The Professional Bios that you are working on are a kind of career document, like a resume. You are summarizing your qualifications, showing what you bring to a company or organization, and demonstrating how you will fit in with coworkers or what you can do for potential clients.
Infographic resumes focus on these same goals, using visuals and document design to highlight the author’s qualifications and accomplishments. These flashy career documents have limited usefulness, of course. Most companies look for more traditional resume presentations.
Please do NOT think that I am recommending that you redo your resume as an infographic. That said, you can gain some interesting perspectives from looking at how document design and visual elements are used in these documents.
Take a look at the infographic resume below for Geoff Hamby and consider how the design and layout highlight the information in the document. You can also consider The Muse’s 4 Rules for Creating a Killer Infographic Resume.
What do you notice in these visual resumes that you can use to make information in your professional bio stand out? How can you use document design and visual elements to present your bio while still fitting into the traditional expectations for a professional bio?
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29 Comments
I’ve always heard that a large goal of a resume is to get a recruiter to actually notice it. I know a lot of my time has been spent organizing my resume in such a way that the important bits of it catch the eye of a potential recruiter. Now, for anyone doing anything in a more creative / artistic field, I think the infographic resume would be an excellent way to not only catch your recruiter’s attention, but also to show off a little of what you can do. I also find myself actually reading the entire resume when I see ones that are in this infographic format, instead of skipping most of it like I normally do.
I didn’t think about how an infographic-style resume is a skill in of itself. It definitely showcases some of your creative and even organizational talents, if don’t correctly. I think it’s also a message to the employer that you care about the job you are applying for and you have put in the effort to make a good impression.
I definitely agree that creating an infographic-style resume is a skill–I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it. It can help stand out in a crowd of artistic type people, where design is a major part of what they will be doing as a job. I think it also shows some qualities that are hard to put on paper, like confidence and risk taking. But I think for certain fields, a normal resume would do just fine, though I agree with the point of this post that aesthetics definitely matter.
I think this type of resume would be useful for a person in a creative field, perhaps a visual design industry. It would demonstrate your abilities and creativity while also communicating your experience. I know this format would not succeed in my field. It seems informal and is slightly difficult to interpret. The best element I can incorporate into my professional bio is the headings. It introduces the readers to the following information and will help guide them to find the information they feel is most relevant.
I agree with your comment that while this resume is useful for professionals in specific fields, it would probably not be best in mine. Before this post, I have never heard of an infographic resume and I have never been encouraged to use one. I do think that in some industries it would help separate individuals with creative skills from the sea of plain resumes. I did find the example shown above a little distracting, though. I could not decide where to start and I had trouble focusing. While I do not particularly like the specific template shown above, I think other infographic resumes could be a little less distracting and demonstrate the candidate’s qualifications and highlights really effectively. I think if any of my classmates decide to go with an infographic resume for their career paths, my suggestion would to be sure that there is not too much going on in the document and also to choose a wise color scheme with no hard to read or unprofessional colors in text such as yellow, pink neon, etc.
I love how the infographic resumes look, but they are most commonly used for graphic design or marketing jobs, not for technical jobs. For example, a resume in this format would be deemed unprofessional and would probably not stand out in the right way in the engineering field. I think using a different layout, rather than just a bulleted list or paragraphs, can be implemented into the professional bio to make it more visually appealing.
I was thinking the same thing about how this would probably not work in a more scientific-oriented career field. I am interesting in applying to medical school and I can’t imagine supplementing an infographic for my CV! That being said, I wonder what could be done to make a CV or engineering resume stand out more?
I’ve been on both sides of the hiring process and have seen something like the skill/years developed chart in particular work very well on software engineering resumes, as an alternative to a long list of programming languages and tools. As a recruiter, it really helps to be able to quickly gauge the approximate level of proficiency in technologies that we use so we can predict how much training and ramp-up time that person needs before they become productive.
I’ve seen it presented in terms of high/medium/low proficiency, years of experience, and lines of code written. That last one is especially eye-catching, though I’m not sure how it would be computed or estimated!
I find that really interested, because everyone I know that is trying to go into software engineering has always had a standard resume. Before reading your comment I would have assumed that employers in this type of field would like the traditional resume, but I guess the more I think about it since software engineers could potentially know many languages it would be effective to highlight each language you know and your proficiency in that language. I will pass this one to my software engineering friends, as a suggestion!
I can see the advantages of using an infographic resume instead of a standard one. Recruiters will look at hundreds of resumes for a given job. By adding some graphics and color to your resume, you can distinguish yourself from the competition while also showing your creative side. Using graphics in your resume will make it more memorable and could therefore help you get the job.
On the other hand, most people are not very good at design. Deviating too much from standard formats when you don’t have the design skill and perspective to pull it off carries a high risk of actually making your information more difficult to understand, or even misleading. Standard formats are standard for a reason: they generally communicate the things employers are interested in pretty well. I think the infographic resume at the top of this post isn’t really something to aspire to; it demonstrates design that makes the information harder and more time consuming to understand.
This type of resume compared to a traditional style is definitely more eye catching, however I get a little overwhelmed looking at it all. Everything is just in different fonts, and the colors are very vibrant which makes me get confused as to what really is important and what I am really looking for. Additionally, the infographic resume does not explain certain skills or experience, it simply lists it. If I was looking to recruit a potential employee I would want to know a little background information, and what kind of work this person did during their experience, not just the fact that they had internships at X, Y, Z companies. I suppose for a design company or creative thinking company this type of resume may stand out more, but I have never seen anyone use this type of resume, and I would personally not recommend it for anyone in a technical career field.
I agree. I think a well thought out infographic resume could be effective, but for the most part, the examples were overwhelming. I do not see myself ever creating one of these because I do not think it will help me in my field. However, I could understand someone looking for a creative position to use this type of resume. As a computer engineering major, I am in the process of completing a personal website that allows me to go into more detail about my background and the projects on which I have worked. With a professional resume, I am limited to and 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper. It is difficult to sum up me as a person in that small space. With a personal website, I have unlimited space to say whatever I want! After I feel comfortable enough with my personal bio, I plan on adding it to my website. If anyone wants to critique my website and give me feedback, it is located at https://benwh1te.github.io. Keep in mind, I haven’t put in too much work.
I would argue that design and creativity is actually a critical skill for technical career fields, and that it’s one of the top things that employers look for when seeking high-performing candidates. But I would agree that a resume is probably not a good place to experiment too much with design, especially when you have limited experience with graphic design in print specifically. For most people, a paper or online portfolio seems a more appropriate place to show off good work and design skill. I think making a page on github.io or, for software people, showcasing code on github is going in the right direction. I would caution however that you should still keep the content on such a website concise, because not even the most enthralled recruiter is going to spend hours reading your website.
I noticed that the information in the visual resumes had the important headings that were larger in font and then all the important information such as: volunteer hours, work experience, skills and persuasive facts about oneself. I feel that in my professional bio I can use “getting to know me” information that was seen on the visual resume from above. It provided a brief, yet descriptive explanation of who they were and their interests which is useful for a professional bio. I think the article did a good job of explaining that keeping it simple was important in getting the point across effectively. Bar graphs and charts as well as pictures (like the state where you’re from) can be used for the professional bios as well. I found this article that I wanted to share because it was helpful in explaining more about what exactly an infographic resume is as well as how it’s an effective networking tool: https://biginterview.com/blog/2013/06/infographic-resumes.html.
I always think these are so neat. I personally don’t have one but I think its because of my discipline and the specific positions that I have applied for. Its important to use these when appropriate like say applying for a brand management or graphic design company. Some company positions that are less related to creative design still have the opportunity on their application to submit a more “personal” resume and I think its super beneficial to have one similar to this infographic or even a personal website to supplement your more traditional resume. Its a great opportunity to express other things that aren’t usually included on the more traditional document or a place to go in more depth on some things that already are. I need to start thinking about my own design! Thanks.
I think this article was helpful by giving a perspective on resumes that isn’t thought about much by the people around me since my major is engineering. It can be fun and enjoyable reading through a well constructed infographic. After reading through the “4 rules for creating a killer infographic resume”, I was struck by how much simple things, like direction of structure and color layering, affect the ease with which the infographics can be read. I strongly agree with the rule of your resume should tell a story, not just list your successes in a robotic fashion. From personal experience, both writing resumes and reading some, a huge aspect that can kill a great resume is tiny font size. If the writing is so small that the reader has to strain in order to understand what’s on the paper, chances are, your resume is going to be set aside in the discard pile.
I feel that when it comes to resumes in the engineering field, they probably aren’t usually infographic, but instead the resumes probably have lots of words. I feel that an infographic resume is more useful for people who have careers in the graphic design, marketing, or business industries. However, the infographic resume does add color and creativity that might make an applicant stand out over the people who just have words on their resume. I feel that some of the examples were very straightforward and easy to read and understand compared to some of the others.
After reading 4 Rules for Creating a Killer Infographic Resume, I learned that keeping the resume simple is the best way to go. When I first saw this post, I was thinking that a resume that is infographic would be super busy with lots of colors and images. However, one of the points mentioned that you could just use two colors to keep things simple, yet organized. By having only two colors, it allows everything to be understood and read a lot easier.
This type of a resume would absolutely fail in my field. The typical example of a poor Computer Science resume is this classic here: https://i.imgur.com/RSmul71.jpg. You’ll have to forgive the formatting of it, it’s hard to find the original anymore — it has been re-posted and reported on so many times. It’s a real resume though. And it’s interesting to see why this resume fails: it’s an entirely inappropriate infographic resume.
Moreover, it makes me cringe because this individual also majored in my two degree programs. The particular things that fail in that resume include his paragraph formatting, his in-character prose, and the colorful references to My Little Pony. None of those things belong in a resume, especially for one competing in a CS field. Overall, despite some clear qualifications, the individual lacks any professionalism at all, and has a poor resume.
From my opinion, infographic resumes are actually like a hybrid between professionalism and creativity where in creating a good one needs a strike of balance between it. Not to say that being professional stops you from being creative but considering we are creating these resumes to showcase what are we capable of to a certain company or organization so we might do not want to go over the top. I actually liked the 4 rules given in the article as it also shows bad examples for us to compare and reflect to what extent we can expand our own creativity in creating this type of resumes.
For my upcoming personal bio I may incorporate some visual aesthetics in it. Maybe not in terms of having charts and stuff but instead finding suitable backgrounds and also using combination of colours that will help in creating a resume that stands out to the reader while also not being too difficult to understand its contents.
This kind of resume gives me a new thought about it. I always think that resume is just a paper, and I list every information about me. That is it. An Infographic resume is really interesting. Furthermore, maybe it is really suitable for me. I am major in CPE, and I need show every coding methods on my resume. If I use infographic resume, it can show clearly how long I have been working on Python, C++, and C, which also can show the picture of my projects, or maybe some creative thinking about some great project.
I love the look of this resume and it is easy, fast, and appealing to read. However, if I put myself in the shoes of a hiring manager I find this resume lacking. There really isn’t any text describing the specific roles or tasks he did in previous jobs. There are general skills learned but they don’t seem as reliable to me. Perhaps I don’t understand it but I’m not sure what it means to be developing “Content” or “Email” skills for a certain number of years. So yes the infographic is memorable and yes its very appealing but when it comes down to choosing the most capable and qualified applicant, I’m not sure its as showcasing as a standard resume. There are some elements that I did draw from this infographic, which I can use in a professional resume. I can give the parts of my resume that I want the employer to focus on a little more emphasis by bolding the font or making it a bigger size. The addition of “pronounced Jeff” provides the resume with a more personal feel, and gives the applicant a voice. I think adding something little like makes the employer more likely to remember your name, without compromising the professionalism of your resume.
I found this article to be very interesting. I’ve never seen an infographic resume before, so it was very neat to see all the different layouts and what worked and what didn’t. To me, it seemed as though the ones with more linear flows were much easier to understand, which I think is the most important thing for anything that is being sent out to potential employers. However, I think this starts to raise the question of the usefulness of these infographic resumes. The point of a resume is to clearly outline your qualifications to potential employers, but I think these infographics actually subtract clarity. While I think they’re a good way for those applying to graphic design jobs to show off their skills, I think that for anyone else it detracts from their resume because they highlight design over the individual. A resume is only one page, make it count.
The infographic transformed numerical text into graphs via time line, bar graph, and circular progress bars. It did a good job with helping me quickly see the person’s list of skills and experience. Each section was labeled with a header to help find specific information about the person. Without it, the resume would otherwise be a boring blob of text on a resume. This is useful for making our professional bios stand out like promotional flyers, captivating to glance at and read, at the same time as keeping it professional. I liked how the end of the time line said that he or she was “eager to join [the company’s] team” to show the person’s enthusiasm.
The infographics in the article are most definitely a creative way to advertise yourself. Personally, I would never use an infographic myself for a resume. In my experience, employers tend to spend an average of 30 seconds on each resume, which would be more difficult with an infographic. The information was hard to find and and most used pictures to take up some white space. I honestly think it doesn’t look professional. However, I do understand why someone would use one of these when applying to a job. If they are in a career of marketing/advertising/graphic design, this would be a great way to showcase some of their work.
I think the infographic resumes are great for those in art fields. I haven’t seen any companies yet that take non traditional resume.
I personally prefer the infographic resume to the traditional resume since it tells the readers what information it consists of visually which makes it much easier to understand.
Also, a paper with full of texts is boring. In my opinion, a traditional resume with the infographic cover letter would be great.
Skills are highlighted here extremely. Infographics I see as a great way to portray what aspect of your personality you want to be exemplified the most. Through designing infographics you can make fonts and size work to show job experience in a unique way rather than just simple credentials from the company. I think in the government sector where I have worked previously this would be beneficial for campaign positions especially because they look for creative innovators who can make “boring” information look intriguing. As for other professions in government, it would be helpful to use less imagery and more ideologically-based language to show proficiency in political affairs.
The infographic in the example does a great job of providing quick and fast information to an employer about the owner. But it is also missing a lot of critical explanations, so I agree that it only has limited uses. I have also found personal/resume websites to be useful when implemented correctly. There is an article online about someone who designed their resume to look like the Google search page, which I found pretty neat and creative. The infographic displayed an overview of the author’s information efficiently, and the colors are what makes it stand out the most. While it is good to stand out with an infographic, I don’t think turning in an infographic as a resume would boost your chances of getting a job.
This type of resume would most likely be poorly received in most field, I do believe that it would be work in a more artistic/creative field. I think that most would be intrigued and maybe even impressed by this creative type of resume, but some would have difficulty following it. This would be especially true if it were not easy to read and understand or if it wasn’t formatted properly. I think that most would find that they would need to seek the help of a professional for something of this nature and that the payback would not equal the time, effort, and potentially money put into it.