[WARNING: This post is not nearly as funny as the last one.]
Ah the resumé. A single piece of paper that encompasses who you are and what you offer to a potential employer. I’ve had a resumé since my junior year of high school (thanks to a mandatory ‘Planning your future’ course) and over the years, my resume has expanded with my experiences and evolved with my design ability.
A few days ago, I redesigned my resumé. With the advent of Pinterest, I was constantly being bombarded with clever and creative resumé designs and formats. I could no longer take it. My resumé, though adequate, did not reflect my current style (which changes about every 6 months) as an amateur graphic designer. A redesign was in order. So, instead of doing homework, cleaning my house or anything else of truly immediate importance, I worked through the night and stayed up until 4am redesigning my resumé. All of this was in spite of the fact that I am not currently seeking employment.
My resumé has been important to me ever since I was hired at Grand Valley’s Career Services office at the beginning of my freshman year. This office specializes in all types of career-related services such as helping students find jobs and internships, providing interview coaching and helping build resumé. Of course, I had no idea this was the office’s purpose when I applied, which makes the fact that I was hired all the more miraculous when considering how terrible my first resumé was (so long as I assume they weren’t trying to fill some diversity quota). Anyways, I thought it was appropriate topic for today since my PRSSA chapter is having a resumé workshop at tonight’s meeting. I didn’t know this was coming up when I did my redesign, but I’m grateful that I can show up with a newly revised document.
Okay now time for the resumé evolution. I will warn you right now that some of the resumés you are about to witness aren’t pretty. In fact, I despise them all save for my latest creation. Though, if you think about it, if I loved my first resumé design, there would have been no reason to change it in the first place. Anyways, though I’m constantly editing the content, I’ve only completely changed the design six times. And here we go: (you will need to click on the image to make it bigger. Also, I had to white-out my address so y’all don’t try to stalk me.)
This is from 2009-ish I believe, created during my junior year of high school. Built from a Microsoft template. I included my typing speed and the fact that I was on my JV soccer team. Who wouldn’t want to hire me, right?
This redesign was from the end of my freshman year at Grand Valley. I used my favorite colors for this design which was created on Photoshop (my first taste of the Adobe Suite). I got a little creative with the inclusion of those wonderfully-random squares in the bottom corner. Also, my experience had expand significantly with my shiny-new jobs at the Lanthorn and Career Services.
This one literally makes me wince. Created near the end of my sophomore year, you can tell that I had finally discovered Illustrator and really wanted my resumé to stand out. Clearly, I got my wish. Note the addition of my GrandPR and Campus View positions, which knocked my high school jobs off and into the vortex of irrelevance.
This one was made a few weeks after the previous one, thank god. Though still riddled with flaws [center alignment, swirly weird symbol thing, obnoxious contact info box, sooo many colors] I was finally starting to embrace all the functions of Illustrator.
This redesign took place at the beginning of my junior year. I was beginning to understand simplicity but, looking at it now, all I see are words, words, words. It kinda looks like a written paper. I do like my little raindrop though. It’s not exactly professional, but it would definitely help people understand how to say my name! Another thing I don’t like is the amount of info I felt was necessary to include.
This is my current resumé. I did away with the bulleted format, added some fun icons and found a way to better illustrate my skills to kind of steer away from seeming to wordy. Also, I’ve added my references…which isn’t usually recommended but honestly I had nothing else to add there. I still need to find time and comb through the content again. A project for another day!
Now I’m off to get this bad boy evaluated. Until next time!
sweet somethings 