There seems to be some confusion between a resume and a portfolio.
While this is clever, unfortunately what it does is make the job of getting the candidate's details harder. Say I have a pile of resumes and what not on my desk, and this. I want to compare them. Easy with the pile of 2 page resumes and attached portfolios, but with this I have to muck on a computer, trying to make out various bits and bobs, then even note them down myself so that I can compare. In fact, I clicked twice and gave up.
People have suggested this is a great way for a designer to show case skills. But IMHO, this is a colossal disaster. What it has does is allow design to get in the way of the content, and worse still, make the content less accessible. Yes, very cute, flashy, clever and skilled, but it shows that the so called designer has failed to understand what the point of design is. Design is supposed to facilitate, NOT make things harder. If it make life harder, it has failed. Does it make the recruiters job easier? No. Does it facilitate the passing on of vital information? No. Clever skills, but a design failure.
Really, I fully understand and appreciate that hackers appreciate the raw skills, and so we should, but I don't think people have their hiring HR heads on, and have also forgotten the basic point of design.
Sorry to swim against the tide here, but given a pile of competent resumes, I'd probably skip this applicant.
I run an interactive agency in NYC. Showed this to my creative director and business partner and we pretty much reached out immediately. This kind of creativity and skill isn't easy to come by. YMMV.
>> But it shows that the so called designer has failed to understand what the point of design is. Design is supposed to facilitate, NOT make things harder.
You are the confused person here.
Design isn't meant to facilitate understanding in all cases. You're letting one specific use cloud your understanding of a general concept.
Designers design with specific aims in mind. These could be expression of content, ease of use for a specific culture, expression of a feeling, wow factor, or rigid conformity to a set style/concept, etc.
Do you believe that somebody that simply wrote in a black-and-white grid that they are proficient at beautiful animated interactive designs is proving this ability with the same authenticity as this guy was able to?
What possible ethical reasons do you have for trying to insure the purity of resumes and portfolios? Why can they not interbreed?
Portfolios authentically demonstrate ability in a way resumes cannot, hence either resumes should direct employers to portfolios or the designer should attempt to blur the forms (yes, the purpose of a design might be to add trustworthy information to a document in the form of visible proof of experience in the medium. As shown: an exchange of message clarity for message trustworthiness.)
lhnz, I agree with you, completely. A designer should be judged on how they present everything. ALL resumes should be considered an example of how they design, and thus part of their "portfolio." I have been a art director and seen many resumes in my tenure. If an applicant comes at the problem from a fresh angle, it is welcomed with open arms. A good art director or creative director can work with this to fix the issue of contact info being buried and whatnot, as others have pointed out. This is a great place to start!
> The aim of this resume is like all other resumes, to get an interview (1). If not, its not a resume (2), its part of a portfolio (3).
So what you're saying is that: a resume exists to get an interview (1), and therefore if it's not a resume and is a portfolio (3) it therefore does not exist to get an interview (2)?
Fact: resumes exist to get interviews.
Fact: portfolios also exist to get interviews.
Fact: a resume can have the form of a portfolio piece and vice versa.
The resume is a terrible way of validating ability. I would prefer a portfolio piece of a designer, or a repository of a developer to their resume.
>> Last point relies on making that comparison in the first place, which is a straw man. No reason to compare like that. Its your own invention.
I disagree. The intention of sending a resume in this form is likely to be that you want to be judged on the merits of the format you chose and the skills it required. Your original implication that they want to be judged with the same criteria as a black-and-white grid is almost certainly false.
Fact: a resume can have the form of a portfolio piece and vice versa
I see you like to play it fast and loose with the meaning of words. A quick review:
A résumé is a document used by persons to present their backgrounds and skills. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education.
An artist's portfolio is an edited collection of their best artwork intended to showcase an artist's style or method of work
-- Wikipedia
In summary, a resume cannot be a portfolio, and vica versa, because a resume is an executive summary while a portfolio is a showcase.
1. At no point do either of your definitions mention that the properties or terms are mutually exclusive.
2. You made a comparison between a resume and a portfolio, as opposed to a resume and a portfolio piece. The difference is crucial because the definition you provided mentioned the word collection - and because the "interactive resume" couldn't have been considered a collection of portfolio pieces.
3. In real life words often don't have such rigid boundaries. and thank god because otherwise the portfolio-resume would only be able to be discussed by people that have property-level understanding of the world and you would be the slack-jawed fool of the conversation.
Before your resume gets you an interview, it has to get someone's attention. This has gotten quite a bit of attention so far, I have no doubt that at least a few interviews will follow.
I've been stuck with many piles of resumes and to have this show up would not only be a breath of fresh air vs the prototypical format, I GUARANTEE I would be talking about this one.
Even if I didn't hire the person, I would be showing people this resume around the office.
If he's looking for an animation- or illustration-heavy position, I think this is perfect. I'm sure it'll catch the eye of at least a few creative directors out there, at which point the standard HR process becomes a bit moot. I mean, he can always send a plain old PDF resume if he finds himself applying online for some random position, but I doubt he'll need to.
Anyway, I really like it. No, it's not perfect—he loses some points for listing Dreamweaver as a skill—but it's good fun, and it certainly makes him stand out.
Dreamweaver is probably used in corporate web design settings quite a lot being a part of the Adobe toolset and all. Perhaps he's pandering to his market?
What tweaked the nose of my bete-noir was the entry of HTML and CSS under "Scripting and Programming languages" - but I think it's fair to say he knows what he's doing, seriously impressive design work going on there.
I see quite a few places advertise for Dreamweaver experience, so it makes sense to put it on a resume. He's first and foremost a designer, so I don't think it will hurt him too badly. Besides, just because someone uses a tool that you don't respect doesn't mean that they don't know how to code without it.
There are two assumptions in your post that I'd like to point out, and poke some holes in.
First, you seem to be missing the actual point of a resume. No one makes decisions on who to HIRE based on a resume. The point of a resume is to get an INTERVIEW. Your resume could actually lack any details of the normal stuff that goes on one (education, experience, skills, etc) - but as long as what you provide gets you that interview then it's done its job. As someone who's done interviewing at interactive agencies, if I saw this I'd probably set up an interview.
The second is your assumption about the purpose of a resume's design. Your thinking lies all on the company's side - making things easier for the recruiter and facilitating understanding of the reader; allow me to offer an alternate line of thinking. In an interview, it's not just the company determining if it wants to hire the prospect; it's also the prospect determining if she/he wants to work at that company. This resume has taken that to a step earlier. This person is purposely making his resume more creative and "difficult" to weed out prospective employers that don't value those things (this is actually something I do as well, though not to this extent). This person obviously wants to work for a very specific type of company and doesn't want to waste his time interviewing at companies that don't match his desire (like companies that use recruiters or where resumes go directly to HR people instead of hiring managers). So I'd argue that the design of his resume is specifically working very well at weeding out places where he wouldn't want to work and attracting the attention of places he would like to work.
Point one - yes you did. You specifically mentioned comparing people based on resumes. You don't compare people when determining who to interview - you only compare people when determining who to hire.
Point two - how is it convoluted that a person would want to target his resume to a specific type of company? Customizing your resume for the company you want to work for is the first basic principle in writing a resume. He just does it in such a way to also exclude companies he wouldn't want to work for.
You're either doing a very good job of trolling me or you have a serious reading comprehension problem.
They are not different scenarios at all. Just because I didn't use the exact same words to describe them doesn't mean I'm not describing the same concept.
Customizing your design to target the employers you want is the equivalent of customizing your design to weed out the employers you do not want. His design is meant to weed out employers that do not value the same things he does; this means his design is meant to attract the employers that do value the same things he does. These things are equivalent and they are the same concept described in both posts.
In that case, I think it works for both parties. He ruled you out as a potential employer. The person who admires it would probably see the candidate as a good fit.
Exactly. If a prospective employer can't see the value of you taking a calculated risk and creatively applying your skills before you're hired, what makes you think they will afterward?
Resumes are mostly useless. First of all, people lie on resumes. All the time. Second of all, even assuming everything is 100% true, what does it means he knows CSS? I can learn some selectors and properties but be unable to apply them to create a visually appealing page, or I can remember nothing but be able to create stunning sites while constantly looking up technical details (just to remove the doubt, real people are neither, it is the extremes). If he worked on project SuperPowerX in Yet Another Big Business Corp., how do you know if he was the most awesome engineer there or just muddled through and had everybody else pick his slack? Of course, you have an interview, but you can only learn the most basic things in the interview. You can do offline interviews - like homework of a kind - but it introduces significant delays in the process.
The best candidate I have ever interviewed (unfortunately, we didn't end up hiring him, but not for the lack of effort from our side) came to the interview with examples of his code and explained what his code does and why he did it this way. Everybody loved that. Unfortunately, almost nobody does it.
Having a place where the candidate shows what he can do - prior to the interview - is awesome, plain and simple. It immediately removes a whole layer of questions for the decision maker - you know who you're talking to, what they are capable of, how they prefer to do it at some level, etc. - and makes the decision much easier to make and less risky.
> The best candidate I have ever interviewed [...] came to the interview with examples of his code and explained what his code does and why he did it this way. Everybody loved that. Unfortunately, almost nobody does it.
Almost nobody does it because it's not expected. Why not ask future applicants to bring in some code samples and walk through it?
Well, unfortunately that's not how the interview process is set up (and I personally have many other things to do other than to tilt at this particular windmill). However, post-factum, it seems very natural thing to do - I might probably do it if/when I ever interview for a position where it is relevant (though I might just bring a tablet in and show some code in opensource repose). I don't see why it's not expected - I haven't seen anyone who would find it inappropriate. It's not always possible - some people just don't have code suitable for presenting or sufficiently non-IP-encumbered to present - but if you're lucky to be able to do it, why not?
>> Does it facilitate the passing on of vital information? No.... it shows that the so called designer has failed to understand what the point of design is. Design is supposed to facilitate, NOT make things harder.
If the "vital information" is "how many years of experience in software X does this person have?", you are correct. But why should that be the information you care about?
If the information is "can this person make nice graphics and do amazing things in a browser?", yes, it does. It both gives the information and demonstrates its veracity.
>> given a pile of competent resumes, I'd probably skip this applicant.
Given the pile of companies who will think this is awesome, the creator will probably skip those who don't.
>> Say I have a pile of resumes and what not on my desk, and this. I want to compare them
I agree that the "pile of text" or "page of images" resumes will not be easy to directly compare to this person's. But does that really matter? The resumes are there so you can move on to an interview, right? Aren't you convinced that this person is fun and has great skills? I certainly am.
As someone who has seen lots of visual/interactive resumes and done research in this field (I created Vizualize.me, an infographic resume site), I thought this was well done. We can argue design wise about its merit, but the point is, the desired outcome was achieved - it got your attention, it's on the front page, and it was unique. When I read this resume, I'm not paying attention to the actual content but rather to how different and interesting this is. This isn't supposed to merely appeal to a HR person or make HR's job easier. That's a very narrow way of seeing it. The best way to get a job is NOT through the HR department. It's to get the attention of higher ups who make the hiring decision. They are the ones who would more likely appreciate the creativeness, dedication and work put into this.
Spot on. There's no doubt as a candidate you need to be comparable but you differentiating yourself is a multiplier.
I applied for a marketing job at a fire safety firm. I'd never worked under a marketing job title (business development was my background) so I needed to differentiate.
I burned off the bottom of my cover letter with some cheesy line like 'let me set your marketing on fire'. Got the interview.
At first I thought this was some cryptic "why the lucky stiff" malarky.
Only after hitting refresh did the site load properly, I almost closed the tab, he might not be so lucky with someone who is a little less patient or in a rush.
And finally what happens if the site goes down or gets slashdot/hn/reddited?
Don't get me wrong, this is a nice demo of this person's skills (except for the use of the down arrow key to navigate right which is a minor usability foible) but it's a portfolio work and shouldn't be used solely as employer first contact when applying for a post.
The vital information the designer needed to communicate was his skills. He did not say it, he DEMONSTRATED it in the first second the user landed on his page. If this man applied to work with me, he would instantly be a strong candidate.
While this is clever, unfortunately what it does is make the job of getting the candidate's details harder. Say I have a pile of resumes and what not on my desk, and this. I want to compare them. Easy with the pile of 2 page resumes and attached portfolios, but with this I have to muck on a computer, trying to make out various bits and bobs, then even note them down myself so that I can compare. In fact, I clicked twice and gave up.
People have suggested this is a great way for a designer to show case skills. But IMHO, this is a colossal disaster. What it has does is allow design to get in the way of the content, and worse still, make the content less accessible. Yes, very cute, flashy, clever and skilled, but it shows that the so called designer has failed to understand what the point of design is. Design is supposed to facilitate, NOT make things harder. If it make life harder, it has failed. Does it make the recruiters job easier? No. Does it facilitate the passing on of vital information? No. Clever skills, but a design failure.
Really, I fully understand and appreciate that hackers appreciate the raw skills, and so we should, but I don't think people have their hiring HR heads on, and have also forgotten the basic point of design.
Sorry to swim against the tide here, but given a pile of competent resumes, I'd probably skip this applicant.