2007 / July 12^th/ Resume Tips

Here’s a few resume tips from me to you. I end up reading a lot of resumes, and I happen to have a pretty different view on what a resume should be. Remember, the creative industry (that’s us) isn’t bound by the chains of industry: dare to be original.

Go deep, not wide

I would much rather see a candidate who can write some kick-ass HTML, rather than see a candidate who can write mediocre HTML, CSS, Javascript, VBScript, PHP, MySQL, etc. In agencies, jack-of-all-trades who cannot excel in one of their specialization’s are not very useful. Your resume should reflect this: don’t just blindly list technologies, writing something down that someone can make use of.

Where you worked is more important than what you worked on

This is a problem that almost all candidates have. They will list at least 4, sometimes up to 10 bullet points as to what they did at each job. At each job, there is bound to be something like: “Apply skills and knowledge from dozens of large projects to produce top-quality products.”

This is useless and does nothing more than take up space on a page. Unless you have some seriously special projects (”I redesigned Apple.com”), then don’t put it down. If you are merely referencing work the company did as a whole: just put the company name down and a very short job description.

Separate out your skill-set

In accordance with the above, combine all the skills you’ve utilized on your past projects and put it in one place. The valuable piece of information is what skills: not what skills you used at particular jobs.

Don’t use your employer’s title

Many people blindly put their employer’s job description title down as their position. This is a mistake because these titles are only relevant within the company. Web Developer II* is not useful. Use words like Junior, Senior, Manager, Lead, etc that describe the work you did; not the job description.

Objective / Profile

I would like to say on the record that I’ve yet to read an Objective/Profile that gave me any useful information. I’d rather see nothing at the top of the page then some sentence like the following:

My objective is to gain employment in a highly creative interactive firm that stays at the leading edge of technology. I am a highly competitive worker with strong work ethic and a proven track record of consistently exceeding expectations in a fast-paced environment.

I made that one up, but I can’t tell you how many BS objectives I’ve read in my life.

Find and Replace

Remove any and all occurrences of:

• Leading-edge
• Cutting-edge
• Industry-leading
• State-of-the-art
• Innovation

If you have statistics, use real numbers or none at all. Phrases like “millions”, “thousands”, have little relevance, especially in today’s statistic-bloated world. This is an example of a useless sentence: Helped produce sites that thousands use each day.

Final Thoughts

With these in mind: remember that your resume is you. It’s not just a sales pitch, it’s you on a piece of paper (or not, if you’re creative). It should at minimum provide a summary of what value you bring, but should not do much more than that. Cut the bloat, fix those grammatical errors, and make it look sexy!

1. 

   Steve S.

   July 12^th | #

   What are your thoughts on resume length? And a side to that: What are your thoughts on padding the resume to fill up the last page of the resume?

2. 

   Anonymous

   July 12^th | #

   what are your thoughts on a completely interactive resume with video embedded, flamming hoops, hypertext, avatars running around spearing eachother in the chest with lightsabers, etc., etc., … I exaggerate but you know what I mean…

3. 

   Will

   July 12^th | #

   Nice article Kyle.

   @Steve S. – Best practice is typically to keep your resume to 1 page if you can. Keep it lean with only highlights of your accomplishments / skills. Although Kyle says the resume is not a sales pitch, it is what most will influence most employers on whether or not to interview you. I my experience, the interview lands you the job.

   This may be slightly different in the design / creative industry when recent work can be used to judge your skills as much as the resume can be.

   I also believe the your resume should be tailored to the position and/or company your sending it to.

4. 

   Kyle

   July 12^th | #

   Will: I said it was not just a sales pitch ;) It most definitely is. I’d definitely agree with 1-page. Any more and I lose interest. And while interviews get you jobs, resumes get you interviews ;)

5. 

   Will

   July 13^th | #

   My bad Kyle. Again, great article and lots of useful information.

6. 

   Aaron :: miLienzo.com

   July 13^th | #

   Just found your site – and a great article to land on.

   You make a lot of wise comments which I find useful. I’m trying to get into the creative industry having come from the corporate world – so my current resume needs a bit of a style conversion. By ‘one page’ do you mean just one side? I couldn’t squeeze my Resume onto one side.

   Also, I understand your point about cutting out the buzzwords and hyperbole – overuse of words like this can insult the readers intelligence. But my background is in PR and marketing so I would still say a subtle amount of, erm, ‘colourful’ language can’t hurt.

7. 

   Crissy

   July 25^th | #

   It’s good to hear a different, more creative perspective when it comes to doing resumes. I agree!

8. 

   Micheil

   June 11^th | #

   Hmmm.. I’ve just been doing my own resume, and I’ve already used 95% of the ideas you have, just out of pure “common sense”. I only looked around at other peoples [ resumes ], and noticed the lack of colour, So I decided to use colour in headings like “Skills”, “Education”, “Past Work”, so the document becomes tri-colour.

   One thing I was told to do was include a copy of my birth certificate, which oddly enough, i have an objection to: The information on them is quite a private collection, information as such can be used in identity fraud…

   Any other tips? Even though this is posted almost a year ago, anyway, nice site and good information, One i’ll be sure to subscribe to in rss.

9. 

   Debra

   June 3^rd | #

   @ previous poster…who in the world told you to include a birth certificate???? That’s nuts (coming from a person who is both a former HR Manager and professional resume writer!)

   One of the most important things is to DEMONSTRATE what you did. Don’t ‘tell’ them. SHOW them

   I am a huge fan of using color and graphics (when appropriate) in resumes, and wish I could for all of my clients! Some positions and industries lend themselves more freely to the creative side than others. But even executive level positions can use an interesting header for their name (just make sure its readable!) or some color in their resume!

   My favorite client ever- a woman who was an elementary school teacher. She very explicitly told me she didn’t want any color or graphics of any kind- text only (besides underlining section headings and name, etc). I was kind of disappointed, because education is one field I can usually have at least a little fun with…until she told me she was printing her resume out on construction paper! What a fantastic idea! Wouldn’t work for any other field, but she was hired from her first interview!

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