Imagine that you’re a recruiter looking over CV’s and resumes. You may read hundreds or even thousands of them at a time. How much time would you spend on each one? Which ones would you prioritize over others? The truth is, with the huge number of people seeking work and the small number of jobs in the current economy, you’ve got to do something to stand out. And nothing stands out better than a sharp infographic resume. It’s a current trend for good reason. Here are a few ways to make this happen.
Use Maps Appropriately
One of the most important things to keep in mind when you’re creating an infographic resume is to make sure that it’s appropriate for the job you’re applying to in general. If you’re applying to a job overseas, or for a job that’s somehow travel related, than showing a map infographic that depicts the places you’ve worked and the sites you’ve visited worldwide in a visual map infographic can be a real plus. This will both show your skill with infographics, but also give recruiters a relief from scanning words and they can instead just take in images.
Go with Easy Formatting
Resumes tend to follow a particular format. Generally you start with contact info at the top, then there’s a skill summary, followed by your work history, the education you’ve hand, and finally anything else that might be interesting or a potential employer to know. You don’t absolutely have to follow this format, but it can certainly help. Some people use timelines for their experience, for example. That way you can start with a certain year, and then show where you were at each point through the year. You can then use something like color bubble charts to show your skills, with the bigger bubbles being the ones where you have the most experience.
Be as Simple as you can
If you get too complicated, you’ll just make your resume harder to read and not easier, which is the goal in the first place. This is especially the case if you’re using the infographic resume style to show your graphic skills for a graphic type job. If you make the resume easy and fun to go over, then this can go a long way to showing what you’ll be able to accomplish for the company in question.
Gather Resources and Get Help
There are quite a few infographic resources available online, so it certainly helps to look through them and find the ones that will help you the most. You can look through the infographic world website for maps if you’re looking for work that’s geographic in nature, you can find animated infographic tools if you’re looking for something more creative, and so on. If you know what style you want to use from the onset, then you’ll be able to look in the right places for the tools to crate the perfect infographic resume.
