Steven Savage – Page 482

50 Shades Of Resume #44: The Combined

May 20, 2014 by Steven Savage

Leonardo Zakour combined his web page, his resume (into foldable style to boot), and his business card into a project to promote himself. It’s like a grand slam of development, consistent style, and self-improvement.

Now I’m going to focus on both his resume and this combined effort. What can we learn from the resume first?

The resume is very cleverly broken up. The folds in turn define the different subsections, making each section nicely bounded and precise. This well-composed.
A foldable resume is, of course, useful to hand out at events and easily portable.
The resume flow is also excellent, each nice, precise section leading to the next (though again, I quibble with the skills listed last, below)
The resume also uses varied text styles and colors to make it more interesting and to highlight important information.
The resume is also pretty straightforward, but he breaks it up using icons for communication and putting skills in graph form. It keeps it from being dull.
On the subject of the skills, he presents the skills section as graphs and makes it effectively compact – he gets a lot in a small space.
The resume also communicates well. It shows a lot of thought and ability.

What can we learn from the “whole effort?”

The unified look is great. It shows planning, it presents himself consistently, it looks professionally.
Describing it on the web as a personal project is a good move – it shows thought as well. It also is a good challenge.

A few critiques:

As I note a lot, I prefer skills first on resumes. However as he’s using a graph form for his skills, I find this can work lower down the resume.
I’m not sure the light blue works on everything. It seems a bit light for the “logo” on the resume, but a bit too aggressive on the business card front.

Steve’s Summary: Great resume, and a good unified effort, says a lot about his skills and thoughtfulness. This is the kind of thing I like getting handed at a business event or an interview.

[“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

Steve’s Update 5/20/2014

May 20, 2014 by Steven Savage

And hello to everyone!

Busy day here, got some vacation time coming up, keeping busy at work, and got friends coming to visit.

First of all, thanks to everyone asking about the tooth. Now that it’s been three weeks things are healing fine. I’m feeling great . . . and not missing being on medications and needing coffee to function.

I had my first sale of the new Fan To Pro awhile ago. Now, let’s see what happens there.

Taking the break from writing a new book for at least 6 months was also well-needed. Last year was insane and the rewrite was challenging. So I’m kicking around where the next stage of my writing is going to go, and I think my next “major” book may not be about geek careers but something else. We’ll see where that goes.

Though as noted, my plans to roll up Way With Worlds as a book will proceed anyway, when I’m done with it. I don’t have an answer to that as it seems sometimes what was once one column becomes three in the rewrite.

Seventh Sanctum has two writers beyond me now – and we’re always looking for more. I really want to turn the codex into a second resource for writers and artists.

So that’s it for me – what about you?

– Steven Savage

50 Shades Of Resume #43: Infographic Mania

May 19, 2014 by Steven Savage

Michelle Magoffin did an infographic resume. Only where we’ve seen some smaller infographic resumes (or ones that were resumes redone as infographic) she went all out. This is a complex infographic with a huge amount of detail – it’s the kind of thing you’d probably print out on Tabloid paper.

The more you drill down, the more you see. There’s a kind of thought flow to go through the reader’s thought processes. There’s quotes. There’s history. There’s a lot.

So what can we learn from this?

She decided to go the complex route on this – then made it easier. She’s got a scannable link to her regular resume and she broke the resume into four basic workflows depending on interest – experience, leadership, results, and creativity. It’s a good example of complexity and simplicity.
It shows a definite sense of humor – even though it’s actually a serious resume. The quotes, the workflow, the design in general has a sense of wimpy.
It shows she knows her potential audiences as she gave a sort of thought roadmap depending on what people are interested in.
She put in hard numbers on her performance. That’s always welcome – and a bit too rare.
Doing this shows a lot of talent and time. This is not something you whip up quickly. For that matter, it shows patience – not something resumes easily display.

Any criticisms? I have a few, though it’s a difficult one to critique:

It’s definitely overbusy. That’s a choice she clearly decided to make, but I don’t think everyone will go for it.
I think the flow of questions could probably be made more orderly.
The use of the four initial colors for each category could be replicated in the resume to show how elements relate.

This is one of those “it’s it’s own thing” resumes. It merely is. And it is pretty neat.

Steve’s Summary: I’d be impressed in seeing this – but I like good infographics. I’d definitely want to talk to her, but would get her regular resume for people not into the idea. It’d also be an interesting conversation starter.

– Steven Savage