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I have now moved into serious "Get a Job I Actually Want" mode and am in the process of developing my new resume.

For those of you that don't know, I am a graphic designer stuck in a very undesirable position in a very uncreative in-house design firm. The shear unflexabilty of the job is slowly draining me of every creative thought I have and is slowly killing me. Besides that, they temp me, meaning they pay me an hourly rate with NO benefits. I had to get a part-time job at Starbucks in order to get health insurance for my wife and I.

I have designed a small leave behind, as an attention getter, to send in with my resume and was wondering if all the creative people here would be willing to give me your critiques. Give me your honest opinion... I can handle it.

Any editing/proofreading/copywriting changes would be appreciated as well.

I'll post jpegs of the spreads but they are thread stretchers so if a downloadable pdf format would be better just let me know.

Thanks in advance for your honesty. Very Happy

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Cover:

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_1.jpg

Inside spreads:

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_2.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_3.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_4.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_5.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_6.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_7.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_8.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_9.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_10.jpg

http://www.arena2045.net/fritz/resume_11.jpg

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joe fix the size make viewing easier and it seems a little dark

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husker wrote:

joe fix the size make viewing easier

But then you can't read it. Would a pdf be better?

Quote:

and it seems a little dark

That's because I turned it into jpegs... but it is a dark color palette.

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Oh... and I'm not joe.

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lol sorry

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I like PDFs can you do that easily?

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If you know how to:

PDF

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are you on aim or msn?

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I have an aim account but use ichat... does that count?

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I don't have ichat

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Love the 50's clip art.

The 4h paragraph of the 4th image is pretty garbled. Not sure if it has something to do with format?

I'm not sure yet what I think about the whole concept. The point is that you would be leaving this with potential employers, right? Even though it's tongue-in-cheek, I can't figure out how they would take it. I don't think they'd appreciate the fact of being told how to do their jobs by someone who is trying to get a job. So it may work better to punch up the irony, make it funnier, make it more clear that you know they know their stuff but this is just a vehicle to show off your (very nice) graphic skills.

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The very last sentence is what I think you should be going for in the whole thing -- broader, more obvious irony/ satire. You want to clue them in earlier, and as it is it takes too long too figure out whether you're serious or not, IMO.

What is the specific format? Paper stock, how is it connected, that kind of thing.

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The first page is where I'd really focus your energies. Right now it's too understated/ too literal. (I'll think about it and see if I can come up with some actual suggestions.)

I love the texturing on the cover.

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sozobe wrote:

I'm not sure yet what I think about the whole concept. The point is that you would be leaving this with potential employers, right? Even though it's tongue-in-cheek, I can't figure out how they would take it. I don't think they'd appreciate the fact of being told how to do their jobs by someone who is trying to get a job. So it may work better to punch up the irony, make it funnier, make it more clear that you know they know their stuff but this is just a vehicle to show off your (very nice) graphic skills.

Hmmm... I hadn't thought of the "being told how to do their job" angle, which wasn't the intent but I could see how you could take it that way.

Does it sound to serious?

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I think it takes too long for the tone to be established.

I think something that would work well with the clip art is a pseudo-scientific tone, emphasis on the pseudo. So something like:

My extensive research has uncovered literally thousands of tell-tale signs that a seemingly sterling applicant will in fact be a roustabout and a laggard. [I dunno, figure out some colorful 50's terms.] Did you know: - 79% of people who have more than one job listed on their resume for any given year take up to twice their allotted break time? - People who indicate they graduated with honors require 5% higher raises than people who don't, regardless of their actual performance? - Potential office gossips are nearly always given away (93% correllation) by the use of a florid, non-standard font for their names on their resumes?

You get the idea. You can get employee horror stories from those of us here who have been employers, use that to put something together that will make an employer chuckle in recognition.

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jp~

I love the graphics!

Here are my notes on the text.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
p. 2

para 1
I would recommend a comma after "Well"

para 3
misspell "rubish" ipo "rubbish"

p. 6

para 1
run-on sentence. recommend split off last clause.

para 4

"around <empty space> of your"
" ot to obad" ipo "Not too bad"
" ow it is" ipo "Now it is"
extra space between "start" and "digging"

p. 9

para 3

last sentence seems clumsy

p. 14

para 1

should be "Let's"

para 3

" ill" ipo "Fill"

p. 18

para 1

should be "whom you want"
recommend finding some substitute for "Hopefully"
should be "Don't wait too"
should be "competition"

para 2

" ake" ipo "Make"
" oe's Hiring uide" ip "Joe's Hiring Guide"
gaps on last line

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George... thanks a ton for all that. Some of those gaps in there just got messed up in the conversion to jpegs but you did catch some spelling and grammar mistakes that I missed. Thanks again.

Soz,

Do you think adding your idea as another intro paragraph (perhaps shrinking the large image of the man with a stack of papers) would be a good way to set the tone? I am a little worried about the length of it already so I don't want to add to much more, but I like your idea of Psuedo-Science Statistics (I might see a headline in that) to get things started.

If I did do that would the rest of the document be alright, or do you think I would still need to liven parts up?

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I think the whole thing would benefit from being more lively/ satirical. As it is, it's nothing they don't know, so the only interest is how it's presented.

Basically, I think that no matter what the first page should be rejiggered and made much more obvious than it currently is to set the tone. It doesn't have to be obvious-obvious, it can make them wonder if it's serious for a few seconds, but it should be obvious enough that by the time they've read the first page they are reasonably certain it's ironic.

Beyond that, you can keep the rest as filler to support the graphics, but if you really want the whole thing to impress, I think the whole entire thing should be punched up.

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Back to the drawing board it is...

Thanks for the input.

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