Say hello to the new #3

Thanks for all the extra work put in by our users, we scored the single biggest increase in web traffic since I last posted the results. Here is the latest update

#1 Kamlesh Bharti (369 referrals) – No surprises there

#2 Rahul Basu ( 337 referrals)

#3 Deepesh Shah (306 referrals)

There are loads of users in the 200+ range and with a month left to go can still play catchup. Deepesh has had the fastest week of growth since we started the program. He has also been quite creative in using his url(I can’t quite go into the details here

Oh and somebody is trying to game the system by hiding their referrer information using tools such as Anonym.to .
Please refrain from such practises. Our ever friendly apache log captures this and per contest rules such tactics can lead to disqualification.

One big feature coming right up!

A common paradigm across new startup’s seem’s to be the fact that they are actually listening to their users. At CampusChai, we have been fortunate enough to get lots of user feedback and feature requests(we have had more than 150 feedback suggestions/feature requests). While it may not be prudent or possible to implement all of them, we have decided to take on the ones that make the most sense and start making them available. We have a pretty big feature release coming up and we like what we see. We are hoping to release the feature in a week if we think it’s ready.

Anybody want to guess on what the new feature is? (Hint: How do more than 60% of the people find jobs?? )

With CampusChai , you get less…

Less clutter, less decisions to make and definitely less complexity. We have made subtle changes to the resume page but the difference is huge!

Before:
We felt that the resume page was a little heavy and had lost focus. There were too many fields and the form in general looked intimidating. We felt that the complexity was directly tied to the number of sections/options available to the user. A common pattern across companies is to set up task forces to brainstorm and add new features, but rarely to remove redundant or bloated aspects of the application.

After:
The page is now broken down into four major sections.

• Tags( use this to describe your skills, career interests etc)
• Resume/Sample files
• Percentage( Your academic scores from college)
• Accomplishments

We reduced the number of sections in the newer page and everything just felt right. As we have said before, we are not afraid to rinse and repeat until everything feels right. Of course, this decision was not made on a whim, we also monitored user behavior using our analytics program and identified patterns within this page.We like the change and would love to hear your thoughts.

PS2 Giveaway – Off to the races

We have had great success with our PS2 giveaway contest. Our users have been C-R-E-A-T-I-V-E!! We would have never imagined publicizing CampusChai the way our users have done. Here is an update on the campaign leaders as of today

#1 Rahul Basu

# 2 Kamlesh Bharti

#3 Satya Narayan Pujapanda

#4 Deepesh Shah

#5 Divyesh Gaind

There really isn’t much separating the top three. There are also a bunch of upstarts rapidly gaining on the top 3.

Update1: We will be announcing prizes for #2 and #3  positions as well next week. Stay tuned for the updates.

Intermittent service

We made some changes to our server infrastructure and some of you may have had trouble reaching CampusChai this morning. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Resume Objective

The most boring part of most resumes is the “objective”. A complete lack of imagination leads to cookie cutter statements such as “To excel in software development” or “secure position in a dynamic company engaged in cutting edge development“. These objectives can come of as being redundant or a recruiter will skim through it and put it on auto-ignore. Since the objective is usually at the top of the resume, it has to earn that spot. A good way to identify your objective is to reflect your underlying belief system – what you stand for and where you want to be – . An objective has to succinct and clear. There are three simple steps to creating clear objectives

1. Write down your belief statement(who you are and where you want to be)

2. Filter it out and remove redundant language. Filter it further.

3. Give it clear focus.

Some examples of clear objectives can be

News Editor position with a focus on economic affairs. Open to relocation.

Ruby on Rails developer position with a startup in Bangalore

Sales executive position in the automobile industry. Open to travel/relocation.

Prashanth Singh is a feedback rockstar!

We receive feedback in many ways. A lot of it from our feedback link at the footer, some of it via emails and then you have the ‘prashanth singh ‘ feedback level. We love feedback in all shapes,sizes and forms as any company should. But Prashanth poked around our site from a user experience perspective and put together a set of images with embedded comments.

We wanted to give a shout out to prashanth and thank him for his extra effort. So, if you are a user and you come across anything you want to share, please do so. If you are feeling lazy about using the feedback form, feel free to leave us a comment on this blog.

PS2 sweepstakes

We are giving away a playstation 2 and the FIFA soccer game here at CampusChai. The contest is extremely simple and straightforward. Everybody that signs up at CampusChai gets their own unique url. So for ex: if your login was asha , your url would be www.campuschai.com/asha . You can now publish this url to

1. Your blog sidebar.

2. Your orkut homepage.

3. Your ryze homepage

4. Any other creative ways to use your url

We track your url and everytime someone clicks on your url, you will get points. The user with the most points wins. We have had some great response to our contest. So far, here are the top three publishers

• Kamlesh Bharti

• Sathya Narayan Puja Panda (trailing by 26 points)

• Divyesh Gaind (trailing by 49 points)

So what are you waiting for, signup at http://www.campuschai.com and get in on the action!

Resume 101’s

Anand Jain has written an insightful piece here on the do’s and dont’s of resume building. A resume is not something to be slapped together listing all the great things about yourself. Think of yourself as a company and imagine how you would like to represent yourself to the outside world. Every word has to be carefully constructed to make an overall impact with the resume. The most effective way to create your resume is online – think about it, you will be able to capture your thoughts, make corrections or even save it and come back later.(Shameless plug here – CampusChai will let you create your resume within seconds and even breaks it down to the three main areas – contact information, accomplishments and project/work history). Another common mistake is to make a resume resemble a PhD thesis. In a world of information overload, Most employers will not even go past the first page. Whatever you do, do not ever use a resume writing service. A lot of their resumes are standard templates and if a employer figures it out, it may actually work against you.

Can Spam!

We are very happy to announce one of our requested features to mark jobs as spam. Now you can do just that, just hit the ‘Report this job as spam’ link. we will then use our google-isque algorithms and figure out if the job is really spam material. We will also have a human review the job and the job will then be removed from our database.