The fact is this sort of service would be awesome if unemployed people could access it at no cost to themselves. If it could be run with either government money (to improve national employment levels) or corporate sponsorship (so companies get better CVs) then it'd be very useful.

You know, your comment gives me an idea; I happen to know a good number of volunteer programmers who might want to help bootstrap a site like this, at least to the point where it could attract government funding or corporate sponsorship.

Let's assume Candidate A decides to pay for this service. Turns out that Candidate A has limited experience and the experience they have is poor at best.

To top it all off, Candidate A is simply terrible at interviewing. Candidate A has paid you money to improve their chances of finding work yet the reality is that regardless of polish, Candidate A is still a terrible candidate.

Now what?

Over the years I have offered my services to HN and a handful of other tech groups to review their CV's free of charge. Due to the fact that it was free, I was absolutely inundated with CV's and a significant percentage of those CV's were terrible. Candidates that would sincerely struggle to find decent work regardless of the layout and content of their CV.

Personally I believe that the number of decent developers that miss out on good opportunities because of their CV and/or interview skills is exceptionally small. That's not to say they don't exist but the market may not be as large as you think.

Another consideration needed is context. Would you shortlist this CV? (yes/no) - That's an incredibly subjective question. Would I shortlist them for what exactly? You will have a lot of work on your hands to ensure that the Candidates are paired with a relevant mentor. A mentor who has only ever worked with Ruby teams for example, is not necessarily the best mentor for a Drupal developer.

Ed, I'm a big fan of your work so forgive me if my comments sound exceptionally harsh. I think some of your solutions to improve the hiring process are great but I'm not convinced this particular idea has much legs. I'd love to be proved wrong though!

So "candidate A" needs to be told the truth and confront their limitations, else they will never improve. Candidates deserve honest and unbiased feedback from people who actually do the hiring, not their proxies, but at present there is precious little feedback given.

You make a good point about the size of the market, so I'm not about to sink life savings into a venture. I am however seriously considering spending a few days working up a MVP.

That's a massive pain point right there. Even the best candidates bemoan the fact that they rarely get feedback from interviews so you might possibly be on to something. Either way, good luck.

I recommand you to read Alberto Savoia' book (pretotype It) it's free. http://www.pretotyping.org/pretotype-it---the-book

Instead of collecting an abstacts feedback/opinions, you have to pretotype your idea (as cheaper as possible) and start collect real data from real cutomers who are using your pretotype.

Have a nice pretotype

A differentiator would be the quality of advice offered, and the fact that the mentors would also be actual hiring managers.

You might be right, though I still think it's worth doing a MVP or this 'pretotype' idea.