Resumes are both ways to describe ourselves but also advertise ourselves. Briana Higgins ran with this idea to create a resume that “blurbs” her personality and traits while mixing them with her background and job description, with some infographics to boot. It’s a bullet-fast bang-bang of information with specific details when you drill down.
Needless to say it’s also a non-standard resume, though works a lot of standard elements into it. Let’s analyze what we can learn:
- Mixing the personality traits (“Dependable”, “Versatile”) in with the regular resume background like education is an interesting choice.
- There’s use of text running in various directions that’s a real change of pace from other resume – and also saves some space.
- She uses different fonts, colors, and sizes to make the resume more interesting.
- The use of icons in the left side is a clever idea that drives how what the sections are about before you read them.
- The skill section is really unique – using the labels as major categories with a “ring” of specific skills around them. That’s a take that saves space and is visually interesting.
- The resume then goes from the “Skill blurbs” to a linear measure of experience, which actually is a mix of skill and job history display. That’s a fast way to communicate knowledge and experience that’s efficient and easy to understand visually.
- When you look it all over, the resume says a lot, but each part is different.
Now a few critiques:
- I like the interleaving of personal traits in with the resume, but sometimes that can be overdone. it might be good to mix the “trait bars” with background elements relevant to said personality traits.
- I think the “blurb” text may be too large – you could free up more space.
- References are probably not needed, nor is the quote from a previous manager. Though the quote is clever, it’s usually not needed – it could be replaced with a personal or philosophical quote. However, it does fit the overall “show my personality” trait.
- I’d have liked to see more job history Since she has a lot of skills, I’d want to see something showing what she’s done.
What I like with this resume is each part is different, so it doesn’t get dull, and there’s some ways to portray backgrounds that are clear, but also different. It also has a friendly, funky look that’s non pretentious.
Steve’s Summary: Hand me this and it definitely tells me we’ve got a person with skill, and I get some fast-and-easy summaries of what she’s capable of on top of the talent that went into the resume. It’s also enjoyably non-standard. I would want some job history though.
[“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