Geek Job Guru

50 Shades of Resume: Aftermath

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50 Shades of Resume is over. It’s been an interesting adventure, met a lot of great people, and I hope you learned some things. I will be doing a roundup afterwards, but I am also a bit tired of looking at resumes right now. I hope you’ll understand.

But what I did want to share is what I learned doing this. If you’re here there’s a good chance you write or blog an you may wonder just what you do – or don’t get out of doing this.

50 Shades of Resume’s goal was multifold:

  • To try a kind of themed writing.
  • To experiment with a long-term writing focus that’s very targeted.
  • To try a project that would involve people in the above.
  • To celebrate my “new” book.

So here’s what came of it:

  • This was really educational for me. If you do some kind of stunt/review pay attention, i’ll educate you. In fact, some of this will come up later.
  • It works if you do it in big pushes – but it will burn you out. I did a majority of these reviews in one day. Yes. One day. That was telling and fascinating, but also a lot of work. However it let me get into the “zone.”
  • Have an organizational structure for any project like this. early on I developed an outline of the basics of a review so I had an idea what to look for and what would work for people.
  • Pace. As cool as this was to do I think fifty in a ROW was honestly a bit much. Maybe every few days would have been better. I could have extended it to a year. But over time I got the impression the audience got a tad saturated.
  • This also helps projectize writing – it’s a good organizational lesson. DOing some kind of “themed writing” project may be good for you if you want to et more organized.
  • People got things out of this – several of the people I reviewed resumes for learned from their work. It’s nice to do one of these projects so they benefit.
  • If you’re looking for site hits, something like this seems unpredictable in the short term. Not sure what’ll happen in the long term.

So that’s what I learned. What’s next? Well, stay tuned, though I’ve got afew more things coming . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

50 Shades Of Resume #50: Sew, Sew, Sew

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Resume 50

Melissa Washin is a creative person. She likes to get hands on. She likes to make things.

She made a resume out of cloth.

So you can see what I saved this one for last. It’s rare you find someone who’s resume is a piece of fiber arts – and this comes from a guy who lives a few miles a way from a fabric arts museum. It’s a resume on cloth.

Now beyond the fact that it’s the only cloth resume I’ve seen since . . . ever, there’s also some important lessons here.

  • First, let’s be honest, this makes an impression. It’s a very unusual idea – and really makes me think of how we can use different materials for resumes. Having once seen a metal business card, I can say non-standard materials have an impact.
  • Secondly, what she does with this unusual material is put on a standard resume. That’s actually a smart idea in that, since she has such an unusual material, a tamer design may be in order.
  • She uses patterned cloth. That’s important because if it had been simple white cloth it wouldn’t have made quite an impression.
  • With the resume design, she uses different colors of fonts to make sections stand out. That also works on the cloth design because a straight mono-color resume would seem too dull. Balancing the unusualness with the standard design is probably a bit of a challenge.
  • It shows imagination. Again, when’s the last time you’ve seen a cloth resume? Even if it is never used, it’s a great portfolio addition.

Critiques? Not any really. This is a great intersection of “stunt” resume and regular resume, and well done.

This may not be the kind of resume you can use anywhere, but it’s mere existence shows that its creator has skill and imagination. Some resumes, as noted, are great as projects all their own.

As you may guess, for my cosplay readers, I’m going to suggest that this might be an idea to try out in one form or another.

Steve’s Summary: Sadly I double I’ll ever see a cloth resume in my IT career. But say I did see this somehow and it’d get my attention right away – it makes you want to know more about the creator because how does one come up with something like this?

[“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 #49: The Coordinated

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Resume 49

Alexander Parker’s resume and business cards are part of a coordinated project – the design of each reflects the other. Alone that’s pretty neat, but the resume design is also pretty impressive.  Together it’s a serious job search combo.

Let’s discuss the coordinated idea first – it’s basically a good strategy (and one I’ve been emphasizing over time in this project). The use of the “Alex icon”, the font, the “funnel” border designs, all unify the look. What I like about that:

  • It shows planning and consideration.
  • It’s a clear, effective design, showing talent.
  • The card functions almost as a mini-resume.
  • The effort is also subtle – it’s not “in-your-face” and I think that makes it effective.

But let’s look at the resume:

  • This is another good example of a two-column resume – employment on the left, skills and education on the right. It works quite well – and using borders to offset the skills/education are adds some additional division.
  • The Work Experience section is a classic piece, with detailed descriptions.
  • I like the “iconic” picture of the creator. It adds personalization while still maintaining the simple ensign. Speaking of . .
  • This is a good, effective, precise design. It’s got some color to jazz it up, smart design, but it’s not aggressive about it. It’s very effective.
  • The chosen color scheme works well – the lime green stands out without overdoing it.

Any suggestions? Only one . . . well, related ones.

  • As usual, I’d put skills higher up. There could probably be more skills as well. I might add more or categorize them.

Steve’s Summary: The kind of resume I like to see – I can share it with anyone, it shows creativity and thought, and innovation as well as tradition.

[“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