50 Shades Of Resume – Page 5

50 Shades Of Resume #41: The Scrolling Show

May 17, 2014 by Steven Savage

An-Ni Wang is a web designer and interactive developer. So you may guess that her resume is going to be a bit different. In fact, it’s a scrolling, semi-interactive web resume showing skills, abilities, history, and more.

The resume, as you scroll through it (and, yes, it’s mobile compatible), uses different graphs, charts, and maps to describe her abilities. Each section uses a different way to present her vital information, often with animations. There’s even a portfolio.

Finally, she caps it off with a regular resume that’s nicely minimalist (though I still argue skills should go first, but by now you’re probably sick of hearing me say that).

This is another one of those “completely itself” resumes in a way – but she uses good, smart design principles that provide a lot of lessons:

It’s not pretentious. It’d be easy to show off, but instead its humorous, with bouncy animations Ms. Wang’s personal stats, clever diagrams, and a sense of fun.
It’s innovative. There’s clearly a lot of though and imagination here.
It shows skill. By mixing up the resume and using many ways to show data, it actually shows her ability to turn data into understandable displays. This is real money-where-your-mouth-is stuff.
It’s got a set, effective, minimal color scheme. This keeps it precise and shows good design sense.
It displays a lot of information in many different ways. If you’re perusing this resume you can pick up quite a bit about her, from her job history to the SEO abilities on top of her technical skills.
It doesn’t get boring – and it’s a long resume. In this case she uses different forms of data presentation to make you wonder “what comes next.”
Having it multi platform is very smart – and shows more skill.
Capping it off with a regular resume is a good move – makes it easier on recruiters and is considerate.
Having a menu bar at the top is an important and thoughtful addition.

There’s really only one quibble I have:

I think some of the charts/graphs aren’t well explained (is “Hot” better than “Ninja”?). It might confuse some people.

A solid, enjoyable resume. Definitely one that was fun to analyze. But if I got this on the job . . .

Steve’s Summary: Show me this resume on the job and I’m a happy guy, this is someone who really cares about what they do, wants to communicate it, and has imagination. Plus I got a regular resume to hand people less inclined to appreciate the creativity!

[“50 Shades of Resume” is an analysis of various interesting resumes to celebrate the launch of the second edition of my book “Fan To Pro” and to give our readers inspiration for their own unique creations.]

– Steven Savage

50 Shades Of Resume #40: The Notebook

May 16, 2014 by Steven Savage

Brian Moose sent this resume to Pixar some years ago. Well, it’s a notebook that is a resume – you get the idea.

We’ve seen a book-as-resume idea here before, but Brian’s approach is to not make what looks to be a professionally published book, but instead a notebook. Yes, a hand-crafted notebook. He also sent it in a film case with a cover letter.

I think we just found our first artisanal resume. Brian isn’t someone who does things small or half-baked.

Now if you scan his Flickr site, whats telling is that despite this unusual and creative “handcrafted” approach, the book also contains appropriate information along with quotes, doodles, and so forth. Unusual take, unusual packaging, unusual delivery – with personally delivered vital information.

Let’s see what we can learn:

First off, this is a pretty gutsy resume period. It obviously took time and was lovingly made. That tells you a lot right there.
Oddly, I think its informal look is important. It could have been done very artsy and with perfect alignment and so forth – but that may have seemed pretentious. The unusualness of the resume is softened by the personal touch.
Despite the unusual idea, he really presented all the vital info – he just did it in a way that was more personal.
Throughout the resume-book there are little quotes pasted or taped in to show his thought processes. That’s a touch that shows who he is – but also keeps it from being too me-me-me. The latter is a threat when you do something this outrageous.
He goes on to include things about himself and his philosophy so you get an overall picture of him.

Critiques? Well, I don’t have many . . .

This is a real gamble resume, and it takes time to do. So if you try something like this, measure time and effect.
This is also a resume that will only work with people who’d appreciate it. Pixar, of course, is a good choice.

This is one of those truly unique resumes that is just what it is.

Steve’s Summary: I wish I’d see resumes like this, but I don’t work with artists as much. But if I did get it, I’d appreciate the effort and the personal touches – and the fact he packaged it so cleverly. It’s an attention getter, but isn’t in-your face. It’s more funny.

– Steven Savage

50 Shades Of Resume #39: The Wheel Graph

May 15, 2014 by Steven Savage

There’s changing resumes a bit or trying something different, and then there’s throwing the whole thing out. Scott Stedman pretty much did the latter and re-envisioned a resume as a wheel including color-coded elements for the kind of things he learned and did. It’s a timeline bent round to form a circle, and frankly, one of the more outrageous takes on resumes I’ve seen.

Like some of our previous resumes, it’s almost hard to start because it’s really its own thing. But I’m glad to analyze it to see what we can learn. Here’s my takeaways

This is a gutsy move, period. Doing this is risky, but also shows that Scott seriously thinks outside of the box, probably as he threw the box out of the window.
It’s also a resume that screams “I have talent.” Not many people do a resume like this.
The “Start Here” is smart. He clearly knows not everyone would get this.
The color graph of just what he did is an interesting touch. It adds more to the wheel and gives you an idea of his involvements – and their ebb and flow.

Being an experimental resume, I do see some issues:

First, this is really a radical departure. Not everyone is going to get this or like it. It may work well with a more standard resume OR a list of skills and so on that was still creatively laid out.
I think having the text lie across other elements of the wheel is a bit much. That’s disruptive.
I’d also want the descriptive text larger.
The use of the wheel should probably be used to communicate cycles or something similar – it might work best if there was a “what’s next” gap at the end.
I’d make his portfolio links larger.

One thing I take from this resume is its so radical that if paired with a well-designed standard resume, it would speak to even more skill. The unusual and the standard (but artistic) paired together could be real powerful.

Steve’s Summary: I love graphs and charts, so I’d get a kick out of the resume – and it tells me this guy gets data visualization. I’d want something much more standard to show other people though.

– Steven Savage