Art-425 | Résumé Project | Fall 2014

Posted by: Ping

What is a Résumé

A resume is an advertisement for yourself. It is a brief document that summarizes your education, expertise, employment history, and experiences that are relevant to your qualifications for a particular job for which you are applying. The purpose of a résumé (along with your cover letter) is to get an interview. Research has shown that résumé takes an average of ten interviews to receive one job offer, so your résumé needs to be persuasive and perfect, and in a friendly and easy-to-read format.

Resume Styles

Résumé usually contains four sections:

  • Contact
    • Your full name
    • Your permanent e-mail address
    • Your permanent mailing address
    • Your cell phone number
    • Your URL (if available)
  • Education
  • Experience and expertise
  • Honors, activities, and outreach

Resume Design Considerations

  • Purpose and audience
  • Software considerations
  • Effective content strategies
  • Resume layout and design principles
    • Present the most important and most powerful content first
    • Use bullets rather than full paragraphs
    • Do not clutter up your design
    • Use a legible font
    • Use grid layout
    • Leave some room for the employer to contact you to learn more

Employers review hundreds, even thousands, of resumes. It’s your job to make it easy for them to see your outstanding skills and expertise. Here are a few tips on what to include and leave out:

  • One page policy. If you plan to seek your career in the visual communication industry instead of in teaching industry, you should limit your resume within one page.
  • Keep it simple. Determine ahead of time what you’re going to include, and don’t try to stuff every piece of information you can into the document. If you give employers too much information ahead of time, they have no reason to bring you in for an interview to learn more.
  • Make sure your contact information is easy to find—and don’t include every type of contact information you have, such as address, all phone numbers, and social media handles.
  • Never lie on your resume; all information should be truthful.
  • Don’t use photographs. When the resume is opened as a low-resolution PDF, it will look bad. If you want to show high-res graphics as part of a portfolio, provide a link in your resume. Do not use any photographs such as your portrait picture and curtain clipping art element.
  • Be mindful of the PDF size. A 10-megabyte PDF might not make it through to the recipient’s email inbox, as there are often limits on file size.
  • Show some personality! Be yourself. A potential employer wants to know who the real you are, and if you’ll fit in the company.

Finishing Your Resume

  • Designing your resume in Word or PDF format if you are not a viscom major
  • Designing your resume in HTML format or MP4 format if you are a viscom major
  • Proofreading the content
  • Considering typography
  • Organizing type hierarchy
  • Outputting your resume
    > Printing your resume (PDF file or Word file) {BA Art / Art History / Studio} (Printing your resume on the special resume paper)
    > Creating an HTML resume page so that your resume could be searchable {Visual Communication}
Nov 12 Résumé Project Begins
MG 2001
Nov 19 Résumé Draft Due: Paper Résumé (AH Majors and Studio Majors)
MG 2001
Dec 3 Résumé Draft Due: Web Résumé or Motion Résumé (VisCom Majors: design your resume through HTML/CSS, or Flash, or After Effects)
Revise Paper Résumé (AH Majors and Studio Majors)

MG 2001
Dec 9 Résumé Due:
VisComm Majors: Email me your zipped root folder
or drop a DVD disk to my mailbox
Art History and Studio Majors: Drop the hardcopy of your resume to my mailbox before noon (Print the Résumé on a special résumé paper)
MG 2001

Please revise your résumé and submit your final résumé before noon on December 9. If you (viscom students) wish to review HTML5 and CSS coding technique for the HTML resume, or need some critiques and comments, feel free to email me to schedule an appointment.

To protect your personal privacy, please provide artificial contact information in your resume. I will upload some interactive résumés on my website, and link the pages back to my blog after the final exam day.

Best Resume Writing Tips:
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/resumetips/fl/best-resume-tips-2014.htm