How to make a creative resume

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How to create a resume that will definitely attract the employer's attention? A few helpful tips in our article.

Since this topic has become very close to me, I decided to write an article in which I will share practical advice on creating a creative resume (examples of such resumes can be found here).

I want to clarify that this is not just another roundup of cool resumes, but tips on how to create them.

Why make your resume creative at all

This approach has many drawbacks:

• Not all employers understand this.
• It takes time to find an idea and develop it.
• It takes time (and possibly money) for the subsequent PR on the Internet.
• A lot of worries: will you be considered cool and non-standard, or, on the contrary, will they be mistaken for a frivolous fool?
• If you are not confident in yourself and are afraid of active attention and criticism, then it is better not to start, there will be a lot of it.
• It is not suitable for all specialties.

But there are also pluses:

• The main advantage is the elimination of companies that are not suitable for you. If people do not like the manner of your presentation, humor, pictures with boobs and they consider it “adorable unacceptable!”, Then you will hardly work with them. Thus, even before the interview, dull companies are eliminated and save your time. Therefore, when writing a creative resume, I recommend being yourself and not being afraid to stick up some meme or a couple of ridiculous photos, if they don't understand you, they won't understand.
• If you have little experience and need to somehow stand out among the heap of the same “specialists”, then this is the best option.
• Increases coverage. If your resume lights up even a little in a professional environment, then the proposals will go in a bunch (including stupid ones) and you will already choose, which, you must admit, is much more pleasant.
• New acquaintances in a professional environment.
• The preference of employers is always given to brighter personalities, everyone wants to work with interesting and funny people, and not with boring people;
• The attitude at the interview is better, they recognize you, smile, ask how you are doing, which companies have already responded, and what a fine fellow you are. The prologue always starts by asking about your resume, and this helps to reduce the initial stress a little.
• Often, employees also look at your resume, so the attitude of the team is initially more friendly.
• It's a hell of a lot of fun! In addition, this is one of the few things that you can do completely as you see fit:)

How to make your resume creative

• Of course, it is difficult to give any practical advice about the creativity itself. See as many examples as possible and get inspired.
• Look for non-standard platforms and media: a page on a social network, a video, a twitter, a banner, your own body, contextual advertising, a song, food, a screenshot of a desktop / game, a resume in the form of javascript code, etc. By the way, my first resume was made as a dating profile on mamba.ru.
• Humor is highly desirable, and the resume should be fun and interesting. It's good if this is some kind of professional humor. But just do not overdo it, humor can take no more than 10-20% of all information.
• Stories are selling. Tell us something about yourself, tell us about how you got into this specialty or what you did cool in life. Open source, conferences, social activities, helped kindergarten, you can even a story from a fictional reality.
• To make your resume go viral, remember to make it a little provocative. For example, I specifically wrote that I quit my previous job and flew to India for a month and a half because I wanted emotions from the reader. Of course, this decreases the chances of finding a job in general, but it increases the chances of finding a cool company.
• Be sure to read and take into account the generally accepted tips for writing a resume (for example, here)
• Well, the last piece of advice - don't listen too much to your friends and mom:) Listen only to yourself, because you are selling yourself, not them. On top of that, they are not the target audience for your resume. Always keep in mind the image of the person for whom you are creating a resume, imagine his thoughts while looking at your resume. Just imagine that you are a little telepathic:) The reader should have a clear feeling that your goal is not “to get a job,” but “to work in his company, to work with him,” getting a job is not the ultimate goal, but only the beginning of the whole action.

Development Tips

• A resume in English looks more stylish, plus no one torments English at all during an interview, it will be read in absentia. If no one in the company understands English, then it is eliminated by itself. This is a very controversial point, but let's just say it all depends on the specialty.
• If this is a site, then choose an interesting domain, if there is a specific company that you are targeting, then do not regret a couple of bucks and register a domain for it, for example: hochuvgoogle.ru or if you know the name of the person who makes the decision, then you can do something in the spirit of: vitalyanaimimenya.rf. Then the target audience will definitely look at your resume, if they see it, of course.
• Don't make it big: the time spent with your resume should be no more than 2-3 minutes - this is the maximum! If this is a presentation, then limit it to 10-13 slides. No need to pull snot, get down to business right away: people who open your resume are usually already aware that you are looking for a job.
• At the end, be sure to include a link to a regular, formally written resume. Also links to profiles in professional social networks (LinkedIn, My Circle)
• Should you link to profiles on regular social networks? The issue is also controversial and everyone decides it for himself. Now all normal companies look at the profiles on the social networks of their candidates, so you need to put things in order there, it is just as important to just look at the search results by your name. In my resume, I mentioned Facebook and Twitter, but I did not mention VKontakte.
• If this is a site, then by itself put social buttons (Like, +1, “Like”, etc.) In the text, ask people to click on these buttons, think of something funny, why they should do it. Also keep in mind that 80% of those who click on the Tweet will leave the text unchanged, so think about it in advance.
• The Title and Decription tags are very important, most social networks will pull up this information in the post description.
• If your work is somehow related to web development, then do not forget about the site code, interested people will look there. The code should not only be beautiful and literate, but you can also stick a couple of jokes or ASCII art there;

Promotion Tips

• A creative resume lasts 2-3 days, so all your promotional resources should be shot in one gulp. If people see that the same resume is sluggishly promoting here and there, for 3 weeks, it seems that no one needs a person. Therefore it is evil. Your goal is a bright flash and hope for a viral effect.
• Make a list of people in advance to whom you could contact with a request to evaluate your resume (no need to ask “write about me”, ask to evaluate the resume, evaluate a non-standard approach) These should be prominent people in your field, it is good if you will be at least a little with are familiar with them. Email 1-2 people from the list, and if they like your resume, ask to Share or Tweet. If you don’t like it, then we redo it, or even put it all down and go on playing Diablo III:)
• Take quality, not quantity. Social networks do not like spam, so try to write to each person individually, and not stupidly copy and paste the same thing, for this you may be blocked.
• If you have friends (this is good) and there are owners or authors of some thematic resources among them, ask them to write about your resume.
• On your pages, also publish the news that you are looking for a job, with a link to your resume and ask all your friends to like it.
• Write to the leading websites in your industry and job search. If by this time someone from the notable person / site has already written about you, then do not hesitate to point it out.
• Write to foreign sites (if your resume is in English), this will give a huge boost to its promotion. Our sites are very willing to write about anything if their foreign colleagues wrote about it.
• If you have a little money, order contextual advertising in search engines by the names of directors or the names of the organization you want to get to.
• Don't forget Twitter, it's a great source of traffic. Write funny Public Replies to several topic accounts, but again, don't try to spam! 1-3 point strikes per day, no more.
• Be careful with the timing of your resume posting (there is a good infographic on this here)

Conclusion

Oh, and I still wanted to write so much, but the size of the article is already critical, so if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them.

I would also like to show the resume that I ended up with - 14zy.ru. I published my resume on June 7, on the first day it got 1000 views, I was tweeted by HeadHunter, written by different people and as a result I got a bunch of interesting interviews for a whole week in advance. At the moment, the dream job has already been found, it remains to agree on some details:)

Good luck!