Creative resume: features and examples

Creative professionals tend to deviate from the classic black-and-white standards when writing resumes. They embody the most unusual ideas into reality, for example, a resume in the form of a glossy magazine cover or compiled on artificially aged sheets. However, their informative part is no different from the established requirements of office work.

A creative resume allows the applicant to stand out against the general background of classic-style presentation questionnaires. And this is not surprising. Going through a lot of the same type of resume, a recruiter will be happy to focus on a colorful document and carefully read the text.

First of all, you need to consider the cons of a creative approach:

• not every leader understands the essence of non-standard resume;
• preparation of a presentation document can take more than one day;
• the internal anxiety of the applicant about the opinion of the management of the company in which he wants to get a job can negatively affect the creative design;
• creative resume format is not suitable for all specialties.

But the list of advantages of a non-standard approach has many more points.

• Screening of companies. Executives and recruiters are encouraged to express their criticism of the CV provided. Different views and competing opinions indicate the impossibility of working with the boss and the team of the company as a whole.
• Creative approach helps compensate for the minimum work experience of the applicant.
• Creative resume gives the applicant a chance to make a stunning career... In a short period of time, a non-standard document can appear in the database of all creative companies in the city. This means that job offers will begin to come to the applicant themselves.
• Creative executives prioritize candidates with lateral thinking.
• An applicant with a creative resume will certainly be invited for an interview. At the same time, communication will take place not on a sluggish note, but with a smile and laughter.
• The team of the company quite often sees the resumes arriving at the address of the company... And such an unusual approach to drawing up a presentation document will allow you to quickly fit into the team.

It is actually very difficult to create a creative resume. Creative thinking and knowledge of graphic programs is only the first step to creating a presentation masterpiece. To get the employer's attention, it is necessary to come up with an unusual concept for this document.

The recruiting specialists shared information about which types of creative resumes are more popular with company leaders.

• Infographics... Quite a common method of self-presentation among creative professions. In the text of this document, all the points of the classic resume must be present. As for the background, this is where the applicant should get creative.
• Envelope... Nowadays, recruiting specialists and business leaders receive resumes from job seekers by e-mail. But this is not always successful - such letters are most often deleted. To avoid such situations will help a "live letter" delivered by courier or transferred to the personnel department with his own hand. At the same time, the resume itself must have a non-standard design.
• "In contact with". Today social networks are an integral part of human life. You can't help but take advantage of this when writing a creative resume. Presentation questionnaires made in the design of a personal page look very interesting and unusual. In addition, this method allows the applicant to reveal their talents, thereby demonstrating them to potential leadership.
• Cover. A great option for a creative resume in the form of a glossy magazine cover. This is where you can put your printed information and insert a few portfolio items.
• Pyrography. An unusual method that is rarely used. This is a wooden plank, on top of which the necessary textual information is burned. In fact, there are many options for designing a creative resume. The main thing is to connect creativity and find an acceptable document model for quickly getting a job.

To compose an original resume, there are several important tips to heed.

• The design of a creative resume should be consistent with one job of interest. Specificity is needed. Options such as "I am ready to work as a programmer or advertising manager" or "I want to get the position of a courier or call-center operator" work ineffectively.
• Creative resume models, like strict versions of this document, should be reasonably informative. The recruiting manager or manager initially focuses on the design of the presentation questionnaire, and then gets acquainted with the text. And here the main thing is to tell the truth about yourself without revealing it to the end. For example, "in my last job, I was able to increase the volume of production without additional funding." These words will interest the employer, and he will certainly want to know everything in detail.
• Even in creative execution, the resume should follow the generally accepted structure. In general, the original design of the self-presentation questionnaire stands out against the general background of strict documents. But with text content, many make mistakes. Some skip some points, others, on the contrary, focus on minor details.
• Particular attention should be paid to the "work experience" section. In this case, the chronology should be from the last to the first.

In the resume of each applicant there is a section "work experience", which indicates the name of the company, position and a list of functional responsibilities. But employers, in general, are not interested in this information. The future leader must see what the potential employee was able to achieve. For this, it is appropriate to supplement the structure of the resume with an achievement section.

For creative resumes, it's best to tweak the work experience section slightly to add achievements. Further, it is proposed to consider, with several examples, what an unusual combination looks like, in contrast to banal phrases.

Main responsibilities:

• making cold calls;
• creation of presentations;
• conclusion of contracts.

On the one hand, the text seems clear and easily accessible. However, the future leader does not see what the applicant was able to achieve. Therefore, it is necessary to make some clarity:

• concluded 10 agreements with international companies worth $ 1 million each;
• in 3 months increased the client base by 128 units, 46 of them became permanent partners;
• over the past 22 months, it has exceeded the plan for sales of products.

You don't even have to ask what text a potential boss will "bite" at.

A prerequisite for any creative resume is to supplement its structure with a section "skills and technologies". For example, if a job seeker is looking for a copywriter job, it is extremely important for him to indicate the presence of public speaking skills. This is not about karaoke, but about teaching lectures or training new employees.

When completing the section on technological knowledge, it is not necessary to paint a detailed acquaintance with the program. It is enough to indicate "experienced user". In general, it is better to make a bulleted list and show which programs the applicant knows well and which ones do not.

In each strict resume model, familiar words are indicated, applicants only change their places. For example, communication skills, stress resistance, responsibility. These words can even be called clichés that potential leaders do not even pay attention to.

Information of a secondary nature in a resume of a creative format should be presented with an unusual twist, and for this you need to connect imagination, talk about principles and beliefs. You can briefly mention your favorite book, blog, or other interests. On the one hand, it may seem ridiculous, but it is this information that reveals the inner world of the applicant, tells about his personal qualities. In addition, if even one interest coincides with the hobby of a potential leader, an imperceptible emotional attachment will arise between him and the applicant. Thanks to this nuance, the chance of the owner of a creative resume to get the desired position increases significantly.

If the applicant does not have a desire to share personal information, you can use the usual clichés, just present them in more detail:

• characteristic "resistance to stress" can be replaced with the phrase “able to withstand high emotional stress and remain calm in emergency situations”;
• "a responsibility" it is preferable to color it with the phrase “I have the ability to quickly analyze the situation and make independent decisions, bearing full responsibility for them”;
• the phrase "I can quickly find a common language with strangers" easily replaces the "sociability" pattern;
• "I independently deal with new information, after which I easily apply it in practice" - we are talking about "fast learning".

The submitted document is an obligatory part of any creative resume. Today, job seekers try to attach a small postscript to their presentation questionnaires, in which there are several sentences related to the company and the position of interest.

In the text of the greeting and the indication of the job seeker's goal regarding employment, the manager recognizes the subtleties of the potential employee's character and his temperament. However, the composition of cover letters depends entirely on several important factors:

• the qualification level of the applicant;
• position of interest;
• the final opinion of the recruiter or production manager who is hiring employees.

As a basis for a creative resume, you can take the templates presented in the vastness of the World Wide Web. The second sample is brighter and more intense. Many advertising companies will want to get a job seeker with such a questionnaire.