Designer Infographic and Visual Resumes Help you to Stand Out From the Crowd
Many web designers, graphic designers and media savvy professionals are incorporating interactive and infographic resumes as part of their self promotion and job seeking strategy. There are some stunning works of art that cleverly demonstrate their creativity, personality, design and technical skill. Thankfully there are now a number of free applications for those of us who are less graphically gifted. These applications help us to transform our data, with just a few clicks, into a professional looking visual resume. There is a list with links to some of these tools below. However, before you throw out your old Word doc resume and invest time in developing a supercool visual resume there are a few things to consider first.
The Pro's and Cons of Visual Resumes
Relevancy and Core Competencies Creative occupations (graphic and web designers, advertising, media etc) have an established practice of producing portfolios that showcase their skill to prospective clients and employers. That's why the infographic/visual resumes work so well for these professions. They are tangible examples that demonstrate their ability in the technologies and core competencies relevant to their field. Their infographic/visual resume is another piece of their body of work and/or marketing portfolio.
Competence trumps Cool Highly creative resumes produced in Adobe Photoshop (or whatever) are less relevant for occupational groups where design and artistry aren't part of the job description. For example, as an (ex) HR manager recruiting to fill an Accounts Admin position, I would be impressed by someone's ability in Photoshop (nice work!) but I would be more impressed by someone who was an Excel spreadsheet guru. Designer resumes won't compensate for a lack of skill. Demonstrated expertise and achievement in core job competencies will always take precedence.
Fine Tune to Fit Many visual resume applications have the ability to import information from your LinkedIn profile. If you use this option your LinkedIn profile needs to be very well written. You also need to be prepared to edit the data to fit the format of the visual resume depending on the application you're using - to ensure that you've captured all the relevant content.
Keywords Matter Many big employers and recruiters still require a Word version of your resume, often uploaded through a website. Sometimes these resumes are automatically screened (in or out)based on a key word search relevant to the position. Unfortunately many of the visual resumes produced by applications are converted into a PDF format and the bar graphs, pie charts and timelines replace or reduce your key word content. Someone with a "boring old word resume" that's loaded with the right key words will fare better (with the software) than someone with a pretty visual resume.
Short, Sharp and Focussed In today's market most job vacancies attract hundreds of applications so resumes need to communicate the applicants competence and fit for the position very clearly and rapidly. While a visual resume may attract attention initially recruiters, HR personnel and hiring managers just don’t have the time to pour through pages and pages of information - no matter how beautiful. Traditional word resumes are typically no more than two pages. Apply this guideline to your visual resume as well.
The Novelty Effect Visual resumes are still a novelty which is why they help you to stand out from the crowd. Over time the novelty effect will wear off as more and more people use them. You will have to invest more time and effort in the visual design to achieve the same attention grabbing result.
A picture is worth a thousand words That's the beauty of a visual/infographic resume, they convert a lot of information into a form that can be quickly processed at a glance. Your life's work is succinctly captured and quantified into a series of graphs, charts and timelines. That's their strength compared to a traditional written resume. It's also a potential weakness.
A Few Tips on How to Make the Most of a Visual Resume
Inspite of some of the issues I still think an infographic or visual resume can be used as an effective part of your overall job search strategy.
One Size Does Not Fit All Generic resumes won’t make it through the first cut. Neither will a generic visual resume. You still need to produce a customised targeted resume that clearly addresses the requirements of each position you apply for.
Form follows Function If you plan to use your visual resume as your first point of contact then pay as much attention to the purpose and function of the resume as it's form. If you have to compromise then prioritise substance over style. Aim for simplicity and clarity. Think of Apple products, streamlined designs that perform their core function reliably and effectively.
Clean Aesthetics Use high quality photos and graphics. Avoid gimmicky colour clashes and hard to read fonts. Remember the recruiter will be rapidly scanning dozens, possibly hundreds of resumes, so make it as easy as possible for their (tired) eyes to pick up on key information.
Your Online Showcase You can post your "generic" visual resume on your website, blog and/or LinkedIn profile. Many of the visual resume applications host your resume and provide you with a link. You can include this link in your traditional written resume and then refer the recruiter to your online version for more information. When you do it this way you can use your online resume as a promotional showcase. You can be much more creative and expand on the information you've provided in your traditional resume. Learn from the "creatives" and designers. Copy them! Create a compelling and memorable portfolio of your work.
Avoid the Big Mistake After viewing dozens of visual/infographic resumes I noted one recurring and significant weakness. They did a good job of presenting the general data i.e. education, interests, skills, employers and positions etc but they failed to answer the critical question, So What? So what that you're a rocket scientist with 3 degrees and a PhD and that you've worked for a number of cool companies for 3-5 years. What did you achieve? What results did you produce? What difference did you make? What value did you create for your employer? Resumes that answer these questions convincingly make it through the cut and get you onto the shortlist for the first critical interview.
Vizualize.Me is an application that can access your LinkedIn profile and translate your career information into a graphical representation. This process is done automatically through a code so there's no requirement for graphic design skills. After creating an account and connecting via LinkedIn, a user can edit their profile summary, work experience, education, links, skills, interests, languages, stats, recommendations and awards. On the final click and save a stunning infographic is created.
Re.vu is another app that enables a user to import and edit their LinkedIn data to produce a web-based infographic. The layout focuses on the user’s name, title, biography, social links and career timeline. It also enables a user to add more graphics, including stats, skill evolution, proficiencies, quotes and interests over time. Besides the career timeline that is generated based on the LinkedIn profile, the other graphics can be a bit tedious to create, as all of the details must be entered manually. The final product is a very attractive infographic resume.
Based on a user’s imported LinkedIn data, Kinzaa creates a data-driven infographic resume that focuses on a user’s skills and job responsibilities throughout his or her work history. Unlike other tools, it also features a section outlining the user’s personality and work environment preferences. Details such as preferences on company size, job security, challenge level, culture, decision-making speed and more are outlined in the personality section, while the work environment section focuses on the user’s work-day length, team size, noise level, dress code and travel preferences.Easy to edit and you can easily up date it and then print as PDF.
Brazen Careerist provide a Facebook application that generates an infographic resume from a user’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn information. After a user authorizes the app to access his or her Facebook and LinkedIn data, the app creates an infographic resume with a unique URL. The infographic features a user’s honours, years of experience, recommendations, network reach, degree information, specialty keywords, career timeline, social links and LinkedIn profile image. The app also creates a “Career Portfolio” section which features badges awarded based on a user’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn achievements.
Slideshare allows you to share presentations, documents and PDFs with a network of 25M monthly visitors. You can produce a visual resume using powerpoint and upload this to Slideshare which gives you a unique URL. You can also embed your SlideShare presentation on LinkedIn or your blog or website, which can help you to reach an even greater audience. If you don't want a public resume you can make your slideshow private.
This is an example of Jeremy Baker's Visual Resume. He does a good job of balancing the important information with the creative elements. There are lots of other examples on slideshare to inspire your own efforts although some are better than others. The one point I would reiterate is that a visual resume of 45-77 slides is generally far too long.
Prezi is a tool that allows you to insert your content anywhere and in any position. Using its zebra wheel, it allows users to zoom in and out of text, glide from one piece of information to another, resize and change font style, embed videos, crop images and tilt text. Although Prezis are typically used for presentations more people are using it as professional online portfolio. They upload their picture, an “about me” section, resume, brief cover letter and work samples. When applying for a job they send a private link to their prospective employer for viewing.
Prezi has quite a steep learning curve so it's difficult for a novice to produce a high quality presentation. This is one of the better examples, demonstrating once again that relevant content with fewer gimmicks is more effective than all the (motion sickness inducing) bells and whistles.
SlideRocket enables you to create, publish, and share your presentations without the hassle of uploading and downloading for updates. Many of its features are similar to PowerPoint or Apple‘s Keynote so you can get started fairly quickly. Even better you can build your Resume with one of SlideRocket’s three ready-to-use presentation présumé templates. (which makes it one of my most highly recommended tools)
Iwanttoworkatsliderocket This is an example of a stunning SlideRocket presentation that landed the author (Hanna Phan) her dream job. It's a beautiful example of a visual resume that also demonstrates the power of sliderocket as a presentation tool.
On-Demand Webinar: How to land a job with a Présumé Hanna delivered a 45-minute on-demand webinar with 5 presentation design techniques that will help you to build a fantastic présumé. The tips and techniques can also be applied to infuse any presentation with maximum impact.
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