Summary: I took on Leigh Householder and did a makeover of my own resume. The key lesson I learned is that you need to showcase your individual personality on paper every way you can.
The incomparable Leigh Householder has been doing a series of posts on Advergirl where she takes a readers resume, and fully redesigns it — both the content and the visuals. Her latest redesign of a new ad account exec was such a huge transformation that it inspired me, nay, made me realize how awful the resume I’ve been sending out has been. And since I’m hunting around for a new job… well, now or never for a resume makeover.
So, I started with a few visual elements Leigh used and completely re-did the layout and some of the wording of my own resume. Thanks to Marilyn Matty for her suggestions on how to rework some of the content. Here’s the final product (PDF), which leapfrogs what I had before:
Here are some of the changes I made:
- Expanded to TWO pages. It was drilled into me in grad school that your resume should be only a page. Bullshyte, I say. If you have valuable content to share that on a quick glance by a manager will impress, offer it up. So I expanded my resume to two pages by dedicating the whole second page to my Forrester reports — which are writing examples basically.
- Created a “Who I Am” section. Before I had an “Objective” at the beginning of my resume. But it didn’t add much value, just seemed like the standard thing to do. And in the recent job interviews I’ve had, I’ve noticed HR people don’t know how to make sense of my background. I’m a game designer…. web strategist… young consumer design aficionado… huh?? So this Who I am blurb I found in a Ms. Householder redesign should hopefully frame me upfront.
- Visual treatment matters. There are a ton of career portals and company sites that will only let you submit a WORD (.doc) resume. Some will even only let you submit raw text! So it’s pretty easy to get dismayed if you want to use a nicer-looking PDF format. But especially in the marketing/design space, the look you achieve and the way you organize information counts enormously, and can say a lot about how you approach things.
- Use simple tools to express yourself. For changing the look, I started by creating an eye-catching header, selected a few complimentary colors, and added some torn-paper backgrounds. I used Word 2002 and Photoshop, and then Adobe PDF maker. One thing I realized is that after I agreed to expand my resume to two pages, I could really open up the font size, which looks so much better.
- Cut out the filler. If there’s a job from your college years, or some description that is not totally unnecessary or descriptive, delete. It’s probably much better to showcase a few diamonds, and leave out the lumps of coal. Yea, I can’t think of a better analogy right now.
Below is what my older resume looked like, from just a few weeks ago, as of April 2008:
I’m glad that sucker is gone.
But looking back at some of my resumes from even longer ago, it’s surprising to see the stark contrast. Want to see what got me my current job as a Researcher at Forrester? I’m embarassed to put this up on the web, but I’m sharing it because it shows just how much can change if you keep refining and iterating.
I’m working on a big post about what an “interactive design strategist” is and why every ad agency and product design firm needs them. Ya know, an “account planner” for the digital age.
‘Til then this was worth checking out — a Slideshare presentation with a bunch of young consumer factoids. Not sure where mobileYouth gets their numbers from, but worth a look.
Summary: GTA IV is coming so get ready. Rock Band is the future of the record industry. And it’s community is growing. (Plus, Harmonix is hiring a Web designer.)
Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is coming our way, and sales are predicted to be huge. PSFK notes that Rockstar (the makers of Grand Theft Auto) and record labels are planning to create in-game radio-stations.
Is this partnership a seed of the music industry’s future? No. The real future of the music industry is with games like Rock Band.
Back in January, GigaOm claimed this is because RockBand makes the whole DRM cotroversy a moot point:
Games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Singstar take music beyond just the recording. This was the reasoning behind MTV’s purchase of Harmonix, and the subsequent release of Rock Band this holiday season. Marry this to Internet-connected consoles and storefronts like Microsoft’s XBox Live, and maybe music publishers can find ways to revitalize the musical experience.
And because of the work involved — annotating songs, splitting instrument tracks, and marking those elusive little stars — consumers will be hard-pressed to produce their own experiences. DRM won’t be relevant, because the content it protects is only a fraction of the experience the labels are selling.
All of that is true, although having created some of the songs for Guitar Hero I, I can tell you it’s an incredibly simple process. But here’s the bottom line:
RockBand’s strength is it’s a platform with a built-in community.
The real promise of Rock Band is that it synthesizes multiple experiences — rock tunes become an interactive, collaborative experience. Just fuel it with endless content, song upgrades, new album releases, and you’ve got a new way of monetizing music.
What’s so impressive to me about Rock Band on the XBOX 360 is the community element. Harmonix, the developers, will be able to link a group of friends playing the game together in a basement in Ohio, with the whole community on RockBand.com. And they’re hiring a site designer to do just that.
I created this presentation to walk you through some of my past work. You can view it as a Slideshare preso, or download a PDF of this portfolio.
There are some interesting thoughts brewing about a topic called Web 3D, a future vision of the web which resembles Second Life, rather than the 2D browsers we see today.
There are lots of reasons why Web 3D could come to fruition, but I want to pose three roadblocks that might prevent that:
- 3D environments are not efficient at representing lots of info. Spend some time immersing yourself in the 3-D environment of a First Person shooter video game like Doom 3 or Halo, and you’ll see why. 3-D worlds are great at making you feel like you are in a real environment, where there’s graphic and physical rules, and danger around the corner — but it doesn’t allow for what people do on th Web, search and gather large amounts of information, and multi-task.
- The Web isn’t an open platform (yet). What one technology will drive the 3d environment? HTML is a very simple technology, and yet look how hard it is for today’s sites just to work well on all the different Web browsers available. Not to mention, large companies want to keep their content and experiences under ball and chair still.
- Big business will be sluggish to catch up. Flash is a Web standard for displaying rich graphics on the Web, and yet how many big brands and major sites use it today? Big business is just slow, very slow, at integrating new experiences. If a 3D Web does become available, it will stay on the fringe of site experiences for a while.
The 3D Web that exists in Johnny Mnemonic, where he navigates virtual reality with motion-sensing gloves, is an awesome idea for the future of HCI, but it’s a huge shift in the way we interact with computers. But sometimes big changes happen in rapid bursts…
(a 3D web as envisioned in Johnny Mnemonic)
RockYou.com is a top site for teens, and their Facebook apps are some of the most popular. As I alluded to, I interviewed Jia Shen, CTO and co-founder of RockYou, about how he and his team target young consumers online.
Jia had great insights to share, and a real knack for clearly articulating the way he approached efforts like creating Super Wall on Facebook.
With help from Bruce Temkin and Steve Geller, I fleshed out Jia’s commentary into a case-study document for Forrester: RockYou Showcases Gen Y Design Practices.
Here are they key points Jia shared, but if you want to full scoop with “Forrester’s Take,” check out the report:
- “Target girls first, boys second.” RockYou targets young female consumers with its online offerings, like a slideshow creation tool with customizable sparkling effects. Yet the firm has managed to appeal to both genders. How? “Attract a female market and let the male market follow naturally,” says Shen.
- “Grab design inspiration from offline media.” To find design inspiration and fresh content, RockYou hunts through teen fashion magazines like Cosmo Girl and Teen Vogue. “We think kind of like the fashion industry — things have seasonality.”
- “It’s really all about the fun.” To amass as much of a youth audience as possible, RockYou’s Facebook offerings focus on basic social themes: messaging and communication, social quizzes and dating, and games.
- “Design for viral messaging and social incentives.” RockYou articulated two approaches for creating Facebook applications: 1) Design for long-term stickiness, or 2) focus on viral growth.
“Dear-God.net” really wants to be the next Post-Secret, but it doesn’t even come close. It takes user submitted confessions, pairs it with a photograph, and puts it on a blog with a visual design reminiscent of a graphic artist’s final project for art school.
The site’s hyper-stylized presentation makes it come off as as way too inauthentic and impersonal. Post Secret however started as a small project by one guy on Blogger. And it succeeded from this through word-of-mouth (NOT RSS) and through an authentic “under-designed” aesthetic. Plus, it users were submitting their own creations… not just words.
So, back to Dear-God.net. My first impression of the site was “Wow, what pretty pictures!!” Which completely misses the point. It takes a few moments to realize the substance of the whole experience is hidden in the tiny text hidden below each photograph.
“Dear God, My girlfriend had an abortion last month.”
“Oh who cares what pretty pictures what a gorgeous typeface and what a lovely color scheme you have there!!”
I respect all whom choose to express themselves openly online — the presentation of this site is what’s to blame, not the content. So, I’ll try another letter to the editor approach.
Dear Dear-God.net,
Lose the act.
- Ross
PS. Something Somewhere, if you read this, no offense intended. Drop me an email and let’s chat.
