Changing with times: Resume 2.0 (What it is and how to make one?)

Resume writing goes back to the medieval times. One of the many inventions of the maverick Leonardo Da Vinci, a professional resume, for a large share of its lifetime has remained unchanged. However, the recent years have been quite happening as we have seen the slow and steady emergence of visual resume, or Resume 2.0. This is a guest post written for naukri.com

Speed Up your Career

Not very long job search meant getting your thoughts at one place, collecting the skills that you have learnt, typing them out in a word processing program and getting the print out on a white clean sheet of paper. This usually took no more than an hour of your time and was considered the standard procedure followed throughout in the recruitment industry, with no exceptions at all.  

Fast forward to today. There are more jobs, but the competition is also greater than what it used to be. Employers have their pick of more candidates, those who have greater experience and a wider skill set. Your resume is competing with a large number of other resumes for the attention of the recruiter and therefore, needless to say, a resume that draws more attention is surely a better bet for getting that employment opportunity. In a poll conducted in early 2013 by a leading recruitment website revealed over 57% of the HR professionals said that an infographic styled resume or visual resume would help them in better evaluation over a traditional resume.

Resume 2.0 or Visual Resume

Visual Resume is a way of making an impression by standing out of the crowd in a respectful and professional manner. While traditional resume was entirely dependent on perfect usage of words, the visual resume maps all your professional achievements in a timeline or infographic. In a market flooded with resumes, these can guarantee your candidature at least one eyeful of the recruiter. Just like better packaging helps in selling a product amongst 10 other similarly priced products of the same type, Resume 2.0 or visual resume increases your chances of getting an interview call. 

While a resume should be inherently content-driven rather than being design-driven, there is no reason why effective presentation cannot co-exist with good content. Your efforts should be on creating a beautifully designed resume that satisfies both the content and the presentation aspect. 

Making a visual resume that stands out

A perfect graphical resume should utilize design in such a manner that the most important aspects of the resume, which include a sensible flow of information, readability and subtle graphical elements, remain intact. You should use simple visual elements only where they make most sense so as to illustrate the key points, without going overboard.

 We are still living in confused times where some recruiters consider a conventional resume as the best while other employers will trash-heap your resume for being boring and grey. Therefore, it is a delicate balance that you will have to ensure is maintained.  One safe approach is to supplement your traditional black and white resume with a visual resume. 

There are several online tools that exist to help you out.  Visualize.Me is one of the most popular of them. This site can create attractive timeline that reflects your job history. The best thing about the site is that once you connect it with your LinkedIn profile, which you must do, there is no need to build the profile line by line. There are a lot of customization options also and once you are done with the resume you can share it to various social networks and know what your friends what they think of it. Other similar helpful services are Re.Vu, Beyond.com  and About.me. 

Summary of points to keep in mind while constructing a visual resume

·         The information flow should make sense, starting with the most important elements. The elements shouldn’t be oversized, or too colorful

·         Design elements should leave enough space to provide the necessary amount of description and detail

·         All design elements should share a coherent relationship, without any of them looking out of the context and place. None of the design elements should draw unnecessary attention or take the attention away from the vital description.

Saurabh Tyagi is a budding online blogger and social media enthusiast. He keeps an eye on the latest employment trends and offers expert advice on various issues and topics pertaining to choosing the right career path.