Resumes that separate you from the rest of the crowd

15
Sep8

A fellow writer forwarded us a resume that I think is an outstanding design that sets her apart not only as a writer, but as an innovator. I’ve seen a lot of resumes come across my desk (including my own) and most are dull and follow all the standard resume rules.

The resume, from Susan Varty, of Ontario, Canada got my immediate attention.

What she has done is use a blended approach between a resume format and a brochure to come up with an easy-to-read, one-page resume that lists all her skills under specific categories.

As Susan has worked on many different types of writing assignments and wanted to showcase her various projects, she designed the resume in a way so it could be quickly and easily scanned.

So here’s the lesson to be learned: break the traditional rules and get noticed.

FOLLOWUP NOTE: Susan has indicated that she has gotten a lot of positive response from us posting her resume and has even picked up some new clients. So here’s the deal, if you have a cool and innovative resume that you would like for us to post as an example of someone thinking outside the box, send it to the email address below and we will see what we can do to post it. Comments are also welcome.

WAIT, THERE’S MORE…

I just found Mark’s posting at 30 Plus Brilliant And Creative Résumés where he says the following:

Times have changed. What worked in the past still works but if you want to stand out from the crowd sometimes the only thing that is needed is a little creativity. We all have the creative juice in us but only some of us dare to squeeze it out.

Here you will find some truly amazing examples of people using their creative talents.

Your Writing Dept is a Sacramento-based writing firm that specializes in developing technical manuals and user guides. We’re the leaders in technical communications in Northern California. Email us for more information about our services at info@yourwritingdept.com.

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Filed under: People we like, Running a Business, The Business of Writing, The Writing Life, Writing Tips

8 Comments

Tom Guarnera
5:14 pm on September 16th, 2009
While Ron and I are business partners and have known each other for many years, he knows that I am the first to jump in as the Devil’s Advocate. Looking at this posting and the attached resume, I have a few thoughts.

As a show piece, this resume is beautiful and definitely steps outside the bounds of a normal run-of-the-mill tool for communicating your skills. It reminds me of the example used by the famed designer, Edward Tufte. He uses a pictorial graph that communicates on many levels information about Napoleon’s march to Moscow. If you have never seen this image, you should search for it.

Susan’s resume reminds me of this image in that it describes her qualification in a way that deviates from the standard two dimensional format.

Now for a chance to offer some practical criticism. Many times when you send a resume to a company, they will scan the document into an employee database, sometimes referred to a Human Resource Management System (HRMS). These systems are looking for key words and phrases. They use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to take a document turn the document into data. When a resume like this is scanned, important information can be lost because this system cannot understand columns, call-outs and other high level formatting that she uses. While these systems have improved over the years, many times a hiring manager will receive a nicely formatted resume that has been turned into a giant mass of scrambled words.

Susan’s resume is beautiful and highly effective in communicating a message about her skills and abilities. This is great if you can be 100% sure that it will make it to the hands of the hiring manager. However, the job hunter of today must keep in mind that resumes often are bent, folded and mutilated before they ever get to the right person. When blindly sending a resume off to a potential job prospect, remember you might want to use a vanilla version for e-mail and carry a fancy version to hand to a human.
Susan Varty
6:55 pm on September 18th, 2009
Hi Tom,
Thank you for your comments. I agree 100%. You always need a text version to go with this style of resume. Time to go work on my SEO-optimized, web spider, OCR and system-friendly version now…
Tom Guarnera
11:00 am on September 21st, 2009
This discussion and the follow-up message that Ron posted on “Tech Writing Group” on LinkedIn, reminds me of something I did back in 1992. I had been working my way through college by working as a computer draftsman. The job market was almost as bad as it is today and I was becoming increasingly frustrated at my prospects.

I decided to take things to an extraordinary level. I created a full size 24″ x 36″ CAD version of my resume. I printed a bunch of these out of the pen plotter and mailed each of them off in a large folder.

I do not remember getting even a single bite by this technique. However, it made me feel better for some reason. To this day I wonder if some company HR person remembers the giant resume that they got so long ago. I picture that resume on someone’s wall. We can all have dreams of grandeur. Or is that a delusion?
Gladys Kartin
9:30 am on September 30th, 2009
Hi Tom,

Love the layout of Susan’s resume; how refreshing to see someone go with who they are instead of conforming to the status quo of the standard resume.

The purpose of the resume is to get invited to the interview. Write and format you resume in the best way to showcase your talents. I think we have all forgotten that we can still mail a resume and cover letter to a live person at the business address.

Sometimes it is so hard to stand out and be different even when the hiring manager is looking for someone different.