Eye Catching Resumes

photo credit: Liel Bomberg

I often push people who work as employees to view themselves as actually being self-employed. When you take a job, your little business just sold some of your time to a company for an agreed-upon amount of money per year. It's a business arrangement, so treating it like one makes sense.

When people make that shift, they often start to see their resume's more like potential "customers" of their services (employers) do. The resume and anything that accompany it are your marketing materials to land an interview. In that interview, you need to push the "deal" forward, but if your resume ends up in a stack with dozens or hundreds of others only to be tossed en masse, you don't even get that chance.

Sure, lots of places are pushing resumes into giant keyword databases. And, for that, you should make sure the text itself is optimized. However, there are still PLENTY of places where your carefully formatted resume gets viewed by a real person.

In those cases, having a resume that catches the eye makes a big difference in getting someone to actually read it and call you in for an interview.

If your resume is based on one of the 3-4 that come with Microsoft Word, consider something a little more unique. This great sample of really nice-looking resumes came through the feed reader this morning really shows what can be done to wake up a tired resume.

Some are more feasible than others if you aren't a graphic designer, but the ideas should certainly spark some changes in yours.