Doc Browns Guide to Taking Your Resume Back to The Future

Doc Browns Guide to Taking Your Resume Back to The Future Great Scott! Creative resumes have been getting a lot of buzz lately.   Technology has sped up so quickly, every individual now has incredible power to invent, create, and produce. Suddenly, a dull paper resume doesnt feel like its enough. It used to be, old guys like me were the ones pioneering change and the future, but now, young folk are creating all kinds of interesting new things, including resumes. The old calculated approach to resume writing is shattering and a generation of kids, that grew up in the tech boom, are fighting to stand out. In fact, even my friends at the universities are announcing that we need help understanding How to Craft the Perfect Modern Resume. Check out their calculations below! Courtesy of  Colorado Technical University Do You Know What This Means? As my friend Marty would say, This is some heavy stuff! So, I decided to take a trip and explore what the future has done with this advice. Here is what Ive found! 1. Erica Swallows Infographic Resume Destination number one took me to Erica Swallows resume. There is no need to question Ericas success. As an editor for Mashable and a history working for The New York Times and Saatchi and Saatchi, she has obviously made a name for herself in media. It might be worthwhile seeing how one in her position prefers to market her skills. Her resume has over 8,000 views on slideshare.net alone. 2.   Turns Out, Theres an App for That! My next stop took me to a resume in a style I had never seen before. Sahas Katta, an aspiring tech evangelist shook up the old way of doing resumes with a mock phone app over on his site, SahasKata.com. The buzz created by his mobile resume generated over 30,000 visits. 3.   8bit Retro Resume I have to admit, this third stop made me question whether I had set the flux capacitor in the right direction. I thought I was heading back in time, but quickly realized that this was Zefs way of creating an interactive resume harkening back to my retro roots. Zef Narkiewicz wanted to get into design work after college so he created this 8 bit resume on his site. He did an excellent job of making it interactive and social friendly. If you go to his site today, you will see the results of his work. He is now happily employed at LBi. 4.   Google Please Hire M.E. Matt seems to have found a time machine of his own with that completely ridiculous western style mustache, but his unique style of marketing his talents ended up paying off. Matthew Epstein sought out on his own quest of landing a dream job at Google. So he created the site Googlepleasehire.me which took Googles design and featured a video of Matthew wearing said   mustache as he laid out a story as to why Google should hire him. The site is filled with many other interactive elements that show more about him, how to request an interview, see his resume, and more. In the end he didnt land a job at Google.   But, he did get an interviewthey just decided not to move forward. Shortly after, he received an amazing job offer at Sigfig and his video went on to see over half a million hits. You can find his story here. Oh and by the way, think Matt must have been crazy to present himself, mustache and all to Google? Well, Google has a sense of humor too. The infamous mustache will live on in their Hangouts. 5.   The QR Resume My last visit, took me to Victor Petit. Mr. Petit scored an internship quickly after making this combo video/qr code resume. His words give us better insight into why he took this approach. “I realized during my previous job search that getting an interview at a communication agency is the hardest part of the process,” says Petit. “I tried to create a CV that would enable me to express myself vocally as soon as they read the paper version. The combination of a sheet of paper and a QR code felt like the best way to reach that goal.” Well done Victor! (free-extras) If My Calculations Are Correct After examining these extremely successful examples, I have calculated the new fundamentals resumes will start to reflect in the future. 1.   The Futures Resumes are Social. Resumes no longer will be between you and the employer.   They will need to carry a social element as wellat least psychologically. What I mean by this is, resumes of the future need a Wow moment.   Something that impresses its viewer enough to think, this person really stood out. My mother used to say the proof is in the pudding, but in the future, the proof is in the social media. Post your website, infographic, video, or other resume of the future online and see what happens. Its hard to ignore the results folk are getting from these new forms of resume writing. 2.   Interactive and Brought to Life by the Viewer In the past, it used to be that we read resumes.   In the future you will play resumes. Do you know what this means?!?! Let me get some help from my friends at Google to demonstrate. Doc Brown:   Hello Google. How many resumes do you get in a week? Google: OhHi Doctor Emmett.   According to our latest calculations we receive roughly   20,000 resumes a week, or two every minute. Doc Brown:   Great Scott Google!   Thats a ton of resumes! So friends, what I mean is, today we send out standard, word doc resumes.   Easy to email, upload, and submit. Which is part of the problem. Its so easy to share these lifeless documents that HR departments around the world get flooded with thousands of junk cvs every day. Now, what about a resume thats a bit more creative, interactive,   infographic, or inventive? Something you can actually play with, click, watch, or see come alive? Do you think it might get a fair bit more attention than its lifeless ancestor? Let me tell you.   It works! It really works!!! 3.   Style Matters In the FutureMore Than Ever Objective, Skills, Work History, Education. These are, and still will be, crucial parts of every resume past or future, but the way this information is displayed can make all the difference whether your resume gets viewed or not. Did you know some fonts are scientifically proven to be easier to read on a screen?   Have you ever considered how spacing can make a difference, or how indentations can cause the eye to wander? Style is like paving a road for your DeLorean time machine.   It builds a runway for the viewer, allowing them to hit all the major points on your resume and reach that 88mph time travel speed. (free-extras) 4.   Resumes Will Tell Stories One of the purposes technology seeks to fulfill is to cut out boredom and send it away for another day. Yet how often are we excited, entertained, or thrilled by a resume? Theyre pretty boring, right? Well, a common pattern of the resumes from the future are their story telling abilities. They dont read like a list of adjectives, skills, or achievements, but more like a story. Where did I come from, what did I accomplish, where am I headed? These are all questions a professional time traveler asks himself, and will be common themes of the resumes of the future as well. Where We Are Going, We Dont Need Need Roads! My trusty time machine used to be limited by how much road we had in order to get it to 88mph.   So I made some modifications, and now the DeLorean hovers. Resumes will be the same way. Dont be afraid to let go of the road. Dont let your boundaries be defined by what fits on a page, what Word lets you do, or anything else for that matter. I know, it feels safe, you can trust it. Are you guaranteed to find fame, glory, and a job? Perhaps. Did my first attempts at inventing work out? No. No. No! It took hitting my head on a bathroom sink and working 30 years to get the flux capacitor just right. Im merely showing you whats being done in the resumes of the future so you can consider the advantages for yourself. Until next time, Doctor Emmett Brown P.S. I am off to more adventures and may be back at another time.   For now, my scribe Bryce Christiansen will handle all comments and feedback.