Day 6: Resume 101 and Skills Challenge Introduction
The 15 Day Design Exercise Challenge
The number one thing holding students back from getting hired is usually their lack of experience. This usually brings up the question - how can I gain experience if most of the positions require experience to get experience? See the problem?
The Radify team got frustrated about this problem. How can we hack the system? We started to brainstorm how we could have students get design experience without actually needing design experience.
As with every skill, design, in particular, requires practice. It’s something you have to work at if you want to improve. Just like running, or soccer, or basketball. You’re not going to get better without dedication, practice, repetition, and feedback.
We were still struggling with this question when we came across Exercise your product muscles by Paul Cothenet.
You should read the whole article but the main point is clear throughout - A good product design or manager needs to practice and they can do this by thinking critically about other products.
This is what we had been looking for the whole time! A way that students can flex their product muscles. A way that students can get design experience that doesn’t require previous product experience.
Modifying Paul’s suggestions just a bit, and framing it for designers, we came up with the 15 Day Graphic Design Exercise Challenge.
The Challenge
Starting today and every day for the next 15 days (Monday - Friday). You will do a daily design exercise.
Each day you will get a prompt that ranges in topics: branding, marketing, and product. From these prompts, you’ll use Illustrator to create the design.
A big part of these exercises is sharing your work. It helps you to stay accountable and it signals to the world that you’re going out of your way to learn a new skill. Share your work on Dribbble:
- Sign up for a Dribbble account.
- Upload a shot of each design you do
Want a few examples to get you started? Here are a handful of amazing designers who have done similar challenges:
A note on daily exercise:
We realize that many of you are in school and dealing with a very busy semester but we stress the importance of practicing daily. By designing every day, you’ll find that at the end of the challenge, you’ll have improved drastically. These designs don’t have to be masterpieces and they don’t have to consume a lot of time. We recommend that you set aside 40-60 minutes a day to work on this challenge.
Pro-tip: Put time on your calendar to work on it each day. Be disciplined and try to do anything else during those blocks of time.
Today's design prompt
Design 3 feature icons for Superman.
Don't forget to post the final outcome on your Dribbble.
Today we are going to cover the basics of writing a resume. There's a lot to cover, but we'll try to keep it very introductory today. Later this week, we'll go into more details.
Two Types of Resumes
Something that is often not taught to students is that in most careers (especially the creative ones) it is important to have two versions of your resume: a creative one and an ATS-friendly one.
What is an ATS?
Many large organizations rely on applicant tracking systems (ATS) to help pre-filter resumes. The systems work by scanning resumes for contextual keywords and key phrases, mathematically scoring them for relevance, and sending only the most qualified ones through for human review. Essentially, they’re the gatekeepers to getting an interview at the larger companies who use those systems.
Don't worry though! As part of the fellowship, we'll help you through developing both resumes!
Resume 101 Basics
All of these principles apply to all resumes you write no matter if they're suppose to be creative resumes or ATS-friendly ones. The most important thing to remember is that resumes are a science, not an art. There are a list of set things you can do in order to make sure that your resume stands out amongst the competition.
1. Think of your resume as an outline for the job interview of your dreams
What questions do you want them to ask you? How do you want to impress them? What would you like to highlight, and what would you like to avoid bringing up? Assume that they have no other information about you besides this document. Make sure you highlight things and use language that are relevant to skills you would use on the job you're applying for.
2. Craft a story
You probably have no idea how you went from your clubs in high school to your first job to your next few...but try to find things that are in common and can be crafted into a story. For example - if you tutored in high school, then volunteered with a tutoring volunteer group in College, and are now doing Radify - you could spin the story that you’re really interested in education and so you started out tutoring, went to teaching, and you’re now doing Radify to learn about the best ways to teach technical skills.
3. Be concise
Everything should fit comfortably on one page. Absolutely no multiple page resumes will be allowed. Think you have too much experience? Read this and reconsider! Go for no more than three to four sub-sections for any given section, and no more than three bullets per sub-section—two is often plenty. Keep each bullet to one/two lines—this forces you to focus on the primary point you want to get across.
4. Aim for clarity
Too many words = clutter = confusing = rejection. It doesn’t matter how impressive you are if it’s impossible to tell what’s happening on the page. Fix this by eliminating all but the essentials. Cut ruthlessly both in terms of the type of information and sections you include, as well as the actual words and phrases you use. For every line, ask yourself: will this improve how the company sees me? The answer is “No” more often than you would expect.
5. Emphasize results first, then skills
For example: “Increased Facebook following by 40% and total Facebook reach by 60%” instead of “Ran company’s Facebook and Twitter accounts”. When possible, share the exact numbers. If you want to emphasize your skills or methods, you should still front-load the impact: “Increased site traffic and conversion KPI’s with targeted SEO strategies” instead of “Used SEO strategies to boost site traffic”. Companies hire candidates who will give them results.
6. Lead them to other sources of information about you
You can’t fit everything about you on one piece of paper. If they want to learn more, make it easy! In the past I’ve included links to online writing portfolios, a personal website, my Github page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle, Instagram account, and photo blog. Make sure this is appropriate for your specific industry.
7. Always submit as a PDF with a professional file name
Whenever you submit your resume, submit it as a PDF and label it as - firstnamelastname.pdf. I am always surprised by how many resumes I receive resumes with odd titles like "theverylastfinalfinal2.pdf" or resumes that say "googleresume3.pdf" when the student is actually applying to Microsoft. Having messy file names screams to employers that you are a disorganized person.
ATS-friendly Resumes
We'll start by going over ATS resumes because in a lot of ways they're easier. They focus on the content of your resume and disregard how it is displayed and what it looks like. First, we'll go over a few tips specific to ATS-friendly resumes and then I'll link a few templates that will give you all a place to start.
1. Keep formatting simple
This is not the time to show off your creativity. ATS require conformity and simplicity. Therefore, you’ll need to delete any extra touches you’ve added to your resume, like logos, pictures, symbols, and shadings. Also, stick to standard resume formatting in a normal font like Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman—the ATS can’t read fancy fonts and will reject your resume out of confusion.
2. Only include one column
You will often see resumes will small columns on the right-hand side of the resume that include skills, volunteer opportunities, additional experiences, hobbies, etc. Avoid this at all costs. ATS can only read resumes with a single column.
3. Choose the correct keywords
For any profession, there’s always lingo, software, responsibilities, basic skills, and licenses or certificates associated with performing the job well—and an ATS will be looking for key phrases and contextual information related to those qualifications. To make sure the software recognizes that you’re a good fit for the job, use these tips to successfully keyword optimize your resume:
An important note here: Don’t go overboard. In the past, people thought that they could exploit the system by overstuffing their resumes with keywords, thus ranking them higher in the eyes of the ATS. This is a very bad idea: Not only is the software sophisticated enough to see this kind of keyword stuffing, if your resume does make it into human hands, no one will be impressed by a nonsensical resume with a long list of keywords.
Now that we've covered those tips. Here are a few templates that you can use to start creating your ATS friendly resume. Once you have decided which template you prefer, click File > Make a copy... save it to your own Drive and then start working from your own copy.
Creative Resumes
The hard work is done! Once you get through making your ATS, you have all of your content - congrats! All of the content related tips that we've talked about so far still apply to creative resumes. They should still be concise, use numbers, etc. The only difference is that now we want our resumes to start out from others with just a glance. When you're thinking about starting your creative resume, there are a few paths you can take. You can start from a template OR you can make your own. Either way, remember that there are times when these resumes will be printed.
Your design can use color but not too much. If you use a blue background and try to print your resume from a normal printer, your page is going to come out wrinkled because it will be soaked in too much ink. We strongly recommend that you keep the background of your creative resume white.
Here are a few examples of creative resumes for inspiration. While some examples may include skill levels, please do not include such a section in your resume.
Getting started on your creative resume may be an intimidating task but not to worry. Here are a few links to templates so that you can get started.
An important note: When you're using templates for your creative resume, make sure to change some to make it your own. You should change the color scheme, font, or even the graphics that are used.
Wrap-up
Right now you're probably feeling overwhelmed by everything that you have to do. That's perfectly normal. Don't get stressed out just yet! We will not ask you to submit your ATS-friendly resume until Wednesday and we won't ask for your Creative Resume until Thursday so you have a few days to work on both!