Résumés. To anyone with a job, just the word can conjure up all kinds of emotions: flashbacks from your first crappy McJorb, anticipation before an interview at MultiMillions Incorporated, and pride in all one’s accomplishments. As everyone knows, a good résumé can be the key to landing a successful career, but designing such a knock-em-dead document can be quite a dilemma. It is a battle I have struggled with on numerous occasions.

Unfortunately, my earlier résumé designs are either in absentis or are too embarrassingly bad to show publicly. Our adventure therefore begins approximately 6 months ago in September of last year, after I lost my job with the California Relay Service and started looking again. I started by downloading one of the (few) résumé templates Microsoft offers for Word (for Mac) and modifying it to my liking.

Version the first

This is what I came up with for my first version, at least my first in some time. It took me a couple days to polish, and it was pretty close to the original template. It looked pretty good, presenting relevant information in a straightforward and readable manner in beautiful Cochin 13pt. Unfortunately, it was a bit cluttered, with multiple levels of indentation and some extraneous graphics that I thought added a little flare at the time. I would soon learn the folly of my ways.

Version secondary

In November, I read an article called Give your résumé a face lift and decided to amend my sinful ways. I started by ditching the superfluous gradient and starbursts and aligning the entire document flush left. I also centered my name and contact information and rearranged some of the other information, following the guidelines on LifeClever. I decided to keep some of the touches of the old design, including coloring headings dark blue and making my name much larger. For the most part, though, I changed everything but the content (short of removing the Objective section and modifying the Qualifications section slightly), including setting the entire document in Hoefler Text 13pt.

One small touch that I’m particularly proud of is in the contact information area. The sample résumé on LifeClever only lists one phone number, and I include two because I have poor cell reception at home, among other reasons. To keep with the simplicity of their design, I opted to eliminate the descriptor words like “Phone” and “Email” present in the previous design. This presented the challenge of differentiating between home and cell, so I thought to myself, why not use small graphics? Since I had removed my other excessive decorations, I thought this would be a nice way to visually spice it up a little while remaining useful. I hunted through my dingbat font sets for a while until I found the (almost) perfect icons of a little house (’H’ in Webdings) and a cordless phone (’»’ in Webdings). This turned out to be a very wise decision, which I discuss later.

Version tertiary

After a while, I decided to reexamine my résumé and redo a few things. This revision was not quite as major as the last one, but it’s still a significant improvement. One ill I wanted to address was the crunched feeling I got when I looked at my résumé, a symptom of a 12 point font size and minimal line height. I decreased the font size to 11pt and increased the line height to 14pt, making the overall size of the content the same, but significantly improving the spacing.

That wasn’t the only change I saw fit to make, though. The sections with lists still looked a little jumbled because long lines were stretching under the text I’d affixed to the right of the page. To distinguish one column of data from the other, I decreased the line width on the lists so it would wrap before it hit the 5 ¹/₄” mark. As you can see, this looks much better. Another change was to add “former network engineer” to Robert, my girlfriend’s brother-in-law’s title, to give him more credibility as a reference when I apply for technical jobs.

Overall, though I made relatively few actual changes, they had quite an impact on the final product. However, this would yet prove not good enough.

Latest and greatest

In March, I got wind of a position to apply for with a networking consulting company, so it was back to the ol’ résumé. I examined the version I had and considered using it, but there were aspects that bothered me about it. I didn’t like the widely-spaced headings, and the font seemed wrong because the number ‘1’ looked like the letter ‘I’. Additionally, the borders around the headings felt visually heavy, so back into the word grinder I delved.

My first change was to Century 11pt for body text and Lucida Grande 14pt for headings, keeping the colors the same. (In the images, bold text has a significantly lighter weight than when it should; I’m not entirely sure why this is.) I also removed the borders around the headings, made them normal title case and cranked the letter spacing down. Some other touches were to justify the Qualifications paragraph and decrease the right margin on the light gray text in the lower lists.

I didn’t like the spacing with the lists, so I increased the space between the bullet and the first letter of each list item. I also wanted something a little weightier and more visually appealing than a plain bullet, so I used a triangle similar to the disclosure triangles in OS X. However, these began life as black as the bullets before them, which gave them too much weight, so I spent some time trying to determine a good shade of gray.

Another area needing improvement was the address header. Leaving both phone numbers on one line made the line too long, and I just didn’t like the weight this gave the icons. I put them on their own lines, but the house and phone icons still seemed a bit too heavy, so I lightened them both to soften their emphasis. I also wanted a subtle graphic that “pointed out” my information, so after some deliberation, I came up with the folded arrow you see in the images (’ƒ’ in Wingdings). Finally, after printing a copy and studying it, I felt the need to visually distinguish between the various sections as I had done before, but I didn’t want big thick borders running across the screen and molesting the headings. I decided to add a horizontal rule to the right of the headings, which manifested in the form of tab and characters with a light blue strike-through. This is the design I sent to the consulting company.

Good news, bad news, and ugly news

Like I said earlier, the house and phone icons were an excellent idea. Apparently, it quite impressed the guys at the consulting company, and after two interviews (and one website design) I was hired to do web design work. This company was the perfect employer for me, as they offer all the services I myself would offer if I were to start my own company: network design and setup, administration, troubleshooting and tech support, and web hosting and design. I thought I had finally made it.

Unfortunately, they laid me off this week because they are in a state of chaos. They are currently expanding and reorganizing, and coupled with several lackadaisical clients regarding web design, they didn’t need a second person coding HTML, as they already had someone doing that. The feeling I got was one of putting the cart before the horse: they had hired me before they had substantial work for me, and before they could afford to keep me on the payroll without actually earning much revenue. Fortunately, there is a light at the end of this tunnel; they are still interested in having me as an employee, so in about a month I’ll probably be able to return to work and not be bored the entire time I’m there.

In any case, my résumé certainly proved to be a positive contributing factor in my initial hiring. My clever use of graphics and my keen sense of layout and visual design produced a document that told the consulting guys that I was worth calling in. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this process, it’s this: you should do some research to see what other people are doing with their designs and to find useful guidelines to make stellar-looking documents, but you should also be creative and not simply cop another person’s creative process without adding something to it. This actually defines the way I design in general: take a pre-existing creation and make it my own. Hopefully you can do the same.

Oh, and a free copy of my real résumé in PDF form to anyone who wants to hire me.