Introduction

Voice apps are opening up new ways for designers, developers, and teams to build new experiences and stand out in brand new ways. In this template, we'll walk you through how you can stand out too – focusing on the job application process.

Introducing the "resume assistant" – a voice experience that lets you package your skills, work, and personal achievements into an interactive resume. This experience allows the hiring manager to learn more about you, ask questions, and ultimately engage with your personality even before they have a chance to meet you. It's a creative and thoughtful way to stand out from other applicants.

In fact, someone on the Voiceflow team recently built this for their very own job application. You can click on the link here to check out the original experience that our Voiceflow team member created as an example.

What are we covering in this video?

In this video, we'll show you how to use the Resume Assistant by walking through a few simple steps including:

1. Designing your flows and categories
2. Handling errors
3. Training your Assistant
4. And testing and sharing your experience

Now, let's dive into the project and how it's designed.

Design Walkthrough of Template

After the start block, we have a speak block - which greets the user with an initial welcome message.

Moving on. The user or hiring manager can then choose from three top-level intents. Think of these as the "menu options" that the user can pick from when using the experience. Here we see Professional Experience, Personal Life, and Why this Company. Depending on the experience, intents can be added or removed to fit the number of options needed.

Once the user responds with their first choice, that specific intent directs to a corresponding audio block. There, the user will hear the candidate's answer to the respective request in the form of an uploaded .mp3.

After the first intent is answered, the user is then prompted once again to pick from the top-level intent options. A "finish" intent is also introduced here should the hiring manager be ready to wrap up the experience.

Most of all, it's important to understand that the assistant is always listening for the designed intents. Should the hiring manager switch context or ask for a different intent at any time, the assistant will work to pivot quickly.

We also have employed an error message here using a speak block with .mp3 audio. With this audio step, the applicant can record a simple message that will play should the user ask for an intent that is not available.

One important thing to note is that this template comes with pre-filled utterances for each of the intents. These are the different ways a user might ask for a specific intent. This makes the conversation much more natural and at lesser risk of failing.

When complete, it's important to train your assistant using Voiceflow's built-in NLU/NLP smart prototyping. This will make sure your assistant can understand and access words or information that fall outside of custom slots, intents, and utterances. Let's add one more utterance to the personal intent (family life) to make sure the assistant can understand what you're asking for.

Prototyping the Experience

Now, let's test this out in the prototype tool.

Assistant: Hey, I'm Sam! Welcome to 'why I should work at Voiceflow'.
Assistant: I've put together three main things that go beyond my resume. You can learn about my marketing work, my personal life, or why Voiceflow. Just pick one to start.
‍User: Family story
Assistant: Here, talk about your personal life. Think — anything that helps you stand out.
‍Assistant: What's next? Personal, marketing, or why Voiceflow. You can also say finish when you're done.

Great! It's working. The app was successful in knowing that "family story" was related to the "personal" intent based on the training we just did.

Better yet, the assistant seamlessly jumped from the intent to the spoken audio. Of course, for this example, the audio you just heard is only acting as a placeholder for whatever audio you choose to use while working in this template.

When you're ready to share your experience alongside your resume or portfolio, you can use the share prototype button to generate a link for easy sharing in emails or job applications

Wrapping up

We hope this resume assistant template is an approachable and helpful option for on-the-hunt job applicants. Creating and leading with this voice experience will help people in any industry stand out and be more marketable, and so we're excited to have you build out a custom resume assistant of your own.

If you want to learn about more ways you can build with Voiceflow, check out our templates library. It's entirely free and serves as a great resource to help build out the vision of your next project.