I’m a bit of a creative person. Just a tad. Well more than a tad, more like a titch. How about this: I bake fancy cakes, I have beautiful gardens, I write quite a bit, I love puffy paint (LOVE), I am a closet foodie that loves creating knock out dinners … in short: I am creative. What I am learning is that not all people are that creative. I don’t mean that as a slam at all. I just need to learn how to communicate with them.
One way I am communicating right now is via my resume. I’m not a big fan of the typical resume. I think they are boring and show no creativity what so ever. What I’ve come to recognize is that not all people who are going to come in to contact with my resume are going to be creative people. So I’ve done a make-over on my resume and made it creatively conservative. Still me but not SOOOO MUCH of me.
That’s page 1. Being over the age of 30 has provided me with some experience in life and work and so a one page resume is not going to happen. Here’s where I had to be creatively conservative again: what the heck do I leave out ? So with pain akin to giving away a child (depends on the day of course) I hacked my resume down. It fits nice and neat on to two pages only !
I think I’ve got all the important stuff on there and hopefully some time soon a person who appreciates a somewhat creative format will recognize that I put time and effort in to this and would do so for their company. I hadn’t thought about it that way until a friend pointed it out. It wouldn’t occur to me to just slap something together and put it out there to represent me. Ick. She pointed out that while the format is somewhat unusual, as someone who reads a lot of resumes, she appreciated the time and effort put in to it. I had a bit of a watershed moment.
I’m glad I’ve put the time and energy in to creating something that I think not only represents my work experience but a bit of my personality. I’m open to new ideas, can see things in a creative way while still getting the message across and am not afraid to take chances. Having said that, the first edition of this resume had a lot more color and pizzaz so maybe going a bit more conservative wasn’t a bad idea. I also don’t want to be viewed as unstable … you know what I mean.
So, this is my compromise to the job-seeking Gods. A resume that expresses some of who I am without hopefully being too scary. A resume that will interest someone enough to invite me for an interview where I will hopefully remember all that stuff I took off. I guess the next step is being creatively conservative with my portfolio. I can feel the pain already …