So I'm not a programmer, but I know these stats definitely ring true based on the demand I have for projects I'm working on and the difficulty of finding good developers. This makes me wonder whether or not it would be possible to get more inner city kids coding so they can a) get good jobs and b) help to fill this need. I know this would be a lot of work, but it would be awesome to find a way to promote coding among inner city kids and to get them onto this kind of track. Know what I mean?
I agree that the whole process is flawed. In addition to the resume problem, job listings are ridiculous. They use inflated information about experience needed etc. and scare off people that might be a good fit.
I disagree. I think it teaches bad habits where you write in a "CV" style. Instead, why not have people write a one-page document with short paragraphs and bullet points for why they should get hired. This can include GPA, results, and experience, but I personally just want to see it in a different format than a dry, bullet-pointed resume.
The best way to use the test is to screen candidates to find the top 5 or so. Let's so you get 200 resumes. Instead of sorting through them all, you can have the applicants take the Plum.io test. Once the results come in, you'll have the candidates ranked from top to bottom. You don't have to make hiring decisions based on the result, but you can use it to narrow the five or ten you want to interview. That's the best use I've seen so far. It also helps to weed out people that have fluff on their resume. You'll know right away how intelligent they are from an IQ perspective and also how hard they work, in addition to other personality traits that will be useful.
I can't point to any conclusive evidence of this, but I'm convinced when I used GoDaddy, they purchased the domains I tried a few days later. Based on that, even though it is inconclusive, I'd recommend using someone else when checking to see if the name is taken.
This article is awesome. And you'd think journalists would get overwhelmed, but 99% of people are too lazy to follow through with something like this so that shouldn't be a problem.
Copying and doing better isn't as easy as it looks, and has already been mentioned, this is exactly where competitors come from. There's nothing wrong with copying and improving an idea as long as you don't steal anything proprietary (obviously).
First off, great design on your site; it's beautiful. Question: How's this any different from the HelloBar? Not that it has to be. Just wondering if it is.
To answer your question, yes, I would be interested in this product, and a lot of other people would be as well (most of whom are using the HelloBar). So is there a use case? The answer is yes.
How to improve: I would consider making options that are the size you show on the site and also larger. Something that slides down and looks beautiful and serves the purpose that a pop-up serves. I feel like this would be less intrusive than a pop-up (everyone hates them) and would allow website owners to show more info than a single line. So as you mention, an author could have a "drop-down" instead of a "pop-up" that shows their new book and entices orders.
The main function seems to be getting special offers in front of people without needing to alter the website dramatically. An example of this would be a company that's hiring but doesn't know where else to mention that on their page. So for stuff like this, it looks good, and the one thing I'd be interested in would be the option for a larger drop down that could show more than a single line but still looks beautiful (which your site currently does).
I'm picturing something where the engine produces regular search results but then users vote the results up, down, or out. Every vote would be incorporated into the search algorithm. I'm also picturing something at a higher level since Google gives you the microscopic word on a page level.