Fulcrum, Simplifying resume creation for students

Overview

About Fulcrum

Fulcrum is an AI-powered placement platform helping students prepare for campus placements through resume building, interview preparation, and career readiness tools, while enabling institutions to monitor student progress.

The problem

Adding experiences to a resume was slow, repetitive, and easy to get wrong.

How might we make building a resume quick, clear, and effortless?

01The problem

Finding the friction

The Resume Builder required students to save information through separate actions, creating repetitive and unclear workflows.

The original work experience step, with Add to Resume and Next competing for the same moment. — The original step, with “Add to Resume” and “Next” competing for the same moment.

Key issues identified

01
Unclear primary action between “Add to Resume” and “Next” buttons.
02
A single button serving two conflicting purposes.
03
Excessive steps required to add multiple entries.
04
Difficult navigation to manage existing entries across separate screens.

02Testing

Validating

Testing with students confirmed the same friction points: hesitation between actions, and uncertainty about whether work had been saved before proceeding.

Testing artifacts from the validation sessions. — What students did at the point of decision, in their own sessions.

03Iteration 01

The quick fix

Made “Add to Resume” more prominent, and disabled “Next” until the entry saved successfully.

Iteration 01, a more prominent Add to Resume with Next gated until the entry is saved. — A hierarchy fix: one clear primary action, and no way to skip past an unsaved entry.

04Iteration 02

Rethinking the entire flow

Consolidated all work experiences into a single section, eliminating “Add to Resume” and using “Next” for both saving and progression.

Old flow

Fill entry
→
Add
→
Next
→
Add another
→
Repeat

New flow

Manage all entries
→
Click Next
→
Save
→
Continue

Iteration 02, all work experiences consolidated into one unified section. — Every entry visible and editable in one place, instead of one screen per entry.

05The constraint

The engineering reality

The system treated saving resume data and progressing as separate operations. Combining them required significant architectural changes.

06Final design

Designing around the constraint

Preserved the unified entry view, while keeping save and navigation as distinct operations visually.

Before saving

Only “Add to Resume” is visible.

Add to Resume

After saving

A toast confirmation appears, and the primary action changes to “Next”.

Saved to resume Next

The final design, the unified entry view with save confirmation and a clear primary action. — The final design: the unified entry view, with save and navigation kept visually distinct.

07Impact

Outcome

67% 32%

Testers reporting UX & flow issues, across two feedback rounds.
02
Reduced friction when adding multiple experiences.
03
A higher resume completion rate, with less time spent getting to a finished resume.

New resume produced with the redesigned builder. — Drag to compare a student’s old resume with the new one.

Old resume. — Drag to compare a student’s old resume with the new one.

08Reflection

Key learning

“Good design balances user needs, technical realities, and business goals.”

, rather than pursuing an idealized solution disconnected from practical constraints.