10 “Cool” – but not so cool resumes

Mediocre career advice meets mediocre graphic design and is making its way into mainstream resume preparation.   Recently commentary on an article “10 Cool Resumes Made by Professional Graphic Designers” replete with samples showed up in one of the on-line Career Management discussions.  In my opinion, these are perfect examples of irrelevant resumes.  People who hire want resumes that are clear, clean, and in standard formats that work with their systems and help them quickly and easily peruse the information.  The information may be displayed in other media as well – LinkedIn, videos, infographics, and personal websites or even graphic presentations – but the core resume is still a professional “document”.

Graphic designers on the other hand need an additional and different kind of resume, which sometimes serves as their primary resume.  It is a “portfolio piece” that displays their graphic design talents – and would never be done by anyone but themselves as it is an example of their artistic and design talent.  It may be displayed as part of their portfolio or used as appropriate during the hiring process.  Based on my experience teaching the career management course to college students that included many enrolled in the school’s graphic design program, of the examples shown in this particular article, there is not much of a quality that would get someone hired for a top graphic job.