50 Shades Of Resume – Page 2

50 Shades Of Resume #50: Sew, Sew, Sew

May 26, 2014 by Steven Savage

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

50 Shades Of Resume #49: The Coordinated

May 25, 2014 by Steven Savage

Alexander Parker’s resume and business cards are part of a coordinated project – the design of each reflects the other. Alone that’s pretty neat, but the resume design is also pretty impressive. Together it’s a serious job search combo.

Let’s discuss the coordinated idea first – it’s basically a good strategy (and one I’ve been emphasizing over time in this project). The use of the “Alex icon”, the font, the “funnel” border designs, all unify the look. What I like about that:

It shows planning and consideration.
It’s a clear, effective design, showing talent.
The card functions almost as a mini-resume.
The effort is also subtle – it’s not “in-your-face” and I think that makes it effective.

But let’s look at the resume:

This is another good example of a two-column resume – employment on the left, skills and education on the right. It works quite well – and using borders to offset the skills/education are adds some additional division.
The Work Experience section is a classic piece, with detailed descriptions.
I like the “iconic” picture of the creator. It adds personalization while still maintaining the simple ensign. Speaking of . .
This is a good, effective, precise design. It’s got some color to jazz it up, smart design, but it’s not aggressive about it. It’s very effective.
The chosen color scheme works well – the lime green stands out without overdoing it.

Any suggestions? Only one . . . well, related ones.

As usual, I’d put skills higher up. There could probably be more skills as well. I might add more or categorize them.

Steve’s Summary: The kind of resume I like to see – I can share it with anyone, it shows creativity and thought, and innovation as well as tradition.

– Steven Savage

50 Shades Of Resume #48: The Emergency Sticker

May 24, 2014 by Steven Savage

Jonathan Wong would like to warn you. Namely, he’d like to warn you he’s an awesome artist. Fortunately he’s got a big sticker for that.

This emergency sticker is actually the cover to a more standard resume (in the lower right hand corner). It’s sort of part of the resume, a portfolio, a cover letter, and more. I wanted to include it for sheer unusualness. Also it’s really cool.

What he did was create an emergency sticker, treating himself as a kind of emergency resource (and apparently biohazard, but hey, artists are biological). It’s an amazingly detailed creation for a kind of preview/lead-in, so what can we learn from it:

It’s a giant punch in the face of pure talent. A lot of work went into this, from design, to aging it, to putting in little details, to making it look right. You really don’t doubt this guy has talent and an eye for detail.
Remember, this is the cover. With this kind of lead in your resume is almost secondary. In fact, that could be an interesting combo – deliver an amazing cover letter with a more standard resume.
It’s interesting how it leads into a more standard resume – a heavy one-two punch and then the detailed, regular information. He literally uses his “finishing move” first – not always something I recommend, but in this case he does it right. This is a massive statement.
* It shows a sense of humor. At first it looks dangerous, then you get the humor involved. That says a lot about his personality as well as skills.
* It’s unique. I doubt you’ll have seen anything else like this in your day. Or year.
It makes me wonder about ways to rethink the resume, portfolio, and cover letter. By turning his cover letter into a statement of talent (and thus a mini portfolio) it plays into the resume by showing his abilities What other ways could we recombine the elements of our job search?

Any criticisms? Actually, not any. This is straight up clever and effective. I’d just note that if you try something similar, do it your own way.

Steve’s Summary: I’ll want to interview the guy based on seeing this. You just don’t do something like this and not have a bunch of talent – and that’s before I get to the resume (and part of the reason it’s in this series).

– Steven Savage