The unemployment rate in the U.S. is currently at 7.8 percent. With a large number of people competing for available jobs, you have to do everything you can when applying for a job to set yourself apart from the pack. Technology innovations have led us to Internet-connected mobile devices, driverless cars, wearable gadgets and so much more. They also present the opportunity and tools to make the most creative resumes possible. The days of the stale, black and white and strictly formatted Word documents are long gone.
Philippe Dubost is a Web Product Manager who made his resume a memorable one by mimicking an Amazon product page. He customized the page down to every last detail, including, “Only one left in stock – Order soon,” a department search listed as “Job Candidates,” and tabs across the top of the page that include “Product Management,” “Online Advertising,” “Client Support,” Web Development” and other career-related skills. Appropriately dubbed “An Amaz-ing Resume,” Dubost has taken full advantage of technology and the Web today.
You can read the entire resume here.
Other job applicants have taken to mimicking Google (News - Alert), LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as the inspiration behind their resumes. Going one step beyond this, Alec Brownstein decided to buy sponsored links associated with the names of his favorite creative directors. His ads read something along the lines of, “Hey, [creative director’s name]: Gooogling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too.” The ad contained a link to his website, alecbrownstein.com, which contained his resume. After a few months he received a two job offers, only costing him $6.
Image via Pulse (News - Alert) 2
As more people continue to hop on the social media resume bandwagon, Elliot Hasse created an infographic resume for a visually pleasing presentation.
Image via Pulse 2
There’s also Victor Petit, who sent resumes to companies on a double-sided sheet of paper. One side of the paper contained standard resume information, but the other had a full-sized portrait and a QR code where his mouth would be with instructions. Once someone placed their smartphone on that spot to read the code, it pulled up a YouTube (News - Alert) video of his mouth talking about his qualifications. Petit’s resume is creative, interactive and has just the right touch of technology to demonstrate his skills.
QR CODE - Content-rich Resume from Victor petit on Vimeo.
Skillshare, a New York City-based startup focused on revamping education, is a company that asks applicants not to send resumes. The online instructions read, “We don’t believe in resumes because we love Internet links! Send us your blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook (News - Alert), about.me, Spotify.” Video resumes including “Google Please Hire Me,” and other creative outlets have just about replaced the standard 8x10 sheet of paper.
These examples really make you want to start from scratch and completely revamp your resume – and they should. Use them as inspiration to channel your inner creative self, utilize technology innovations we continue to see every day and keep stepping the game up! It’s people like this who go the extra mile that help come up with these innovations and make resumes like these possible.