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