2009
07.03
07.03
As some of you might have noticed on twitter, I have been working on a design project most of last week. The goal was for me to do something other than coding or writing reports and use the creative side of my mind. I decided to make myself a visual resume and here is the end result.
Let me know what you think about it. Also, if you spot any errors/typos, do let me know (I am not the best at spelling when I was doing this at a rather ungodly hour)
I also have it available in pdf
I plan to print this on a 11 x 17 bi-fold sheet and have my “normal” resume on the back side with a simple cover on the front in time for the career fairs. Lets see if whether this gets me a job (or gets me kicked out of the room).
Is the word "favious" near the pie charts intentional? I’m not sure if it’s a typo or a play on the words favorite and various. It might be confusing to a recruiter. Still, this is very cool.
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Dang Ajai, this is a really neat and visually appealing idea. I just got back to Savannah after 6 weeks of tough training at Quantico, VA. Now I’ve graduated Marine Corps OCS. Can’t wait to go back home to Georgia Tech.
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This is awesome! What software did you use to do this?
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Ajai, this is neat, but for one problem, the tag cloud. Though the cloud does highlight what you have worked on, or know about, however keep in mind humans are not search engines. Human seeing the visual CV would be more intertest in the contextual information he can drive from the tag cloud, than just raw words. For example, in your tag how is marketing and communication related? Is the communication your verbal ability or is it related to the mobile word in the cloud? I guess you have got the point.
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Mike: Plain old Adobe Illustrator
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Very nicely done! Keep us updated on what recruiters say.
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i didnt bother to read any of this or look at the image but this sucks
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An interesting idea, but I must say it’s hard to see what you’re trying to communicate with some of the visuals. It’s difficult to compare the magnitudes in the ‘Graph of Effort Over Time’, actually staring at it a little longer I see what you’re doing. But it wasn’t immediately obvious.
I’m not a fan of the stars scattered haphazardly. To take advantage of this ‘visual’ resume you should purposefully arrange them in some informational way, maybe somehow tie them to the "Graph of Effort…" to show what your efforts accomplished. The way they are arranged right now is difficult to parse, and I feel like I’d rather just have a bullet point list as a text resume would have. What do the colors standfor?
Though sort of amusing, the spedometer and post-it note graphics are distracting and, i feel, unprofessional. There should be a consistent theme throughout, it’s like you’re mixing metephors. Is this a car dashboard? an office workspace? pick one and stick with it.
The logos in the bottom right mean nothing to me, it looks like you just put ads on your resume.
The bar graph on the right isn’t at all any more informational than doing a list.
i.e.
Desired Careers:
1. Entrepreneurship
2. Journalism
etc…
There’s just too much going on in this entire thing to be very useful. And from a design perspective, there’s too many variations of color palettes and visual metaphors. That said, this is a neat idea, but could use a lot more work.
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This is fascinating.
A suggestion: the pie charts would be more useful if labeled. Helps recruiters scan for key words.
Maggie
fellow cs undergrad in a southern state
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submit it to journalists. Could get pick up on new and interesting ways people are coping with record unemployment in trying to find jobs.
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use haro to reach out to reporters http://www.helpareporter.com/
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This is a great concept, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) I don’t think it comes close to its potential. I think the point of having a visual resume would be to convey more with less – but you’re missing a lot of information that a traditional resume would include with bullet points. Unless you’re of the mind that all you need are talking points, this fails to convey more with less. HOWEVER, all that might be outweighed by the fact that you’re a CS major, and so taking the initiative to do something so creative is more important than having the end result be a perfect resume.
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This brings me to an idea:…
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Hi Ajai, Your idea of visual resume is awesome. Great creativity. I am sure recruiters will be taken up by such representations of resume. Keep the good work going.
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It’s good but there’s too much information being presented. I did a similar one around the same time (you can see the influence Michael Anderson’s had on me) and went for less is more.
http://www.photo-blog.cv-industries.com/images/pg_l.jpg
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