Are Creative Resumes Worth the Risk?

In the "olden days," back when I was early in my career, the standard for a resume was "just the facts" and always on a white piece of good paper. Yes, some risk takers tried to put their resumes on light creme-colored paper, but these renegades, these outlaws, these mavericks were usually looked down upon and generally despised by the hiring community. How dare they try something creative with a document as sacred as a resume?

But now there's a new sheriff in town -- maybe. CareerJournal has a piece that says some job hunters are finding success with "creative" resumes. Their thoughts:

To stand out from the competition, some job seekers are creating resumes with aesthetic features that defy convention. Recruiters say these efforts demonstrate creativity, attention to detail and other characteristics that can help draw their interest.

Here are some examples of what they are talking about:

• Mr. Houle's resume resembles a marketing pamphlet. It's four pages and features complete sentences divided into paragraphs.

• Among the more eye-catching resumes, Mr. Zander says, are those that display corporate logos representing an applicant's current and past employers or clients.

• Another design element Mr. Zander says he admires is the pull-out quote -- a short selection of text that's "pulled out" and highlighted in large type.

• Stephanie Hester, a free-lance writer in Raleigh, N.C., designed her resume to look and read like a press release.

The benefit of a creative resume is that it stands out from the pack:

An innovative resume can be refreshing for recruiters who can look over dozens each day. Allan Zander, a vice president at SolaCom Technologies Inc. in Quebec, says he typically receives up to 300 resumes when he has a position open and around 40 a month during other times. He says most share the standardized look -- less than 5% have creative designs.

But there are risks in such a strategy -- that it implies you are all style and no substance:

No matter how eye-pleasing your resume looks, make sure the content does a good job of telling your story, such as by identifying your skills, work history and education, says Mr. Hargis. Likewise, keep it void of grammatical errors, misspellings and erroneous information that may indicate a lack of professionalism, he adds. "A typo is still a typo," he says.

So what do you think? Is it better to be "professional" and use a standard resume or to "risk it" a bit and be sort of creative? Has anyone ever tried the creative approach? If so, what was the result?

Comments

[JJ in Balt]

Interesting topic on resume design, it is a topic that is near and dear to my heart as I just used my "new resume" to get my new job (Whew hoo - a 20 K raise !)

I think the answer to this is easy. You have to know your customer. Some potential jobs require the look and feel of a standard resume (no more than 2 pages, plain paper, no more than 2 fonts etc). Other Companies may be more flexible due to the corporate style or product. However, If you don't know, err on the conservative side.

I do know that I worked hard to get my résumé down to 2 pages (I have 25 years experience). During the interview, the President of the company complimented me on my resume ("you did the right thing by keeping it to 2 pages") but said he wanted to see more info on the "key accomplishments in the older jobs". Long story short, my resume expanded to 4 pages (it included all of my publications) and I got the job.

I do know that if you do not have a good summary at the top, your chance of someone spending more than 20 seconds on you is slim to none.

Just my thoughts!

JJ

[Austn]

A graphic designer friend of mine made a template for my resume, which included an interesting font for my name, then also made a logo, which appears on my cover page, header and footer. It's very creative, but very clean. I think that's the most important thing; make sure it's clean. If it's a clean look, then they'll just be attracted to the look without being distracted from the content. I imagine somebody taking the "creative" completely the wrong way and instead using some cheap looking cartoon pictures, or using some of that gaudy type of stationary with a vine going around the page or something. Ew.

In the two jobs I've applied to since having this template, both employers made a comment in the first interview of really liking my resume, and I got both jobs.

I dig the past employers' logo idea. It wouldn't look quite right on my resume, but I could see it being awesome on others.

Oh, the logo was just my first and last initial... It was nothing outrageous, but it connected to the font used for my name.