Comment by alecgorge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecgorge | Hacker News Reader

I have had tremendous success with very unorthodox layouts, features and subtle use of colors on my resume via Adobe InDesign.

https://www.alecgorge.com/Alec%20Gorge%20Resume.pdf

I used to completely redo my layout every year while I was in school and had success with it. Especially at the collegiate level when many resumes are the same in practice, something new for the recruiter to look at goes a long way.

On quite a few occasions I have walked into an interview and been greeted with some variant of "oh wow so you are the person with the cool resume!" or "we have all been talking about how we love how your resume looks!"

I have never gotten negative feedback on my layouts and the positive feedback has been a huge confidence boost in those interviews.

I spend hours and hours attempting to build a unique layout provides personality and the information needed—this means no pie charts or arbitrary skill ratings. I view the design as a way for me to communicate something about my passion for typography and layout while giving an insight into my personality. I always want my resumes to be friendly and have a clear hierarchy.

I'm still on the fence about using paragraphs instead of bullet-points but it looks so much better with justified paragraphs that I think it is worth the trade-off to stand out in a positive way.

Of course, all of the work into the design goes to waste if you don't write clear, concrete supporting information. Too often I see resumes that contain factual but boring/non-contextualized data. Why did you do X thing? What problem was it solving? How did it solve it? What did YOU do that that was special? Use numbers to give a sense of scope and size.

I honestly have trouble understanding the chronological order of you experiences at first glance, plus they all seem to be given the same importance.

If you really are contacted and complimented over this, I’m puzzled at how the recruiter mind works, I would like a recruiter comment on this.

(This is entirely not directed against you, but towards trying to understand if my way of conceiving resumes has been all wrong so far)

That's totally fair, but not entirely unintentional. I like highlighting the fact that I ran a consulting business throughout high school and college as well as the popularity of some of my side projects. Those have been just as (if not more) valuable as the internships I have had when it came to looking for full-time work.

I haven't updated the layout since I have been at Stack Overflow because I like it and I don't need a resume. If I were to redesign my resume right now it certainly would put more emphasis on the last two years of full-time employment.

Plus, even if it might create some confusion I hope it communicates that I can be trusted to not totally screw up the UI side of things if left by myself haha

I personally like your resume as it included what it needs to be no more, no less. But I have less experience ( only two places I have worked ). If I follow your resume style, my resume probably completed within half of A4. What is your suggestion on this?

Thank you!!

Yeah, that's a question I get a fair amount.

Many people have an instinct to leave things off of their resume because they aren't "professional" or "tech" enough. Do not sell yourself short! If you feel like you don't have enough for your resume, include anything that covers the soft-skills portion. A good first rule of thumb is to look at anything that occupies a lot of your time or did so in the past. There are a lot of skills that apply to any job or social arrangement: time management, initiative, planning, leadership, etc. It is optimal of course to demonstrate those through internships and full-time jobs in your chosen field but there are other ways too. Mowing lawns, working with a club/charity, working at coffee shops, washing windows and volunteering at the library can all demonstrate different important qualities that will translate to a new role. Don't leave them out if you are looking for more things.

The layout needs to be fit to your personal story—not the other way around. If you feel like you still have less content than you would like, use a touch more whitespace or use less terse wording (but not fluff). If you have one major thing you are incredibly proud of, make sure the design reflects that—don't let it sit and have it match all the boring things in visual appearance. I usually go through a bunch of different sketches before I find something I like. It is definitely not "one-size fits all".

There's lots of ways to vary the appearance of something: bolding, italicizing, different font, border, whitespace, color and the position on the page. There's no magic combination but you generally don't want to use more than two or three of the techniques at the same time. If you use too many things will look out of place.

I'd say you can lose the GPA now :)

What's the rule of thumb on that? One job post-graduation?

I'm not entirely sure what to fill that space with to balance the line if I remove it haha. Maybe I could expand BS out to Bachelor of Science? Still probably wouldn't look balanced though...

Unless your GPA is super impressive, I'd argue it's not worth bragging about at all. A 3.2 is fine when you're hunting for your first real job. After you've got work experience, I doubt many would care about a GPA. When people did really well, you'll sometimes here them say "I graduated summa cum laude" instead of specifically referencing their GPA.

just want to comment how there's so much in such a short time period. jesus you did not waste any time...

Cool resume. Boiler up! If you're ever looking for a job back in Indiana hit me up.

Did that layout work before you were in Apple?

I didn't have the exact same layout but it had a similar feel and it was quite successful. The people at Apple as a whole appreciated the unusual resume design more so than any other place I have applied.

It started as something I used as a freshman in college to grab their attention and plead my case before the recruiter realized my age (I also took my graduation date off resumes given in person). I had mixed results but, hey, I was a freshman and getting some conversations was better than none.

OK, thanks! I just wanted to know if it was the design or the big name on resume ;-)

I also "decorate" my CV with e.g. different alphabets of languages I speak and some headhunters told me it's perfect. No issues getting interviews at top companies, smaller ones hesitate more often.

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