15 ms·

This may be the best resume I have ever seen

339 points by beagledude 16y ago

watmough 16y ago
It's interesting, but I'd much rather see a chronologically-based bubble diagram for recent experience. Definitely eye-catching.
tptacek 16y ago
Not good. * Has a graphic which must be interpreted simply to find the last few projects the candidate worked on. * Uses a proportional diagram scheme that is (a) worse than pie charts (an achievement) and (b) requires a color coded legend to illustrate the simple clause: "[Project Name]: Rails, CSS, jQuery". * Straightjackets the candidate's work experience into "technology used" instead of "accomplishments earned". * Attempts a comparative analysis of experience with different tools both as a "developer" and a "designer" without explaining the significance of either term; what's a "Photoshop CS5 Developer" or a "Textmate Designer"? * Or is the blue "frequency" and the orange "expertise"? Why is the graphic laid out so that the cutesy venn diagram looks like a color key? * Spends something like 1/3 of the real estate of the graphic on an almost entirely uninteresting attribute of the candidate (what terminal she uses, what text editor she uses, what browsers [seriously.] she uses). Designers can be expected to know Photoshop. Nobody cares about your editor. * I have no idea what the subway-map illustration of command line tools and web services even means; the impression I get is, "this person will add baffling complexity to things in order to avoid boredom". Whoah, where do I sign? * Extraordinarily inefficient representation of the candidate's Rails experience; a simple resume would lead with "Rails developer with over 5 years experience" instead of burying the lede in another cutesy picture. * No reasonable employer cares about college credits earned in high school, the age you were when you coded your first website, or what platforms you tech-supported in school, and yet that material consumes more visual weight than the number of years the candidate has doing Rails development. Resume tip. Here is the terrible thing about spending time on your resume pointing out your favorite dog breed or color-coding your choice of text editors: people with real accomplishments would never, ever do that, because they only have two pages of heavily-bulleted text to convey those accomplishments in. What you say with a resume like this is, "I hope someday to have major accomplishments" --- whether that's true or not. It's not just that infographics are a crappy format for resumes (and, they simply are.). It's that this is not a good infographic. In fact, since we're all so familiar with resumes here, it's actually a really good example of the problem with all the cheesy infographics that have been floating around for the past year. The blogger who highlighted this "graphical resume" did a disservice to the person who created it; I have no doubt the author is an totally reasonable human being who sends normal resumes to people when resumes are what's called for.
- klbarry 16y ago
  If I was hiring a programmer for a creative business though, and I didn't know too much about programming (like most employers), this would definitely set her apart for a number of reasons.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    Set apart, perhaps, but not necessarily in a positive way. There are a number of parts of the resume that don't make sense - why would I care if someone uses Textmate, the technology chart is horrendously hard to understand at a glance, the subway-style bit for command-line vs. web service tools is odd, etc.
- steverb 16y ago
  I agree with your assessment, but it is an interesting try at presenting the information, and the linked png did at least have template for a link to the plain text version.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Willingness to experiment and try new things is an asset for a developer. Inability to edit oneself, or to walk away from an experiment when it has clearly failed, is a dealbreaking liability. Infographics ON a resume, good or mediocre: OK. Infographics AS a resume, if amazing: OK. Infographics AS a resume, if not amazing: VERY BAD.
    - moe 16y ago
      Seeing multiple comments of yours in here (all negative) I can't help but wonder if you have some kind of axe to grind with her? Yes, her infographic isn't flawless. But it isn't bad either, it is in fact pretty damn good. And most certainly good enough to stand out in a pile of standard-resumes, which is about as much as it can possibly accomplish.
catshirt 16y ago
i actually believe resumes like this hinder the application process. the problem this seems to solve for the author is "Ok great, we use Java and PHP and Python but how competent are they in those languages?" it's a fair concern, but i don't agree this is the right way to solve it. imo, brevity can speak louder than pictures and colors. even if i were to give the author the benefit of the doubt here, this particular resume/graphic doesn't strike me as exemplary.
gensym 16y ago
This would be great if you wanted a job at USA today.
- deleted 16y ago
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ceejayoz 16y ago
If I were hiring someone to make infographics, this would be a useful (but not necessarily positively received) resume. For anything else, particularly development, it'd be in the discard pile pretty quick.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Also mindbending: Rails/jQ developers command an enormous premium in this market, but my understanding is that the people who actually lay out and draw those cheesy infographics make peanuts.
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    I find this your most salient critique, of all that you've leveled in this thread. In other words, legitimate Rails/jQ skills do not require clever resumes in this market to get noticed, so from a job search perspective a simpler, more traditional resume makes more sense. I think this invalidates some of my comments in reply to your comment at the top of this thread. :)
mgkimsal 16y ago
This sort of CV is going to exclude this person from certain positions and companies - probably exactly the companies and positions this person does not want to be hired at. Jamie is doing her own filtering by being "in your face" about what sort of worker she will be, and you can instantly tell whether or not to exclude her from consideration. Whether to hire automatically, that's would take more time to determine. She'll instantly get discarded from consideration for most 'sit in a cubicle all day and take directions from 5 committees' jobs, and that's probably exactly what she wants.
- deleted 16y ago
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Maro 16y ago
This infography resume scores high points for standing out and being memorable, which is important as many companies receive many CVs. It completely fails as a tool for communicating how good she is at what she "does". I guess it's Rails? The CV is confusing. Also, it gives the impression that the person is more interested in style than substance. I guess that's okay if you're an artist/designer (?), not so good if you're a programmer. The CV gives me the feeling this person is a programmer, but probably not a good one, she should really be a designer. Overall, I think the problem is what's communicated in the programmer /\ designer Venn-diagram. She's trying to communicate that she's a designer programmer, but it comes across "forced". Her designer part made this infographic, which isn't very good, and we can't really tell if she's a good programmer, and suspect that she's not.
- mnutt 16y ago
  Are you arguing that it shouldn't have been an infographic, or that the infographic should have been better? Other than the list of tools, I thought it was well done and showed she had an eye for aesthetics, which most developers either lack or actively shun. Which is not to say that some people don't absorb the information better in different ways. That's probably why there's a "Plaintext" link at the top.
  - chc 16y ago
    I don't know what he meant, but I can imagine how an infographic could demonstrate both her skill at design and her skill at programming — it's just that this one only really even tries for the former.
ajju 16y ago
Along similar lines, a friend of mine built a life map a few years ago: http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2010/11/15/lifemap-timeline-concept-ritwik-dey/ http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2010/11/15/lifem...
agnesberthelot 16y ago
In my opinion, this still doesn't solve the problem of beefed-up resumes. Or one can spend 40% of his time working on PHP doesn't tell exactly how good he is in PHP. The best is still to have the candidate really showing how good he is, for example to have the candidate work on customized puzzle targeting the skills an employer needs.
gst 16y ago
The best resume I have ever seen is this one: http://www.squicky.org/cv/ http://www.squicky.org/cv/
- aw3c2 16y ago
  It is funny for a moment but that is all.
  - reinhardt 16y ago
    It would be all if he was some random English BS major graduate from Idaho. The fact that he has a PhD from MIT in EECS changes the underlying message to a "I am confident/arrogant enough that I'll land a top job despite the goofy resume".
jrmxrf 16y ago
I would still prefere standard latex template over this. Especially when I need to do comparison later between this and other candidates.
slavak 16y ago
In addition to all the (valid) comments that have been posted so far, there's one more thing that bothers me: When I was looking for a job, a fair number of the resumes I sent out were either sent by fax or given out in printed form. Either way - they were in black & white. Requiring your resume to be in color in order to be readable seems like a terrible way to actually go looking for work.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 16y ago
Incidentally, to see this style executed (from a designer perspective) competantly, check out: http://feltron.com/ http://feltron.com/
- gfodor 16y ago
  Or, http://worrydream.com/ http://worrydream.com/ (Click Bio)
  - aw3c2 16y ago
    No such link, it says "This website requires Flash player 8. Click here to upgrade." if I enable Javascript.
- moe 16y ago
  Which of the 7 images linked on that page are you referring to? I glanced over the infographics and was underwhelmed. From my perspective as the information-consumer the OP's resume is much better executed than this. The layout and colors on her resume are inviting. The typography and flow works well. I could parse most information without problems, and even felt entertained in the process. The infographics you link to are gray, crowded, artsy and overdone. They pushed me back so hard that I didn't even bother to figure out what they are about. I respect your competancy in the security realm. But I doubt you're competant enough in the infographics genre to justify the eleborate bashing that you posted higher up in this thread.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Let's be careful here. I'm happy to argue about graphic design and will concede up front that I'm not an expert. My criticism of the OP's resume, though, are about the resume infographic as a resume infographic. Like many, many people on HN, I'm certainly qualified to "elaborately bash" a bad resume. Next, while I respect that you might disagree about the Feltron annual reports, it's certainly not a personal quirk that I like them; I learned about them from the Kottke/Gruber nexus on the web, and other people (notably, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Creative Review, Print Magazine, Slate, and AIGA) have called the reports out as well. Finally, I hope you understand that I'm addressing the "style" part of the "style vs. substance" issue with this resume by citing Feltron.
jwwest 16y ago
Love it. It takes a certain size of balls to send something like this to a potential employer. This kind of thing targets a certain type of company. This could be a way of flushing out the type of companies you don't want to be involved with (stodgy, old-school traditional).
- rmc00 16y ago
  Is writing this type of resume really the best means of filtering out an applicant's undesired companies? It would seem to me that the best way to avoid companies you don't want to be involved with is to simply research the company before you apply. With that approach, there's no risk due to the personality or opinions of the recruiter regarding the format of the resume, but you can still end up at the type of company you want to work for.
sukuriant 16y ago
My greatest wonder of the whole thing is how this information is entered into one of those text-only resume systems; and, how office workers with laser printers print this appropriately and see all the important details
dbcn 16y ago
The best resume you've ever seen includes that the candidate is a PRO at WEB BROWSERS? wow.
- andreaja 16y ago
  Presumably in the context of web development, this means familiarity with browsers as deployment platforms (quirks etc).
- beoba 16y ago
  Not quite, the chart says they aren't quite pro at web browsers, but that they're used all day.
  - iuguy 16y ago
    You can hit the same level by procrastinating on HN all day long.
imcqueen 16y ago
I think it's effective because it's polarizing. Any recruiter who likes it will REALLY like it and immediately want to pursue the applicant.
jrockway 16y ago
Not a fan of this. Not because of the garish colors and graphics (though I don't really care for those), but because of the implication that there is a "perfect sweet spot" between a "developer" and a "designer". Copying and pasting shit from a Ruby on Rails tutorial does not make you a good developer.
- chwahoo 16y ago
  Why the assumption that she's not a good developer? Was it the choice of emphasized technologies (e.g., terminal, text-editor) or the focus on web development tools (e.g., jquery, rails)? I suspect she can program better than you give her credit for (better than straight copy/paste/tweak from tutorials), but probably won't be straying far from straightforward use of rails. Perhaps that level of programming coupled with design ability is a sort of "sweet spot" for many projects? I'm certainly far more on the programming side of this continuum (and so would never attempt a CV like this), but I can believe this resume might persuasively communicate her combination of skills to her intended audience.
  - beoba 16y ago
    If I were going to pick out a particular thing that stood out to me, the use of Advanced "Apple Terminal" in a resume of any format would throw me off. It could just mean that the candidate was trying to convey eg "Terminal"/"UNIX Shell", or it could mean that they don't understand what the CLI really represents. A bit nitpicky; it wouldn't be an instant drop, but I'd still look at the rest a bit more cautiously. Oddly enough I only notice a resume's "tools" section when there's something weird in it.
    - Luyt 16y ago
      "... the use of Advanced "Apple Terminal" in a resume of any format would throw me off." That catched my eye too, along with the 'TextMate' proficiency. If you start putting those things on your resume you might as well also put '90% Keyboard skills' and '100% expert Mouse user' on it.
- beoba 16y ago
bobobjorn 16y ago
I doubt any professional recruiter would read more then 10% of it. It takes way to much time to read, it is hard to understand and says nothing about accomplishements. Resumes is not about what you have or should have done, it is about what you have accomplished. http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/Sample_Resume.pdf http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/Sample_Resume.pdf That resume is alot faster and easier to read. The podcast that goes with it: http://manager-tools.com/2005/10/your-resume-stinks http://manager-tools.com/2005/10/your-resume-stinks
siddhant 16y ago
For designers, okay. But what's wrong with a simple LaTeX CV? Its clean, gets the point across, and frankly, it stands out from the other badly-formatted Word documents.
- beoba 16y ago
  Given the style of the document itself, the language used in the header introduction ("Web apps that people actually want to use"), and the fact that every one of the "Previous Work" items has a gray "HTML/CSS" circle, I think/hope that she's trying to convey herself as primarily interested in front-end design work.
- mdwrigh2 16y ago
  I agree, and actually have open sourced my LaTeX resume in case anyone wants to use bits and pieces of it: https://github.com/mdwrigh2/resume https://github.com/mdwrigh2/resume
  - cosbynator 16y ago
    There was an entire news item that resulted in tons of LaTeX resume templates being posted last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714381 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714381 (mine included!)
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  And yet I've never seen a recruiter ask for anything but a Word document; this seems to be significantly because they then strip off your contact details and put their own header on it, mangling your carefully thought through presentation.... I do wonder what ueful place recruiters still have in the process; they often seem to be providing a service that amounts to little more than running an advert and forwarding emails so why are they so highly paid for a variant on secretarial work?
mediamaker 16y ago
the best resume is no resume. They give hiring managers too many things to find wrong
- marshray 16y ago
  Now the manager who's actually hiring may know you're the one when you met him through the social network, but any employer with an HR department is going to require some form of resume/CV and job application. It's more or less a legal requirement. HR often gets a say in who's hired and lacking the ability to judge technical l33tness they tend to go on degrees, resume formatting, previous job titles, and dates.
27182818284 16y ago
I couldn't take it seriously because of how popular(cliché) infographics are. The first thing that came to mind was that satire on infographics which included the text: 2: The number of cats I own.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I can't help but think of my long-standing opinion of infographics- they are often just a way to make a tiny little bit of largely inconsequential information take up a lot of space.
OasisG 16y ago
The many negative responses to this resume are exactly why I've let go of the job hunt and embraced the path of the entrepreneur. Even when you go above and beyond, winning over the hiring director is still a game of chance.
- beoba 16y ago
  If negative feedback is what drove you into wanting to be an entrepreneur, you may want to reconsider.
  - OasisG 16y ago
    Thing is, when you're job hunting you don't get ANY feedback 99% of the time. I don't actually mind negative feedback because then you know where and how to improve. What bothers me is how much of the job-seeking process is essentially a crapshoot. Does the person reading my resume actually know what the job entails? Will they see my writing style as clever and witty? Or will my attempts to seem serious come off as stuffy and arrogant? Do I list all my experience and risk being underbid by some young hotshot? Or do I try for the job even after being told every other candidate has several more years of experience? Or in this case, I've designed an infographic to set myself apart from every other applicant, but will it be viewed as creative initiative or gimmicky for not conveying enough/the right kind of information? The current job market is far from the only reason I'm doing my own thing, but being able to avoid that nonsense is certainly a great motivator.
jhamburger 16y ago
Isn't the cartoon representation possibly crossing a line with having a headshot on the resume?
- tptacek 16y ago
  People put headshots on resumes all the time.
Swannie 16y ago
I found it quite surprising that Jim doesn't get CVs where people rank their skills. My first proper CV had that on, and my CV does to this day. Pretty basic stuff. That said I reviewed a friend's CV two weeks ago. He was lucky it was over the net and he wasn't in the room... I think someone 10 years younger could probably do a better CV. Sheesh!
StayuKasabov 16y ago
a) Design - good idea, bad execution. To much clutter. This is typical problem for web designers nowadays, they simply don't get it. FUNCTION over FORM. To much color. To much fonts. Bad management of white spaces. Info-graphics must have a balance and accents. Logic over artistry. KISS. Not Web 2 crap. b) Developer-for developer we need to see code. Way of thinking and way of writing. Cool tools or technologies are irrelevant to see quality of programmers. If you are CEO, entrepreneur or business owner, and you don't have any designer/developer background, hire someone with enough professional experience to pick right people for you. Don't think that because you pay the money or manage business you know everything. Don't fool yourself with assumption. Good teams are built by design or by accident. But accident ones always bring disaster.
JonnieCache 16y ago
Accidental satire cuts deepest.
methodin 16y ago
My overall impression of this resume was that I wanted to go see the actual websites this person made. Which is a far better impression than a cookie-cutter bulleted list of facts that flower what you actual did at your job. As the meme states, "Haters gonna hate" - which certainly remains true judging by the lengthy responses here.
sbradley 16y ago
"If I knew they spent 70% of their time on Java and they have around 5% familiarity with Ruby now that's telling me something of value. (...) While obviously nothing is perfect I think the idea of adding weighted cues for skill sets is something missing from the current resume model." Odesk includes the hours worked on a given project. Even so: I'm not sure that tells me if the programmer has any real fluency. I suppose measures like that and/or certifications are the closest thing to what you're asking for... But maybe a Topcoder ranking and/or contractor satisfaction index for the sought-after skill set would be more relevant...something/anything which quantifies narrative comments from hiring parties, or contextualizes a programmer among their peers...that would be more valuable to me. "If you were to pair this with a data output that is machine readable, google's problem of 75,000 resume's per week could be significantly made easier to wade through. HR people in enterprise companies look for keywords, bottom line." People who sift through resumes look for keywords. Interviewers, hiring managers, business owners look for something else... How many interviews have you been on where the interviewer picks up the resume, glances at it, sets it down, and then proceeds to ask questions clearly indicating they did not read the resume? That's the real disconnect in the present resume model. Rather than build a machine readable way to screen fluency, or allow oneself to be charmed by the most visually disruptive document, why not build a better way for employers to simply test--en masse--for certain personal qualities AND technical qualifications? (Heck...deficiencies in psychometrics and testing methodology is a real bottleneck in America's capacity to suss out competency...in any number of domains. I love tests like the GRE which offer questions, for example, like "An Apple is to an Orange like a Doctor is to a A) Veternarian, B) Osteopath, C) Architect, or D) Accountant." How the hell is someone who's not a native speaker supposed to answer a question like that?) Often what's needed to get the job done is too subtle to communicate on any number of pages...or "pages" as they exist now, and it'd be a stretch for any machine to vibe out a candidate to such an extent. It's probably why video resumes are so useful.
ylem 16y ago
This person's resume is getting a lot of useful feedback. Outside of volume, is there a legal reason why most firms don't tell people why they weren't hired? Or is the typical, "It was a difficult decision, with many excellent candidates..." just simpler?
marshray 16y ago
Say what you like about the style/substance and form/function angles, but if I were trying to get a job as a graphic designer I would hate to have my conventional resume on the stack under this one.
mkramlich 16y ago
The best resume is no resume. Don't tell me where you've worked show me what you've made. Don't tell me what certificates you have, show me what you can do no. The best way for me to know what you can do in the future is to see what you've done in the past, and are doing right now. I hope resumes die out. At least in software anyway. On a related note, I think I just might be at a point in my career where I never need to send a resume out ever again. I definitely bias to not sending them. I think resumes are, like the commute-9-to-5-yes-boss job paradigm, just another relic of the Industrial Age for blue collar workers. Can you imagine Roger Waters of Pink Floyd "applying" for a job as a musician/singer? "Sir, you'll have to fill out this form and submit a resume, k thanks." He hands them The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, etc. "Sorry sir, not good enough. Yo have to eat all your meat like everyone else otherwise we can't give you any pudding."
- GFischer 16y ago
  Well, you might have heard the story about how C creator Ken Thompson was asked to take a mandatory language test at Google before being able to check-in code :) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_ou...
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    Too funny. I could see a recruiter asking him how many years of professional C programming experience he has: Ken: "Uh... 37 years?" Recruiter: "Liar!"
weegee 16y ago
no, it is too fancy, cluttered, and hard to read. creative, yes, full credit there. but not easy to read, and comes across as pretentious. great if you're looking for graphic design work. not great if you're looking for engineering work or programming work. simple, black ink on white paper, edited content (get to "the point"), easy to scan and read quickly is what you want.
gte910h 16y ago
To those who dislike it: Jamie Kite has succeed in doing far more than most people with their resumes: She's gotten thousands of people to look at it and talk about her resume. Is it the best infographic? Parts are pretty serviceable. Is it the worst? Not by a long shot. Does it use a lot of common styles seen today, yup. Will it infuriate some people? Oh hell yes from Ptack's reaction. But did it work? Yes. "Logical" left brained types get hung up on exact meanings of graphics when sometimes it's the fact you have a visually interesting doodad out there is all that counts to get the attention to your whatzit. Does she have some stupid stuff on their and weird phrasing? No more than most people who haven't looked at lots of resumes. (Apple terminal caught my eye). Would I hire her for a top level rails position? Likely not without more convincing. Would I think about hiring her for a midlevel position where there is significant art issues, yeah, I'd definitely consider calling her for an interview. She should likely redo parts of it to sound better, (like many people have to do with their resume).
- chc 16y ago
  If getting talked about is all you need, just put a naked photo of yourself holding bacon on the resume and submit it to Reddit. Being much talked about is only inherently good if you aspire to be Paris Hilton.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    So what if she just happens to be a mediocre developer designer hybrid? This exposure is very likely going to be a stepping stone to a better job than she'd get without it. Your example is about a stunt unrelated to showing qualifications. This actually shows some. It shows some history, and shows what skills were used where. Is she a perfect ubergod? Nope. Does she smile and perfect ruby fall from the sky? Probably not. Does she probably have a good enough knowledge of rails and photoshop to do many a task? I'm guessing she could do all of 4 gigs I know of at the moment using skills she has. Are they the epitome of grand rails design, nope, but they likely fit her skillset. Hacker News people have this very odd elitism thing going on expecting everyone to be functionally speaking manga cum laud from Stanford.
stopbits 16y ago
This may be the best resume I have ever seen, too. She would be on the top of my list without a doubt. The color coded tree is animated and reconfigures itself as you hover over the various items in the legend. We are seeing a static screenshot. There is also a text version available which we are not seeing. She does hit the spot between developer and designer. That statement seems to be confusing a lot of people. I am not confused by that. Those are exactly the type of people I need. I guess it is just not in everyone's argot. Maybe there are some nits to be picked, but just the fact that she broke new ground in this manner says a lot to me, and it is all positive. This is just true of me. Maybe it is not right for everyone. I thought the HN crowd would dig this a lot more. My mind is a little blown by all the nitpicking and bashing. Maybe there is a little bit of pissing contest going on here.
mfukar 16y ago
Apple Terminal Pro. That's how long I dragged myself through. Sorry Jamie.
Papirola 16y ago
where's the app that gets linkedin data and renders this?
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  I'm not sure LinkedIn has quite this much information, but after a short search - http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiekite http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiekite
_corbett 16y ago
I think it's a great resume. Does the job quickly: Do I want to schedule an interview with him/her y/n? y
Tichy 16y ago
A fun exercise, but somehow I distrust infographics on principle. Overly big fonts make feel stupid and foolish for example. OK, I got it he programmed for FIVE years FIVE!!!!!! 5555555 5 5 5 5 5 55 5 5 Five five five five five FIVEFI F FIV E FIV That's how it makes me feel. In general if you treat somebody as if he is stupid, it'll make him feel stupid. Infographics treat people as if they are stupid - bright shiny colors, big fonts, short sentences... Maybe it already has to do with chunking. "5" is really just one chunk, the number 5. But a big, ginormous 5 doesn't fit into one brain slot anymore. It fill the whole brain and bounces around inside of it. Anyway, I don't like infographics...
known 16y ago
http://www.tahlent.com/ http://www.tahlent.com/ is working on similar lines.
zandorg 16y ago
Witb his skill in non-ASCII text, he should be able to get a great job at Wolfram Alpha.

339 points by beagledude 16y ago

It's interesting, but I'd much rather see a chronologically-based bubble diagram for recent experience. Definitely eye-catching.

tptacek 16y ago

Not good. * Has a graphic which must be interpreted simply to find the last few projects the candidate worked on. * Uses a proportional diagram scheme that is (a) worse than pie charts (an achievement) and (b) requires a color coded legend to illustrate the simple clause: "[Project Name]: Rails, CSS, jQuery". * Straightjackets the candidate's work experience into "technology used" instead of "accomplishments earned". * Attempts a comparative analysis of experience with different tools both as a "developer" and a "designer" without explaining the significance of either term; what's a "Photoshop CS5 Developer" or a "Textmate Designer"? * Or is the blue "frequency" and the orange "expertise"? Why is the graphic laid out so that the cutesy venn diagram looks like a color key? * Spends something like 1/3 of the real estate of the graphic on an almost entirely uninteresting attribute of the candidate (what terminal she uses, what text editor she uses, what browsers [seriously.] she uses). Designers can be expected to know Photoshop. Nobody cares about your editor. * I have no idea what the subway-map illustration of command line tools and web services even means; the impression I get is, "this person will add baffling complexity to things in order to avoid boredom". Whoah, where do I sign? * Extraordinarily inefficient representation of the candidate's Rails experience; a simple resume would lead with "Rails developer with over 5 years experience" instead of burying the lede in another cutesy picture. * No reasonable employer cares about college credits earned in high school, the age you were when you coded your first website, or what platforms you tech-supported in school, and yet that material consumes more visual weight than the number of years the candidate has doing Rails development. Resume tip. Here is the terrible thing about spending time on your resume pointing out your favorite dog breed or color-coding your choice of text editors: people with real accomplishments would never, ever do that, because they only have two pages of heavily-bulleted text to convey those accomplishments in. What you say with a resume like this is, "I hope someday to have major accomplishments" --- whether that's true or not. It's not just that infographics are a crappy format for resumes (and, they simply are.). It's that this is not a good infographic. In fact, since we're all so familiar with resumes here, it's actually a really good example of the problem with all the cheesy infographics that have been floating around for the past year. The blogger who highlighted this "graphical resume" did a disservice to the person who created it; I have no doubt the author is an totally reasonable human being who sends normal resumes to people when resumes are what's called for.

klbarry 16y ago
If I was hiring a programmer for a creative business though, and I didn't know too much about programming (like most employers), this would definitely set her apart for a number of reasons.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  Set apart, perhaps, but not necessarily in a positive way. There are a number of parts of the resume that don't make sense - why would I care if someone uses Textmate, the technology chart is horrendously hard to understand at a glance, the subway-style bit for command-line vs. web service tools is odd, etc.
steverb 16y ago
I agree with your assessment, but it is an interesting try at presenting the information, and the linked png did at least have template for a link to the plain text version.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Willingness to experiment and try new things is an asset for a developer. Inability to edit oneself, or to walk away from an experiment when it has clearly failed, is a dealbreaking liability. Infographics ON a resume, good or mediocre: OK. Infographics AS a resume, if amazing: OK. Infographics AS a resume, if not amazing: VERY BAD.
  - moe 16y ago
    Seeing multiple comments of yours in here (all negative) I can't help but wonder if you have some kind of axe to grind with her? Yes, her infographic isn't flawless. But it isn't bad either, it is in fact pretty damn good. And most certainly good enough to stand out in a pile of standard-resumes, which is about as much as it can possibly accomplish.

catshirt 16y ago

i actually believe resumes like this hinder the application process. the problem this seems to solve for the author is "Ok great, we use Java and PHP and Python but how competent are they in those languages?" it's a fair concern, but i don't agree this is the right way to solve it. imo, brevity can speak louder than pictures and colors. even if i were to give the author the benefit of the doubt here, this particular resume/graphic doesn't strike me as exemplary.

gensym 16y ago

This would be great if you wanted a job at USA today.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

ceejayoz 16y ago

If I were hiring someone to make infographics, this would be a useful (but not necessarily positively received) resume. For anything else, particularly development, it'd be in the discard pile pretty quick.

tptacek 16y ago
Also mindbending: Rails/jQ developers command an enormous premium in this market, but my understanding is that the people who actually lay out and draw those cheesy infographics make peanuts.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  I find this your most salient critique, of all that you've leveled in this thread. In other words, legitimate Rails/jQ skills do not require clever resumes in this market to get noticed, so from a job search perspective a simpler, more traditional resume makes more sense. I think this invalidates some of my comments in reply to your comment at the top of this thread. :)

mgkimsal 16y ago

This sort of CV is going to exclude this person from certain positions and companies - probably exactly the companies and positions this person does not want to be hired at. Jamie is doing her own filtering by being "in your face" about what sort of worker she will be, and you can instantly tell whether or not to exclude her from consideration. Whether to hire automatically, that's would take more time to determine. She'll instantly get discarded from consideration for most 'sit in a cubicle all day and take directions from 5 committees' jobs, and that's probably exactly what she wants.

deleted 16y ago
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Maro 16y ago

This infography resume scores high points for standing out and being memorable, which is important as many companies receive many CVs. It completely fails as a tool for communicating how good she is at what she "does". I guess it's Rails? The CV is confusing. Also, it gives the impression that the person is more interested in style than substance. I guess that's okay if you're an artist/designer (?), not so good if you're a programmer. The CV gives me the feeling this person is a programmer, but probably not a good one, she should really be a designer. Overall, I think the problem is what's communicated in the programmer /\ designer Venn-diagram. She's trying to communicate that she's a designer programmer, but it comes across "forced". Her designer part made this infographic, which isn't very good, and we can't really tell if she's a good programmer, and suspect that she's not.

mnutt 16y ago
Are you arguing that it shouldn't have been an infographic, or that the infographic should have been better? Other than the list of tools, I thought it was well done and showed she had an eye for aesthetics, which most developers either lack or actively shun. Which is not to say that some people don't absorb the information better in different ways. That's probably why there's a "Plaintext" link at the top.
- chc 16y ago
  I don't know what he meant, but I can imagine how an infographic could demonstrate both her skill at design and her skill at programming — it's just that this one only really even tries for the former.

ajju 16y ago

Along similar lines, a friend of mine built a life map a few years ago: http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2010/11/15/lifemap-timeline-concept-ritwik-dey/ http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2010/11/15/lifem...

agnesberthelot 16y ago

In my opinion, this still doesn't solve the problem of beefed-up resumes. Or one can spend 40% of his time working on PHP doesn't tell exactly how good he is in PHP. The best is still to have the candidate really showing how good he is, for example to have the candidate work on customized puzzle targeting the skills an employer needs.

gst 16y ago

The best resume I have ever seen is this one: http://www.squicky.org/cv/ http://www.squicky.org/cv/

aw3c2 16y ago
It is funny for a moment but that is all.
- reinhardt 16y ago
  It would be all if he was some random English BS major graduate from Idaho. The fact that he has a PhD from MIT in EECS changes the underlying message to a "I am confident/arrogant enough that I'll land a top job despite the goofy resume".

jrmxrf 16y ago

I would still prefere standard latex template over this. Especially when I need to do comparison later between this and other candidates.

slavak 16y ago

In addition to all the (valid) comments that have been posted so far, there's one more thing that bothers me: When I was looking for a job, a fair number of the resumes I sent out were either sent by fax or given out in printed form. Either way - they were in black & white. Requiring your resume to be in color in order to be readable seems like a terrible way to actually go looking for work.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 16y ago

Incidentally, to see this style executed (from a designer perspective) competantly, check out: http://feltron.com/ http://feltron.com/

gfodor 16y ago
Or, http://worrydream.com/ http://worrydream.com/ (Click Bio)
- aw3c2 16y ago
  No such link, it says "This website requires Flash player 8. Click here to upgrade." if I enable Javascript.
moe 16y ago
Which of the 7 images linked on that page are you referring to? I glanced over the infographics and was underwhelmed. From my perspective as the information-consumer the OP's resume is much better executed than this. The layout and colors on her resume are inviting. The typography and flow works well. I could parse most information without problems, and even felt entertained in the process. The infographics you link to are gray, crowded, artsy and overdone. They pushed me back so hard that I didn't even bother to figure out what they are about. I respect your competancy in the security realm. But I doubt you're competant enough in the infographics genre to justify the eleborate bashing that you posted higher up in this thread.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Let's be careful here. I'm happy to argue about graphic design and will concede up front that I'm not an expert. My criticism of the OP's resume, though, are about the resume infographic as a resume infographic. Like many, many people on HN, I'm certainly qualified to "elaborately bash" a bad resume. Next, while I respect that you might disagree about the Feltron annual reports, it's certainly not a personal quirk that I like them; I learned about them from the Kottke/Gruber nexus on the web, and other people (notably, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Creative Review, Print Magazine, Slate, and AIGA) have called the reports out as well. Finally, I hope you understand that I'm addressing the "style" part of the "style vs. substance" issue with this resume by citing Feltron.

jwwest 16y ago

Love it. It takes a certain size of balls to send something like this to a potential employer. This kind of thing targets a certain type of company. This could be a way of flushing out the type of companies you don't want to be involved with (stodgy, old-school traditional).

rmc00 16y ago
Is writing this type of resume really the best means of filtering out an applicant's undesired companies? It would seem to me that the best way to avoid companies you don't want to be involved with is to simply research the company before you apply. With that approach, there's no risk due to the personality or opinions of the recruiter regarding the format of the resume, but you can still end up at the type of company you want to work for.

sukuriant 16y ago

My greatest wonder of the whole thing is how this information is entered into one of those text-only resume systems; and, how office workers with laser printers print this appropriately and see all the important details

dbcn 16y ago

The best resume you've ever seen includes that the candidate is a PRO at WEB BROWSERS? wow.

andreaja 16y ago
Presumably in the context of web development, this means familiarity with browsers as deployment platforms (quirks etc).
beoba 16y ago
Not quite, the chart says they aren't quite pro at web browsers, but that they're used all day.
- iuguy 16y ago
  You can hit the same level by procrastinating on HN all day long.

imcqueen 16y ago

I think it's effective because it's polarizing. Any recruiter who likes it will REALLY like it and immediately want to pursue the applicant.

jrockway 16y ago

Not a fan of this. Not because of the garish colors and graphics (though I don't really care for those), but because of the implication that there is a "perfect sweet spot" between a "developer" and a "designer". Copying and pasting shit from a Ruby on Rails tutorial does not make you a good developer.

chwahoo 16y ago
Why the assumption that she's not a good developer? Was it the choice of emphasized technologies (e.g., terminal, text-editor) or the focus on web development tools (e.g., jquery, rails)? I suspect she can program better than you give her credit for (better than straight copy/paste/tweak from tutorials), but probably won't be straying far from straightforward use of rails. Perhaps that level of programming coupled with design ability is a sort of "sweet spot" for many projects? I'm certainly far more on the programming side of this continuum (and so would never attempt a CV like this), but I can believe this resume might persuasively communicate her combination of skills to her intended audience.
- beoba 16y ago
  If I were going to pick out a particular thing that stood out to me, the use of Advanced "Apple Terminal" in a resume of any format would throw me off. It could just mean that the candidate was trying to convey eg "Terminal"/"UNIX Shell", or it could mean that they don't understand what the CLI really represents. A bit nitpicky; it wouldn't be an instant drop, but I'd still look at the rest a bit more cautiously. Oddly enough I only notice a resume's "tools" section when there's something weird in it.
  - Luyt 16y ago
    "... the use of Advanced "Apple Terminal" in a resume of any format would throw me off." That catched my eye too, along with the 'TextMate' proficiency. If you start putting those things on your resume you might as well also put '90% Keyboard skills' and '100% expert Mouse user' on it.
beoba 16y ago

bobobjorn 16y ago

I doubt any professional recruiter would read more then 10% of it. It takes way to much time to read, it is hard to understand and says nothing about accomplishements. Resumes is not about what you have or should have done, it is about what you have accomplished. http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/Sample_Resume.pdf http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/Sample_Resume.pdf That resume is alot faster and easier to read. The podcast that goes with it: http://manager-tools.com/2005/10/your-resume-stinks http://manager-tools.com/2005/10/your-resume-stinks

siddhant 16y ago

For designers, okay. But what's wrong with a simple LaTeX CV? Its clean, gets the point across, and frankly, it stands out from the other badly-formatted Word documents.

beoba 16y ago
Given the style of the document itself, the language used in the header introduction ("Web apps that people actually want to use"), and the fact that every one of the "Previous Work" items has a gray "HTML/CSS" circle, I think/hope that she's trying to convey herself as primarily interested in front-end design work.
mdwrigh2 16y ago
I agree, and actually have open sourced my LaTeX resume in case anyone wants to use bits and pieces of it: https://github.com/mdwrigh2/resume https://github.com/mdwrigh2/resume
- cosbynator 16y ago
  There was an entire news item that resulted in tons of LaTeX resume templates being posted last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714381 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714381 (mine included!)
eftpotrm 16y ago
And yet I've never seen a recruiter ask for anything but a Word document; this seems to be significantly because they then strip off your contact details and put their own header on it, mangling your carefully thought through presentation.... I do wonder what ueful place recruiters still have in the process; they often seem to be providing a service that amounts to little more than running an advert and forwarding emails so why are they so highly paid for a variant on secretarial work?

mediamaker 16y ago

the best resume is no resume. They give hiring managers too many things to find wrong

marshray 16y ago
Now the manager who's actually hiring may know you're the one when you met him through the social network, but any employer with an HR department is going to require some form of resume/CV and job application. It's more or less a legal requirement. HR often gets a say in who's hired and lacking the ability to judge technical l33tness they tend to go on degrees, resume formatting, previous job titles, and dates.

27182818284 16y ago

I couldn't take it seriously because of how popular(cliché) infographics are. The first thing that came to mind was that satire on infographics which included the text: 2: The number of cats I own.

sliverstorm 16y ago

I can't help but think of my long-standing opinion of infographics- they are often just a way to make a tiny little bit of largely inconsequential information take up a lot of space.

OasisG 16y ago

The many negative responses to this resume are exactly why I've let go of the job hunt and embraced the path of the entrepreneur. Even when you go above and beyond, winning over the hiring director is still a game of chance.

beoba 16y ago
If negative feedback is what drove you into wanting to be an entrepreneur, you may want to reconsider.
- OasisG 16y ago
  Thing is, when you're job hunting you don't get ANY feedback 99% of the time. I don't actually mind negative feedback because then you know where and how to improve. What bothers me is how much of the job-seeking process is essentially a crapshoot. Does the person reading my resume actually know what the job entails? Will they see my writing style as clever and witty? Or will my attempts to seem serious come off as stuffy and arrogant? Do I list all my experience and risk being underbid by some young hotshot? Or do I try for the job even after being told every other candidate has several more years of experience? Or in this case, I've designed an infographic to set myself apart from every other applicant, but will it be viewed as creative initiative or gimmicky for not conveying enough/the right kind of information? The current job market is far from the only reason I'm doing my own thing, but being able to avoid that nonsense is certainly a great motivator.

jhamburger 16y ago

Isn't the cartoon representation possibly crossing a line with having a headshot on the resume?

tptacek 16y ago
People put headshots on resumes all the time.

Swannie 16y ago

I found it quite surprising that Jim doesn't get CVs where people rank their skills. My first proper CV had that on, and my CV does to this day. Pretty basic stuff. That said I reviewed a friend's CV two weeks ago. He was lucky it was over the net and he wasn't in the room... I think someone 10 years younger could probably do a better CV. Sheesh!

StayuKasabov 16y ago

a) Design - good idea, bad execution. To much clutter. This is typical problem for web designers nowadays, they simply don't get it. FUNCTION over FORM. To much color. To much fonts. Bad management of white spaces. Info-graphics must have a balance and accents. Logic over artistry. KISS. Not Web 2 crap. b) Developer-for developer we need to see code. Way of thinking and way of writing. Cool tools or technologies are irrelevant to see quality of programmers. If you are CEO, entrepreneur or business owner, and you don't have any designer/developer background, hire someone with enough professional experience to pick right people for you. Don't think that because you pay the money or manage business you know everything. Don't fool yourself with assumption. Good teams are built by design or by accident. But accident ones always bring disaster.

JonnieCache 16y ago

Accidental satire cuts deepest.

methodin 16y ago

My overall impression of this resume was that I wanted to go see the actual websites this person made. Which is a far better impression than a cookie-cutter bulleted list of facts that flower what you actual did at your job. As the meme states, "Haters gonna hate" - which certainly remains true judging by the lengthy responses here.

sbradley 16y ago

"If I knew they spent 70% of their time on Java and they have around 5% familiarity with Ruby now that's telling me something of value. (...) While obviously nothing is perfect I think the idea of adding weighted cues for skill sets is something missing from the current resume model." Odesk includes the hours worked on a given project. Even so: I'm not sure that tells me if the programmer has any real fluency. I suppose measures like that and/or certifications are the closest thing to what you're asking for... But maybe a Topcoder ranking and/or contractor satisfaction index for the sought-after skill set would be more relevant...something/anything which quantifies narrative comments from hiring parties, or contextualizes a programmer among their peers...that would be more valuable to me. "If you were to pair this with a data output that is machine readable, google's problem of 75,000 resume's per week could be significantly made easier to wade through. HR people in enterprise companies look for keywords, bottom line." People who sift through resumes look for keywords. Interviewers, hiring managers, business owners look for something else... How many interviews have you been on where the interviewer picks up the resume, glances at it, sets it down, and then proceeds to ask questions clearly indicating they did not read the resume? That's the real disconnect in the present resume model. Rather than build a machine readable way to screen fluency, or allow oneself to be charmed by the most visually disruptive document, why not build a better way for employers to simply test--en masse--for certain personal qualities AND technical qualifications? (Heck...deficiencies in psychometrics and testing methodology is a real bottleneck in America's capacity to suss out competency...in any number of domains. I love tests like the GRE which offer questions, for example, like "An Apple is to an Orange like a Doctor is to a A) Veternarian, B) Osteopath, C) Architect, or D) Accountant." How the hell is someone who's not a native speaker supposed to answer a question like that?) Often what's needed to get the job done is too subtle to communicate on any number of pages...or "pages" as they exist now, and it'd be a stretch for any machine to vibe out a candidate to such an extent. It's probably why video resumes are so useful.

ylem 16y ago

This person's resume is getting a lot of useful feedback. Outside of volume, is there a legal reason why most firms don't tell people why they weren't hired? Or is the typical, "It was a difficult decision, with many excellent candidates..." just simpler?

marshray 16y ago

Say what you like about the style/substance and form/function angles, but if I were trying to get a job as a graphic designer I would hate to have my conventional resume on the stack under this one.

mkramlich 16y ago

The best resume is no resume. Don't tell me where you've worked show me what you've made. Don't tell me what certificates you have, show me what you can do no. The best way for me to know what you can do in the future is to see what you've done in the past, and are doing right now. I hope resumes die out. At least in software anyway. On a related note, I think I just might be at a point in my career where I never need to send a resume out ever again. I definitely bias to not sending them. I think resumes are, like the commute-9-to-5-yes-boss job paradigm, just another relic of the Industrial Age for blue collar workers. Can you imagine Roger Waters of Pink Floyd "applying" for a job as a musician/singer? "Sir, you'll have to fill out this form and submit a resume, k thanks." He hands them The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, etc. "Sorry sir, not good enough. Yo have to eat all your meat like everyone else otherwise we can't give you any pudding."

GFischer 16y ago
Well, you might have heard the story about how C creator Ken Thompson was asked to take a mandatory language test at Google before being able to check-in code :) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_ou...
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Too funny. I could see a recruiter asking him how many years of professional C programming experience he has: Ken: "Uh... 37 years?" Recruiter: "Liar!"

weegee 16y ago

no, it is too fancy, cluttered, and hard to read. creative, yes, full credit there. but not easy to read, and comes across as pretentious. great if you're looking for graphic design work. not great if you're looking for engineering work or programming work. simple, black ink on white paper, edited content (get to "the point"), easy to scan and read quickly is what you want.

gte910h 16y ago

To those who dislike it: Jamie Kite has succeed in doing far more than most people with their resumes: She's gotten thousands of people to look at it and talk about her resume. Is it the best infographic? Parts are pretty serviceable. Is it the worst? Not by a long shot. Does it use a lot of common styles seen today, yup. Will it infuriate some people? Oh hell yes from Ptack's reaction. But did it work? Yes. "Logical" left brained types get hung up on exact meanings of graphics when sometimes it's the fact you have a visually interesting doodad out there is all that counts to get the attention to your whatzit. Does she have some stupid stuff on their and weird phrasing? No more than most people who haven't looked at lots of resumes. (Apple terminal caught my eye). Would I hire her for a top level rails position? Likely not without more convincing. Would I think about hiring her for a midlevel position where there is significant art issues, yeah, I'd definitely consider calling her for an interview. She should likely redo parts of it to sound better, (like many people have to do with their resume).

chc 16y ago
If getting talked about is all you need, just put a naked photo of yourself holding bacon on the resume and submit it to Reddit. Being much talked about is only inherently good if you aspire to be Paris Hilton.
- gte910h 16y ago
  So what if she just happens to be a mediocre developer designer hybrid? This exposure is very likely going to be a stepping stone to a better job than she'd get without it. Your example is about a stunt unrelated to showing qualifications. This actually shows some. It shows some history, and shows what skills were used where. Is she a perfect ubergod? Nope. Does she smile and perfect ruby fall from the sky? Probably not. Does she probably have a good enough knowledge of rails and photoshop to do many a task? I'm guessing she could do all of 4 gigs I know of at the moment using skills she has. Are they the epitome of grand rails design, nope, but they likely fit her skillset. Hacker News people have this very odd elitism thing going on expecting everyone to be functionally speaking manga cum laud from Stanford.

stopbits 16y ago

This may be the best resume I have ever seen, too. She would be on the top of my list without a doubt. The color coded tree is animated and reconfigures itself as you hover over the various items in the legend. We are seeing a static screenshot. There is also a text version available which we are not seeing. She does hit the spot between developer and designer. That statement seems to be confusing a lot of people. I am not confused by that. Those are exactly the type of people I need. I guess it is just not in everyone's argot. Maybe there are some nits to be picked, but just the fact that she broke new ground in this manner says a lot to me, and it is all positive. This is just true of me. Maybe it is not right for everyone. I thought the HN crowd would dig this a lot more. My mind is a little blown by all the nitpicking and bashing. Maybe there is a little bit of pissing contest going on here.

mfukar 16y ago

Apple Terminal Pro. That's how long I dragged myself through. Sorry Jamie.

Papirola 16y ago

where's the app that gets linkedin data and renders this?

eftpotrm 16y ago
I'm not sure LinkedIn has quite this much information, but after a short search - http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiekite http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiekite

_corbett 16y ago

I think it's a great resume. Does the job quickly: Do I want to schedule an interview with him/her y/n? y

Tichy 16y ago

A fun exercise, but somehow I distrust infographics on principle. Overly big fonts make feel stupid and foolish for example. OK, I got it he programmed for FIVE years FIVE!!!!!! 5555555 5 5 5 5 5 55 5 5 Five five five five five FIVEFI F FIV E FIV That's how it makes me feel. In general if you treat somebody as if he is stupid, it'll make him feel stupid. Infographics treat people as if they are stupid - bright shiny colors, big fonts, short sentences... Maybe it already has to do with chunking. "5" is really just one chunk, the number 5. But a big, ginormous 5 doesn't fit into one brain slot anymore. It fill the whole brain and bounces around inside of it. Anyway, I don't like infographics...

known 16y ago

http://www.tahlent.com/ http://www.tahlent.com/ is working on similar lines.

zandorg 16y ago

Witb his skill in non-ASCII text, he should be able to get a great job at Wolfram Alpha.