV and track which companies downloaded it. I used it myself and was excited that others could do so as well. It was built with the idea that having a public facing CV would help discovery and potentially land some people jobs.

For a while it had some success. It generated enough money from premium members to pay for its own server bills and I could see my own CV being downloaded on occasion. I was quite happy with my system and it had some great feedback. There were a few people then that were asking for me to implement AI CV generation which I would refuse on moral grounds but overall the users seemed happy.

The unfortunate thing is that shortly after I launched NotAnotherCV, the AI bubble really kicked into gear, and people simply didn't need a CV writing system anymore. They already had one that did all the hard bits for them called ChatGPT...

There remained some premium users keeping the project afloat for a while and when even they dropped off, I kept it going for my own use. The internet is very different today than it was when I launched NotAnotherCV: There is no longer a single social network that has everyone on; Companies use AI based CV filters to weed out candidates; and AI generated CVs or Cover letters seem to be commonplace.

I Myself, and many others who work as hiring managers, regularly see AI generated CVs now. It's become such a problem that I believe many parts of tech interviews, that I had previously disagreed with, have become a necessity to weed out those who would use LLM based tools to pass more flexible methods. An algorithmically generated CV based on the role you're applying for isn't only unneeded now, it may be actively harmful.

So with that said and a heavy heart, I've shut it down. This post is my rambling, handwritten, goodbye to a system I loved building. The domain will redirect to this article for the time being and if someone wants to buy it off me for some none-ai based project, I'll be open to the offers.

In the meantime, I'll keep building cool stuff in my spare time and I hope you'll keep an eye out for it.

Michael.