Your Resume & Bio: The Hardest Writing You'll Ever Do

Your Resume and Bio:

The Hardest Writing You

Will Ever Do

Presented by David LaFontaine

Director of Professional Development

UXPALA, April 29, 2017

What is a contextual resume?

“A way of going beyond the simple bullet-point chronological resume that is stilted and artificial, and instead looking at a way to tell a story and reveal the human being that they might actually want to work with…”

… as opposed to…

Admini-speak

Jargon

Artificiality

Cold, calculated

Lack of humanity

These are hallmarks of

a resume that is written

according to a formula,

rather than to tell a story

OK, let’s deconstruct Dave’s resume…

Really? You’re

going to do me

like this?

First Content Area

Your value proposition, as clearly and emphatically as you

can state it.

This is your “elevator pitch”What have you done?

What is your process?

How did you work?

And how is that going to translate to this new position?

First Content Area

Tip: Work with other people on this.

Run it past them, and get a bunch of opinions from people

you trust.

Try out “informational lunches” to see if you can get an HR

pro to help you out.

First Content Area

Danger: Don’t try to lie.

Don’t use “admini-speak” in this.

It should be a paragraph that flatters you, shows your

humanity, and makes the HR person nod and continue

reading.

2nd Content Area: Skills & Experience

If you’ve got the HR manager reading this far, then you’ve

got them hooked.

Now you just have to back up the statement you made in

the first content area with the stuff you’ve done, and the

skills that allowed you to do it.

2nd Content Area: Skills & Experience

Write one sentence that describes what was the most compelling thing that you did on that job

Write one sentence that describes what the results were of your work. Numbers or results that you can point to are particularly compelling to the bean-counters.

Repeat for each gig that is relevant.

Boom! That’s it! You’re out.

Content Area 3: Further Qualifications

If you’ve written and published articles, or done presentations, or performed charity work - this is the place to put it.

Don’t go overboard on making it sound flowery or important. State it plainly. They will ask you about it. Then you can explain. This is a good thing.

DANGEROUS BUT MAYBE A BONUS: Make it funny

Content Area 4: Software/tech

This is kind of a controversial point. Some companies really are sticklers on you knowing how to use the flavor of UX design tool that they use in-house.

But let’s be honest here: most UX tools really are pretty intuitive.

This is not Photoshop, or AfterEffects or Maya we’re talking about.

Content Area 4: Software/tech

Experts are split as to whether or not you should list any front-end development skills here. Some recruiters say that having skills in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, jQuery, etc., are things that can kick you into a MUCH higher income bracket (i.e. make you a “UX Unicorn”).

Others say that having coding skills detracts from your design-focused story that you’re telling.

Your mileage may vary.

Content Area 5: Education, associations

If you have certifications, put them here.

Don’t depend too much on school experience to carry you

through.

Some people take advantage of this space to get a little

playful. Depending on your personality, and how you feel

about the kind of company that you want to work for, this

can be effective at making you stand out.

Content Area 6: Keywords

Yes, we know. Keywords? WTF? What are we doing here?

Meta-stuffing a sleazy clickbait site?

Reality check time.

A lot of the screening of resumes is no longer even done by

humans. It’s by bots that scour pages, looking for matches

between the keywords in the text of your resume, and the

text of the job description.

Content Area 6: Keywords

It may seem kind of spammy - but having

this section at the end of your resume

allows you to get the message across to

the human eyes, by having the compelling

content first …

… while still getting the robots on your

side by having the words they’re looking

for in the document.

Step 7: Unleash arrogant designer!

Make it look like a designer’s resume

1. Have your name large, but not overpowering. The HR

interns will be flipping through these quickly, and you

want yours to be able to stands out

2. Make sure your name appears on pg. 2 - the intern

may not staple the pages together

3. Use color to make it stand out. But not Day-Glo

eyebleach colors

Make it look like a designer’s resume

4. DO NOT use fancy fonts. If you email the .docx to

someone to review, and they don’t have a fancy font

page installed, it will default to some basic font and all

that time you spent getting the margins just so will be

wasted

5. Divide your document into the content areas we just

went through

Thanks!

For more about Dave (seen here teaching in an underground bunker at a former military hospital in Ecuador),

please visit his site at: http://davidlafontaine.com