How to write a creative CV ?

 

How to write a creative CV?

It’s not a secret to anyone that nowadays the competition for quality jobs and even internships is stronger than ever. Before the 2008 economic downturn it seemed that barely a correct resume would secure an invitation to a job interview. But now, times have changed. Candidates are becoming more and more creative and they have many more tools at hand to use if they want to make an impression on a recruiter. Here are a few tips to make the most of your basic tool in a job hunt, your resume.

The Raise of a Creative Resume

Probably the first of what we now call “creative resumes” was the one made by Michael Anderson.
It appeared on the web in 2008 and made a lot of buzz at once . It had quite a lot copycats and eventually infographics became a standard of non-standard resumes. Nevertheless, such a resume still makes an impression on a potential employer. And the good news is that it’s no longer exclusive to people who make a living from graphic design.

There are numerous web-based tools which enable you to create a resume of this kind without having any knowledge of graphic editors. It’s not hard to find such tools. Try googling “resume builder” or “creative resume generator”. In our opinion, a nice comprehensive list of online resume builders can be found here (http://bit.ly/1dMWfkK).

As far as we see, these are not very popular. Yet. Now that making a infographic-rich resume is available to everyone, it’s obvious that this kind of CV will devaluate soon. How soon? It’s hard to predict, but all of you, who want to be a step ahead of your competition, you have to think of this step now.

Graphic Design, Web Design, Anything Design

Design is a keyword of these days. People realised how important is design in almost every walk of life, also in a job hunt. This means it’s essential to design your resume, but it does not mean, you have to use some creative design layout in it (unless you’re a graphic designer and need to show off). What we mean is that your resume design should be thoughtful.

A good way to stand out in the crowd and secure yourself an invitation to an interview is to morph the employers CI into your own resume. This is what Eric Gandhi did when he applied to Google.
(source: http://read.bi/1iJV5yk)

It doesn’t require any advanced graphic skills, just some time to adjust your standard resume to your potential employer’s CI. And the online resume generators will not help you with this.
Of course if you really deal with design, you need to show something more. A web designer might prepare an interactive resume, just like Robby Leonardi (http://www.rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/).

Somebody aspiring for a marketing job, can show their talent in a video-resume,
By typing C.V.I.V. (CV interactive video) into YouTube's search input box you will get plenty of results for those kind of CV's. One of the most popular is Graeme Anthony C.V.I.V. What he said in the video is that there is nothing wrong with the good, old-fashioned pen and paper but C.V.I.V. is far more exciting and accessible. You can see his C.V.I.V here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EzNll1U2N8

See also:

Lying in your CV
How to write a good CV?