Geek Job Guru – Page 27

50 Shades Of Resume #5: The Progress Chart

April 11, 2014 by Steven Savage

Let’s talk about progress, specifically the detailed chart Steve Duncan of Sven Studios made for his career.

Steve goes all out with a detailed, color-coded outline of his entire career. It shows work, education, what he did when, and specific events. It’s his life as a timeline.

So taking a look what stands out:

The sense of organization is obvious. This is a guy capable of thinking of his life and career in this organized a manner. Makes me think I should be doing Gantt charts of my career. A good takeaway here is to remember how a resume arrangement says something.
Lots of detail. His life is pretty much here.
It actually tries to combine several elements of a career into a single graph and show how they relate. It breaks the usual “categories” of resumes to say something different.
It gives a more unified, larger picture – that’s not always common in resumes, which tend to be broken into “life chunks”

Now as for improvements and issues

This is definitely a supplemental resume or one to keep on a portfolio. Not a resume I’d send in alone.
The font size is a bit small and could be larger
Sometimes the text is a bit too much – too much detail.
This might go well paired with a skills acquisition or history graph, if you’re going to go graph-focused.
If you paired this with a “regular” resume using a similar color scheme, it’d be an excellent bit of combined branding. If it was combined with a portfolio site with the same color scheme, that’d be great.

Steve’s Summary: If I got this resume it’d be interesting – especially if the job required a lot of organizational ability. But I’d want it with another resume that’s more traditional. I’d also probably wonder if this guy should be a fellow manager.

[“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 #4: The Old-Timer

April 10, 2014 by Steven Savage

Let’s take a look at Kelly Weihs’ old-timey looking resume.

Kelly’s resume has an old-timey flyer look here, complete with fake aging and retro fonts. It’s a standard resume in many ways, it just is gussied up to look like a post from times gone by. There’s actually some subtle graphical work here to get the look just right, and the more you look, the more details you see. Take a few minutes to go over this one in detail.

So what are the high points of this old-school yet new-school resume?

It’s actually a full resume. Not sure it’ll scan with the fancy fonts, but it’s easily human readable and has everything one would need to show their work history.
It varies fonts which adds some visual richness. A standard font is always nice to use, but varied fonts (and font styles) can be very powerful when used right.
The use of a focused color scheme – red, black, and the cream-colored background – lets it call attention to important elements or to make text stand out. It uses colors without overusing them, and gives the resume a coherent color theme.
The use of colors to make things stand out deserves it’s own separate mention. This is a very powerful way to guide the viewer’s eye.
It’s got a retro charm which also stands out – as opposed to looking high tech the high technology is used to make something look old. That’s a clever show of talent without being blatant.
It’s surprisingly condensed. The use of side-by-side, different font sizes, etc. helps get a lot of information in there.
The mention of activities and interests is important, and the little red blurb on loving history adds a personal touch.

A few things I’d do:

The use of different font sizes may be overdone. It gets a bit distracting and some may be too small, others (like the Education heading) are too large
I actually think the resume could use a different order – I’m big on skills, then work experience, then education.
I’d put Work For Hire as part of Work Experience.

Steve’s Summary: If I got this resume, I’d be pleased. It shows skills and creativity while communicating information. The whimsy also gives me a good sense of the person’s personality and interests – they like history and they made this look historical.

– Steven Savage

50 Shades Of Resume #3: The Infographic

April 9, 2014 by Steven Savage

Next up in 50 Shades of Resume is an infographic resume from Martin Suster.

Martin’s resume goes landscape instead of portrait, and he uses the extra space to take an infographic approach to his career. It actually includes a lot of standard resume elements – skills, job history, hobbies – but in a different format. He tops it off with a simple, limited color palette, which is useful as it keeps it from being garish.

The high points of resume are:

It actually mixes standard resume elements with the info graphic approach, and can mostly be viewed either way.
The listing of the skills is actually very effective as it combines both a measure of abilities and general classifications to make it easy to read.
The use of the icons adds a nice, subtle bit of personality to the resume. This is something people could use on a variety of resumes.
A limited color palette keeps this from being garish.
The landscape layout allows this to be an effective one-pager.
There’s a good sense of “quantifying” here and of self-awareness. Despite it being a resume that uses an info graphic, I feel it’s about a person.

The limits of this resume, and suggested alterations:

On the skills, I’d list them in the order of ability from most to least ability, so there’s more symmetry.
Not sure the job history works. It could probably be reconfigured to give it more space.
The education graph is clever, but could probably be a bit smoother, going for a simple timeline.
It’s not a resume that’ll necessarily scan well. It’s probably well paired with a more regular resume – it looks great online or as part of a set of resumes.
This would go well paired with a regular resume – it’s a good, powerful personal snapshot.

Steve’s Summary: If I got this resume it gives me a sense of a person with a good sense of design and a real sense of self-awareness. I’d want some more job history though, and possibly a regular resume.

– Steven Savage