12 ms·

As a professional resume writer I'm seeing a lot of clients now asking for more design on their resumes (including many senior clients with solid accomplishment

• joegahona 7y ago
  Do you ever recommend that the resume writer puts his/her picture on the resume? It struck me as really odd when Linkedin started to encourage this, as I was told ages ago that a photo on your resume will get it thrown out instantly because it opens up the potential employer to discrimination.
  • jgtrosh 7y ago
    Depends on the accepted practices. For example in France it's always welcome (AFAIK).
    • walshemj 7y ago
      That is Problematic on so many grounds. I am surprised the EU hasn't banned that on discrimination grounds.
      • jaclaz 7y ago
        As a matter of fact the "standard" EU CV (so called Europass) has the photo "field" : https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/about-europass https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/about-europass (with a recommendation to check whether it is allowed in the specific destination country): >Add your photo only if required. Check local provisions in the country where you intend to send your CV.
      • NikkiA 7y ago
        As someone with a visible 'disability', I wish it would.
    • tluyben2 7y ago
      In Portugal I have not received any without a picture on it. It does not help.
      • BubRoss 7y ago
        It does not help what? How would you know?
        • tluyben2 7y ago
          Because I review those resumes for our company and, as others have said here, it adds bias even if you don't want to. That does not help.
    • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Europe and Asia generally require photographs, America generally requires no photographs.
      • rsynnott 7y ago
        It’s more granular than just ‘Europe’. Having a picture would be pretty weird in Ireland, say.
        • Silhouette 7y ago
          In the UK, too. I've heard lawyers advising a policy of blanket-discarding CVs with attached photos to avoid any possibility of discrimination during screening stages (though I don't know whether this is because of a specific law or just their judgement regarding minimising risk).
  • fecak 7y ago
    As others have said, it depends on the country. For my US clients I never add a photo, but I will offer to add a LinkedIn URL at the top. The ability for the reader to view your profile (and photo) can help them to understand that this is a real person, and my guess is it's harder for most people to say 'no' to someone they have seen (of course this is assuming several things about each party).
  • RealityVoid 7y ago
    > it opens up the potential employer to discrimination. This argument never seemed to hold any water for me. Ok, most cases of "discrimination lawsuit" were because people were discriminated negatively, not positively. Wouldn't discarding the resume _because it has a picture_ have the exact result that the person discriminated person complained of? If that is so, it seems NOT accepting the resume would open you to lawsuits, not accepting it. Yet, I don't see a lot of fuss being made about job-seekers claiming discrimination because of CV pictures out there.
    • erikpukinskis 7y ago
      “People who put pictures on their resumes” are not a protected class.
      • RealityVoid 7y ago
        Yes, but "black people" is and you can easily extract that form a picture. Outright removing the CV because of the picture, regardless of reason, can be argued that you _actually_ did that because of being a protected class. Of course, it's probably easier if you can prove that you discard _all_ CV's with pictures anyways. But have some exceptions go through and you might get screwed. Regardless, if you don't have a clearly stated policy of dismissing CV's with pictures, it just feels like an asshole move, frankly.
        • HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
          Of course, it's probably easier if you can prove that you discard _all_ CV's with pictures anyways That's exactly why it's done.
• Aloha 7y ago
  How would you recommend hiring a resume writer to do a review? I have two resumes, my master long form document which covers everything I've ever done, and my "working" resume, which is what I tend to send out, and might get lightly massaged for positions.
  • fecak 7y ago
    There are probably several resume writers that offer review services, and I am one of them. My profile has details on how to find me.
• pseingatl 7y ago
  In many countries, a picture is required. As part of the application process you are required to submit your passport details page as well (if you are applying for an expat job, of course you already have a passport. Only Americans don't.). A resumé is advertising. A more comprehensive document should follow after the initial culling.
• clubm8 7y ago
  Design doesn't have to mean lots of color or weird use of white space though. One can "design" a great resumé in LaTeX.
  • Silhouette 7y ago
    I sometimes think writing a CV/resume in LaTeX is a bit like writing your "any language you like" interview programs in Haskell. It can be the secret handshake that sends a positive signal to the right observer, but unless you really nail it, it probably just looks a bit weird to most people.
• jjeaff 7y ago
  I don't believe that a nice looking resume tells you nothing. It shows additionally effort, creativity, and style. But if your hiring is based solely on what you can input into a computer, crunch the numbers and spit out the top candidates, then you might as well just have your candidates fill out an online form. Maybe even make it multiple choice to avoid any possible individualism.
• Kagerjay 7y ago
  > With visualized resumes, the user is sacrificing the ability to provide a more robust list of accomplishments, or perhaps to provide additional details and context for the accomplishments they have listed. As a mid level developer with 3 years of experience in catalog design / AdobeIndesign, I can fit way more technical content on a PDF than I could on a traditional word doc. I have full control over the font type, kerning, whitespacing, layout, etc. You have to use design to enhance the technical presentation, it should never be the centerpoint. Most design resumes I've seen don't do it right. I usually use 2 resumes, a ATS friendly parsed one via Google docs and another one pager minimalistic colored PDF.
  • devnulloverflow 7y ago
    How do you get feedback about what works?
    • sooper 7y ago
      Having just read through >300 resumes to fill several security consulting roles, my anecdata is that a well laid resume makes with good design does make a good first impression and increases the chance that I will read through it. To me, it exhibits that they have put a bit of effort into communicating their value and shows ability to understand how to communicate information. That said, still not as much of an impression as a good cover letter written to demonstrate how their strengths match the vacancy.
    • Kagerjay 7y ago
      I don't recommend going down this path, this is everything I did to make my own resume (including feedback portions). - I hired one of the best technical professional writers to help me write a better google doc resume. This took about one month of iterative question/answer comments. Said person is actually the comment above my original comment - I went and found the best resume designs online, normally from UI/UX designers working at FAANG companies (bestfolios.com/resume). I studied these extensively and took the best elements from various resumes. - I also have a lot of experience in outsourcing work. I found a designer with similar skills as mine. We did a 10-15 hour design cycle essentially reinventing the resume, this came out to about 100 design iterations. Font-sizes, font-types, white-spacing, font ratio-sizes, greyscale support, layout, were all considerations done. - I took resume, over another a month and asked developer friends for blind feedback. I think I asked at least 20 or 30 developers. They dumped dropbox comments on the version-controlled PDF, I took every suggestion to heart and considered whether it made sense. Sometimes I would load my resume with bad typos, errors, and sometimes bad designs intentionally as a control to vet the best reviewers. If they didn't catch those errors, I wouldn't take the feedback as seriously. - I asked my friend who is a senior instructor at LinkedIn/Lynda.com for feedback. Usually this feedback was more tailored toward content. - I have a background in HR as well. I know what gets read and what doesn't. That being said, while I did job hunt I also asked for feedback from my recruiter friends. I learned how ATS parsing worked after applying to many jobs, most ATS parsers show you previews of what gets uploaded. Some recruiters use word doc resumes, I got to see how they modified my files and present it to prospective employers. This gave me more benchmarks on what content employers actually like to see. My good friend is a recruiter too so I get insights all the time. - Potential employers told me what they liked best about the resume. I kept those and amplified it. These were generally svg skill-icons - Sometimes, I noticed recruiters would struggle to find content, usually this was skills tied for specific projects. I decided to use a key-legend style approach found in geographic maps, people overall liked it. - I decided to clickmine the resume. I wanted to do actual data analytics in how often my resume's links actually got clicked. I used bit.ly to track how different user groups would click on different parts of resume, this was done in different user testing cycles. I noticed trends in what people clicked who knew me, vs employers who did not. ===================================== So... to see what feedback works. Just ask your friends, employers, recruiters, etc what improvements you can make. Look at what recruiters are actually doing to your word doc resumes. Is your resume self-explanatory (are employers asking you to explain it)? If it's not ... then it's not doing a good job. That being said, you should really tailor your resume to each job. I still do via a google doc or quickly one-off mod my PDF. But sometimes you don't have too, especially for one-click apply sites / services. For the record I never use cover letters unless a company explicitly wants it. I don't recommend anyone going down this path of making your own resume, it takes a lot of time and effort. I only did it because I didn't like any of the resume designs out there. Having a designer resume as a frontend developer is a complimentary skillset anyhow. Also during an interview, I never talk about the resume design process whatsoever. It speaks for itself. If your curious this is what it looks like: http://bit.ly/hackernews-resume http://bit.ly/hackernews-resume
• katsura 7y ago
  Hmm, Marissa's resume has "Pale Alto" in it. Is there a reason behind it being Pale, or is that a typo?
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • pledg 7y ago
    Yes, it isn't her real resume.
• dwd 7y ago
  There's difference between fancy formatting and applying good design. Good design will make your resume more readable and draw focus to the key points the reader would be initially scanning for. 30 seconds is about the time you have to grab someone's attention. If they don't see something that ticks a few boxes in that time, they'll move on to the next resume. I've had to sort through a lot of resumes over the years and when you have a stack to go through and project deadlines approaching - you need to go through them fairly fast. Basically, I'm not going to try and read a long description of achievements and skills gained. Not even dot points. I'm looking for where you've worked and for how long to gauge overall experience, how long you stayed in roles and the kinds of companies worked at. Knowing someone worked at a particular company gives a lot of info about their potential exposure to tools and technologies. So, if your resume can get that across in those first 30 seconds, it will get read in full later once you're down to a handful of potential candidates. Those info-graphic style resumes are appalling and not what you want to try and parse unless the person's job role will be creating info-graphics.