I have been working on my resume/self branding materials, and I have been exploring job opportunities overseas, where the CV is prevalent. A creative CV, it seems, is much like a creative resume. It is short, concise, creative and clean. It also includes a cover letter. Here are my generic cover letter and CV/Resume listing my past positions. I have been working on this almost constantly for the past 2 weeks, so I am very interested in your feedback. Here is the download so that you guys don’t have to try and read it tiny like that.
Thanks guys!
I’m not a graphic designer, but here are some general resume advice that has served me well.
– Customize your CV and resume for each position you apply for. Show that you have done you know about the company you are applying for and why you want to work for that specific company (for example: the company that I currently work for is know if their focus on “Customer Mania” so I integrated that into my CV)
– Identify key words in the job description and integrate them into your CV and resume.
– Ignore the one page resume rule, your resume should be long enough to include everything that could be relevant to your future job.
– Expand the descriptions of your prior experience; these descriptions should not only include what you did, but also what were the results of what you did (for example: at PictureThis, how did you help improve the business model and what were the results?)
– On your resume, put your Education and awards section below your experience; the most applicable experiences and/or skills should be first.
Good luck and I hope these help you.
For those of you who are wondering who I am, I am Micah’s brother.
I might also add that you will always want to proof read your comments…I mean CV before posting…I mean sending.
I love the simplicity and crispness. One thing I’m noticing on your resume is the legend you have going on in your “skills” section. While visually interesting, I sort of feel like it’s adding an unnecessary level of complexity. Is there a way you could group them by level of proficiency? Is there a reason for the way you’ve ordered them? Perhaps keeping them in order (while keeping the icons) would help reduce complexity.
Great work! So nice and clean.
Thank you for your great feedback! I appreciate it! I’ve already made a couple changes, I’ll post them up on my Friday post with my other items.
Like my very intelligent brother said, it is important to know who your target audience is and to cater to them. Do you know who you are actually going to be interviewing with? Does your CV have to make it pass through the HR team before the Creative Director sees it? I did a lot of design interviewing at one of my former jobs and I think it is important to keep in mind that the key decision maker will probably be a creative as well and will not care about standard resume rules. The content of your CV is important, but depending on who is interviewing you, the way you organize it may be even more so.
I really like both the skills and experience sections. They feel different and fresh while remaining completely readable. I like the “timeline” feel of your experiences. Maybe you should even consider pushing that idea further. Maybe the line wraps around to the second line rather than ending and starting again. I would take some clues from some of Gavin’s infographic work or the like.
The only thing I feel is a bit weak is type choice of your name. It doesn’t feel strong enough to be a logo and therefore seems a little out of place with the body type. Could just be me, though.
Hello Meg, welcome to the co-op, sorry I’m a little late to the welcoming.
The timeline style for your experience section is great. I agree with Holly about the skills section, also I think it could be edited down. Some of the info there should be self-evident by your portfolio. You could probably edit down to a sentence or two.
I’d like to see the rest of your identity before I could say more about the appropriateness of the type usage.
It’s nice and “crisp” as Holly mentioned. (I don’t use the term “crisp” enough.)