Anyway, I've started to hop back into the job market. I mean let's face it, when it comes to sales, I'm much better off talking up the products of the company that I'm working for rather than anything I'm trying to convince people about myself. For whatever reason, I'm just better at pitching an established brand, and creating improvements in a model that needs it, instead of creating a brand from scratch. I'm working on building from ground zero, but in the meantime I think I'll stick with what I'm good at: using my talents to promote something that isn't me.
With that in mind, I've started the process of re-entering the workforce. I've passed around some of the standard resumés, but I know that you have to be a step up from normal in order to get the job that you want. As a person who is creative and has lots of ideas, I've had a few opportunities to use this to my advantage in the creation of unique and (supposedly) entertaining resumé examples.
I got the idea for a catchy resumé during a round of StumbleUpon, and I came across this article that showed me a bunch of different ways to branch off the blazed trail. While a lot of these are printed resumés, some of them are web-based. But I found out that I had a different limitation in passing my resumé through to the companies.
If you submit an application through LinkedIn, you get to see if they view it. Furthermore, you attach a custom cover letter to whatever custom resumé you want to pass through, unlike Monster where you have to have the resumé uploaded to the site and then pick it from there, which I'm not a fan of. There's just one problem, you have to keep your resumé under 200k file size.
Now, if you have any experience creating PDFs (which is the only file format allowed that lets you be creative on LinkedIn) you know that keeping a PDF under 200k, especially one with images and multiple fonts, can be a challenge. I've been successful with this a couple of different times. Here's my first attempt, with my application to PowerChord, for the position of Email Marketing Specialist:
That's pretty neat right? Use a standard envelope template, that makes sense doesn't it? Add in a few images and some custom typography, and you have a resumé that is relevant yet unique, and it was definitely hard to keep under 200k. It took quite a few configuration and compression changes to get it there, but I did it. I submitted this one on December 8th and they viewed it the same day. It's been 10 days, so I hope that the only thing keeping them from ringing me is the fact that the holidays are now in full swing.
The next custom resumé I created was a doozy. There's a company called FairWarning that handles privacy breach detection solutions for the health care industry. This position was for Marketing Content Manager, which included the responsibilities of copywriting, SEO, creating web pages with HTML, experience with a CMS, Adobe Photoshop, etc. Basically all the things that I have experience with. So in order to show them the level of effort I was willing to put into filling this position, I created an entire website that essentially scraped their code and replaced all the mentions with my name and information. It took me all day to recreate the site, do the graphics and write the copy (all the things they wanted, right?) and then I submitted it. Mind you, I submitted it the day after they listed the position, to show them the amount of work I could do over the course of a single day. They still have yet to view the application, and I've emailed them a couple times with no response. I'm really hoping that they at least take the time to look it over, I'd hate to feel like I put that much of myself into applying for a company that doesn't even bother to look at what I've tried to show them.
I even put a click-to-call application right on the home page, and there is a very liberal amount of contact information spattered all over every single page. So there's really no reason to think that they couldn't get back to me. I'm certainly willing to give them the benefit of the doubt though and put this in the same category as the first, and that they're waiting until the holidays are over before they start the hiring process. That seems reasonable enough. I submitted this one on December 10th. It's only been 8 days, and I try to follow the Seth Godin rule of not worrying about it (though my options on deadlines are running a little thin these days).
This last one I did pretty recently, and right now it's also my profile picture on Facebook (a modified version of it anyway). As someone who believes he is worthy of a job that pays six figures, I applied to 6FigureJobs.com, who posted a position for Online Marketing Manager, another role that I could fill nicely. Granted, I don't think that working for this company assures me a 6 figure salary, but I can see the potential there, so I created this second PDF resumé to pass along to them:
Now this is the modified version that's also on Facebook, but you get the idea. It's hard to fit a lot of information on a template like this, but I'm hoping that I put enough, and made it interesting enough, to spark some interest for a subsequent interview. I submitted this one just a few days ago on the 15th and they viewed it the same day. I'm expecting a call next week.
Now, my thinking on this is that what I've submitted is innovative enough to warrant at least a phone call from the companies I've applied to in this case, but what do you think? Would you cast aside these attempts as too gimmicky to consider, or would they pique your interest and put me in the running that much more? Honestly, I'd love some feedback on this, because I really don't want to be wasting my time coming up with creative output when what I should be doing is blanketing every single place I apply to with the same old boring plain-text 4 page novella.
