Tips for a CV in a website, one page design or Sway

If you want to look innovative then you might consider other ways of presenting yourself than the standard CV in word.

There are a few tools which make your CV look just amazing and professional - be it a website, a one page design (photoshop or illustrator), a video, or a Sway for example.

These tools look great at first sight but once you start working with them, you quickly realize that it takes some time and energy to utilize them really well for your CV.

If you want to stand-out and get your dream job, you have to be willing to take the extra mile and invest some time and energy. There are a few things to keep in mind, however, when you try to impress your future employee with that brand new CV:

1.Chose the CV style and format based on your industry, the position and the person you are applying to. Most importantly - make sure it fits you

Graphic CV from templatesforcv.com

What kind of a function would you use the CV style above for? A manager in a defense department? A financial controller? Probably not. A sales function in IT industry, a front-end web developer, communications manager and the like are probably more suitable for such a visual format.

Keep these criteria in mind when using 'new' tools for your CV:

• the industry or organization is innovative rather than traditional
• the position requires good visual presentation, sales, or (online) communication skills
• it fits your personality - creative, innovative, you like to stand-out, etc. This is important because sending a 'cool' design to a company will create a certain expectation of you as a person and you do want to match that with reality. Make sure you use what fits you and what you feel comfortable with (do not use tools just because it's trendy now).
• it illustrates your skills. For example, you can creatively split your skills into percentages (I'm 30% designer, 20% communicator, etc) in a graph. At the same time, showing your skills in this format proves your designer / visual / presenting skills.
• very important - make sure fitting your CV into one page will be good enough to fully represent your talents needed for the job. Not everyone will be impressed by a visual CV. A person hiring a finance manager will want to see the proven experience and skills for the position, not only a selection of them. Also, you will most likely not impress them by visuals, but by your skills and experience. Makes sure you know what is important for your reader and chose the format based on that (rather than on your own preferences or trends). 

2. Promote yourself - not the tool itself. 

If you use a tool that is great at showing your skills graphically, make sure to do exactly that. Ask yourself; what is it that I want to show to the reader through my CV? What kind of impression do I want them to get about me? And how is the tool I am using going to add to that experience (more than a word document would)?

Make sure you don't get excited about the tool more than about the purpose of it.

See Sway from Microsoft for example:

Watching their add, I became really excited about the tool. Wow this will make presentations look awesome, I thought for myself. I quickly went to their website sway.com and saw they have a template for a resume. I had to try it myself.

The reason I post it here is – when getting excited about any tool, make sure you take into considerations some of the factors I mention below, such as viewing it as the reader and making sure the software does not spoil your layout.

What I think of Sway for your CV:

• It allows you to embed visuals, video's links or documents. As the reader scrolls through they come to life as they load through word online or YouTube. It does look pretty impressive.
• However, you have limited design options, are forced to use the available templates and layouts which I find quite limiting and kind of strange in today's 'drag and drop' era.
• You can only send the CV as a hyperlink, which is great, but the reader then also has the freedom to choose from one of the 3 viewing designs. This might not make it as neat anymore because if you make your CV look really nice in that scroll down option it makes it look a bit messy in the other two viewing options. So make sure you make it look amazing in all 3 styles.
• Privacy: it seems that you cannot restrict sway to a select number of viewers - once you share the link, it is available to the whole world. Read more on the topic here.
• It is not possible to post the direct Sway CV hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile (LinkedIn does not support Sway yet). You have to use a third party like bitly to do that.

My purpose for trying out Sway was to know if I could recommend this to my clients and help them when creating their own Sway CV.

For now, I'm not convinced that this is the tool for resume's that will blow people's minds. I do think, however, that for some CV's this is an amazing tool, not for everyone. 

Be your own judge and see my CV on Sway as an example.

3. Utilize the tool to its potential - don't just recreate your CV in a new tool

What is your reason for using an innovative tool? Probably to stand-out from the many CV's, get peoples' attention and most importantly to get hired for that dream job. However, there is no point in rebuilding your CV into a website or any other tool, if the only thing you do is replicate your CV.

When using innovative tools, make sure you get creative with it to really stand-out.

Look at the experience and skills at dw.digital website above. Let's look at what makes this a great 'CV 2.0':

• novel design and layout: making use of columns and multiple directions can become messy but when scrolling through this CV, you are taken from the most important experience and skills to an example of projects worked on. Get creative but stay neat.
• you immediately see the latest and most important work experience right from the top left corner. Remember that at least when it comes to websites and PC screens, people tend to look from top left to bottom right.
• almost immediately you are drawn to the timeline of the skills. Showing your skills (or responsibilities) as a progress over time without having to read the whole CV makes it easy for the reader and look amazing. It takes the reader through a journey of your progress in a matter of few seconds. This is a great addition to any CV (you could think of plotting other important things). 

4. Consider the ease of readability and accessibility for the person opening your CV.

.jpg, .pdf. and .doc files are the most common formats that almost everyone knows how to open. Make sure you are not sending an unreadable file (such as .psd for which you would need Photoshop) or a link that might not work on all browsers (internet explorer, chrome, mozilla, safari). Test it yourself in all browsers and make sure your modern CV is dummy proof! 

Conclusion:

There are many tools available in which you can make an awesome CV. Whatever tool you chose, keep the following in mind:

1. chose only the style and format that fits your industry, the position and your personality. Use a new and innovative tool if:  you want to work in innovative industries; you want to work in positions that require good visual presentation skills;  it fits your personality; it illustrates your skills well visually; tool shows enough of your skills needed for the job

2. Promote yourself, not the tool itself – don’t get excited by the tool without it having a real added value

3. Utilize the tool’s full potential instead of recreating your CV– get creative!

4. Whatever tool you are using, make sure that a dummy user will be able to view your CV without any issues. 

Do you need help with your CV? Contact me at www.CareerFulfillmentCoaching.com

Example creative online tools for your CV 

• create an online CV with Sway.com
• create a website instead of a CV using wordpress or wix - beware that the free versions tend to include ads
• if you have photoshop, consider a template from this website: templatesforcv.com