Building My First App — JiffyCV
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My first ever app — JiffyCV — is now live! Here’s the story about how it came to be, the approach I took to make it and what I learned along the way.
You find out more about the app on our website https://jiffycv.com or find it in the app store and play :
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/jiffycv/id1542050610#?platform=iphone
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jiffycv.jiffycv
The imaginative spark
I originally started looking at building some form of tool to assist job hunting in 2016, after the startup I was part of closed down and I found myself struggling to remember what I’d done in the last five years and what to include in my CV.
The idea I had then was to build a Kanban tool, similar to Trello that helped keep track of the jobs you applied for, allowing the user to upload the CV they submitted and to create interview notes from that CV.
I then started looking at a means to create CVs, allowing the user to create different versions so they could have multiple CVs created from a combination of versions.
I ditched that idea after I pitched it to some ex-colleagues who pointed out the many flaws the idea had and I ended up getting a new job shortly after meaning I had no time to iterate on the idea.
Skip forward a few years and in late 2019 I was working on a React Native app for a gaming community organisation that I had volunteered for, putting many hours into building it, but unfortunately the app was binned as the game that the community was built around released something similar.
So I decided at that point, given the knowledge I gained and the fact that I was back in my old university sleeping pattern (I did 35 hours at a job while also doing my BA full time so I didn’t get much sleep) that I was going to build my own app so I didn’t waste my time working on something that never delivered any value.
I spoke to some friends at work and asked them if they’d be interested in helping out as they had skills…
