Visual resumes go viral!

EXPRESS YOURSELF! A screenshot of product manager Harish Shankaran's visual resume showcasing his unique skill-set

A well-drafted résumé is a potent tool used by professionals to find that elusive dream job. What’s ironic though is that while the nature of jobs and technology has changed rapidly, the plain old two to three page résumé is still used by a majority of job seekers. With social media becoming an integral part of our lives and employers increasingly looking at online profiles before the hiring decision is made, there is a clear need to project your experience and skills better. This is where visual mediums like Prezi & Vizify come into play. If you are ready to take charge of your personal brand and project it with a punch, read on.

Advice for students

These platforms give you the freedom to express, which makes up for your lack of experience. You can showcase your various activities and projects, creatively. Typically, a visual works best for those in creative and expression-based industries such as advertising, media, design, animation, publishing, product management and technology. It is, however, slowly gaining recognition in mainstream jobs, too.

Templates for visual resumes on Prezi.com/presume

Visual résumé softwares

Prezi: This is a cloud-based presentation software that enables you to communicate your ideas in the form a story using visuals and videos while zooming in on important pieces of information. To get started, visit https://prezi.com/prezume/ and you can choose any of the readily usable templates or create your own as well. Once ready, it can be sent to prospective employers as URLs or perhaps even replacing a conventional résumé. You can check out several presume samples at https://prezi.com/explore/prezumes-and-portfolios/

Vizify: This is a visual platform to project your personal brand. It picks up key content from your profile details on facebook, twitter and LinkedIn and gives you a graphical profile in just a few minutes. It’s important to remember that as you make changes to your personal data and content on your social media sites, the vizify profile will also change. To see some sample profiles visit https://www.vizify.com

You can also view your twitter story in the form of a video on vizify. If you have a twitter account, check it out at https://www.vizify.com/twitter-vide

Tips to create you visual résumé

• Organise all your résumé-related information (you can use the traditional résumé for this)
• Keep all the images that you want to use ready in a folder
• Keep logos of companies you may have worked for ready as well
• Photos representing career highlights
• Give links to blogs and other social media content
• Give links to any videos that you may want to showcase

Remember that with a visual résumé ‘less is more’ and a ‘picture is worth a thousand words’. So, keep this in mind while designing your profile. The résumé continues to evolve, perhaps more rapidly than ever. No one style will work for every situation. In creating a visual résumé, your possibilities are only limited by your imagination. 

The author, Sunder Ramachandran, is a Senior Training Manager with Jardine Lloyd Thompson India. You can tweet him a @sundertrg