How Not to Design Your Resume

Hello!

I’ve had a long give-and-take relationship with resumes. At the beginning of my career, it was a lot of 'Give'. Sending my resume out, to anyone who asked and a lot more who didn’t. All in the hope they’d take the time to look through and send back a positive reply. It’s often been a mixed bag of responses if any, some with a standard ‘Thanks but no thanks’ and the majority being The Sound of Silence.?

I’ve been employed for most of my career and once I rose to the mid/senior roles, the needle started to slowly shift to 'Take'. I needed to review other profiles to hire and flawful patterns started to emerge; this was from a decade ago and the patterns are the same. It became evident that some applicants spent more time crafting and finessing, while others didn’t spellcheck.

For a few years and across a few jobs, the regularity went from a dozen-ish applications twice a year, to a few hundred applications a week for a few months. Long story short, I've processed and filtered 1000+ resumes over the years.

As a Design Director and Founder, I’m at a stage of frequently reviewing profiles and applications and it’s taken many years to go from a point of sending out to only receiving, and I do consider my Gwen Stefani Spinning Chair moment with credible gravitas.?

The tables may have turned, and it’s time to turn them again. The notion of give and take is based on reciprocity and success.

I’ve designed and redesigned my resume a hundred times, rejected and hired based on hundreds of others, and helped juniors craft their own

Here are some words of advice that could help you get your next job.?

CV vs Resume

The moral of the story is, that these terms are loosely used interchangeably and they’re not the same and you should know the difference.?

Curriculum Vitae is Latin for ‘Course of your life’ and is a multiple-page list of experiences, accomplishments, capabilities, and personal details.

These are culturally predominant in a lot of Western countries and globally in technical roles such as medical, law, engineering, and the like.

Resumes are a single-page synopsis with only the big highlights.?

Plus, you can always use your LinkedIn profile to share the details. If you were to hyperlink into your resume, you'd have the best of both worlds. LinkedIn for a longer and more detailed version, along with your succinct resume.

Within the sub-continental part of the world, we have a humungous and ever-growing workforce trying for employment in the thousands every day. Distilling that down to the perspective of any single job opening in a major city in India, there are only 1-3 people whose responsibility it is to filter.?

While the numbers can be daunting and the ratios could feel disproportionate, I’d never want to deter you from shooting your shot. I encourage you to give it everything you’ve got and put your best foot forward to get in the door.?

Be very specific and intentional to every word. A well-crafted resume works as a thumbnail of everything you’ve done and everything you’re capable of.

It’ll also be swimming in a sea of a few hundred other candidates, so how do you make yours welcoming, inviting, digestible, and informative??

Make it skimmable.

Leading, Tracking, Kerning, Space, Weight, Size

Your resume is going to be skimmed before it’s read.

It’ll get a quick glance through first and that gives you a second, maybe two, for a first impression. It is what it is, and these are problems that design can fix.?

What are the most important sections of your profile?

Which portions of your resume best show the relevance of you to that job?

What are the big highlights?

What would you want to focus on more?

What's one thing you want them to remember about you?

Filter, filter, filter – Less is more.

There are plenty of typography and design principles that come quite handy at this point, and the easiest is The Squint Game.?

The Rules Are Simple.

- Make the headings a little bigger and bolder than the body.

- Use shorter sentences.?

- Avoid bulky paragraphs.

- D o n ’ t? b r i n g? i n? s p a c e? w h e r e? i t ’ s? n o t? n e e d e d

- ALL CAPS IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

- smaller font sizes show lesser importance

(There's a long list of fine-tuning possible but I’m keeping this general for now.)

How you play this is to zoom out a little so you see the whole page, and then squint a little. Just enough until the black and white of the letters become greys.

If your resume is one big grey block with no visual blurry hierarchy, you lose and the princess is in another castle.

Using bold headings, sub-headings, 12pt body copy, and maybe even smaller sub-copy in a thinner font and you should notice a clear grouping of information. Use line spacing between information to enhance your visual hierarchy and you’ll get a tonality of darks and lights in text blocks.

If that’s you, 1000 points.?

Play with the weight and size of the text to show importance, and structure the information predictably.

Left, Left, Left, Right Left

Most of the world reads starting from the top left and ending with the bottom right, one line at a time. It’s in-built and hardwired which means our eyes follow a certain flow without our brain prompting. That is until you mess with it.?

The assumption and expectation is a linear order of information, which has been incredibly dismissed by the free templates available online. These come at the cost of intent and direction.?

If you do choose to bento your profile, prioritize and order.

What are the most important points about you?

What would make you the better applicant?

What are the highlights of your career?

Can you separate the ‘need to know’, from the ‘good to know’?

FileName.pdf

You’ve emailed in your application and attached your resume hoping it will all go well, but you were in a hurry and one half step before the first glance comes the title.

It may feel like a highly inconsequential, tiny little imperfection, and it counts. Instead of starting with a blank slate, this could take you down half a point for lack of attention to detail.?

The bigger drawback will be taking away from recall value and if the title of your resume is unclear, so will the memory of your profile. Additionally, you'll also become harder to find in a folder of all the other resumes.?

So, follow a format: first name last name - Resume dot pdf

Profile Image

What’s the point? Does knowing what you look like improve your application? What if they don’t like how you look? What if they only like how you look? What does your face have to do with your career? Does an image add value?

It’s not your fault, this format came from the templatization of design that one person somewhere created and shared and nobody questioned. It’s irked me for years and my issue with it is the subjectivity and bias it brings to the employment process.?

One can argue that a photo brings personality and a human touch to your resume. Well, maybe. This could be a highly personal opinion of mine, but my logic is rooted in objectivity. The decision-making process should be as neutral and impartial as you can make it, and there are more ways than an image to add personality. You could use fonts and colors, and the intro section right at the top is crucial too.

Consider every square inch of the page as very valuable real estate, and think about if an image is the best use of that space.

In case you do choose to include this, go the extra mile and take a professional photo and not a Facebook crop. Please.

5 Star Nonsense

This has been another sour point that's come up so often that it makes me chuckle. There are a few variations of these with either software, skills, or language proficiencies, all of which make no sense whatsoever.

The context is that you're better skilled at some things than others, and that's completely fair and justifiable. But it’s an unspecified scale that raises more questions – what does 5/10 mean? If you were 10/10, does that make you a black belt specialist??

Keep it simple and to the point, list out the skills you have in the order you’re good at them.?

Giving Back

I’ve covered a lot of broader points of what not to do and steered a little away from the inclusions only to keep this edition digestible. As with everything else, there are nuances and finer details I’d love to get into but only if you really want to.?Like I said, this is about reciprocity and success.

I’m offering free 1:1 resume reviews!

This is for five design students, and students alone to help you apply for internships/jobs. ?

You will need to apply for this so please send me your resume at [email protected] with a little note about yourself and what you’ll be applying for in the future.?

[Applications close in one week 08/08]

TL;DR

Curriculum Vitae is Latin for ‘Course of your life’ and is a multiple-page list of experiences, accomplishments, capabilities, and personal details.

Resumes are a single-page synopsis with only the big highlights.?

Hyperlink your LinkedIn profile into your resume.

Be very specific and intentional to every word.

A well-crafted resume works as a thumbnail of everything you’ve done and everything you’re capable of.

Make it skimmable.

Your resume is going to be skimmed before it’s read.

Filter, filter, filter – Less is more.

Zoom out, sit back, and squint.

Play with the weight and size of the text to show importance, and structure the information predictably.

If you do choose to bento your profile, prioritize and order.

first name last name - Resume dot pdf

Consider every square inch of the page as very valuable real estate, and think about if an image is the best use of that space.

List out the skills you have in the order you’re good at them.

Never, ever, use the arbitrary rating graphic.

That's all folks! I'd love to hear about your experiences in either hiring or applying. What are the kinds of resumes that you've received? What are the application struggles you've experienced? I'm always looking forward to hearing from you. Hope you're having the brat time of your life, you're a bawz and I appreciate you!

Take care!

Sincerely,?

Bob Surrao

PS : Is there a brand/design topic you'd like me to talk about? Let me know!

You can check out some of my work at Hellohello.

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