If you have you ever wished that you were one of those job seekers who has successfully used a creative resume to grab a recruiter’s attention, but you’ve lacked the brilliance to design something amazing yourself, then you’ll be happy to learn about a new service called Story Resumes.
According to a study by TheLadders, the average recruiter spends just six seconds looking at your resume. 6 seconds! Now, what if in the usual pile of hundreds of resumes that a recruiter scans through for one job posting – either online or on paper, there’s one that attractive, stands-out and brings an instant smile. A resume that shows that you have attempted something which others have not, the extra mile that might mean – getting noticed and getting hired!
Story Resumes is an innovative new service that transforms your ordinary resume into something visually extraordinary. They custom-design infographic resumes, illustrated resumes and animated video resumes that inspire a recruiter to spend more than just six seconds reading what you have to offer.
After taking a parenting break and living nine years abroad, Andrea struggled to get noticed for jobs. When I talked to Andrea she explained that although she was normally a confident extrovert, her failure to get noticed meant that she lost her confidence, questioned her self-worth and began to suffer from low self-esteem.
When Andrea finally got offered a job, she said she accepted it out of desperation. But it turned out to be the wrong job for her and she resigned a few months in so she could figure out her next best move.
The result? Frustrated with the whole process, Andrea decided to try something different this time around. She turned her resume into a ten-slide story and she found an illustrator to bring it to life.
From that point on, everything changed. Recruiters and company founders (on the other side of the world) started writing personal responses to her job applications, calling her within hours of receiving her resume, inviting her for interviews and offering her jobs.
One year later, Andrea has created Story Resumes to help others get noticed like she did. You can read Andrea’s full story here. (It’s in comic form and is very clever.)
What problems does Story Resumes solve?
1. They get you noticed
The hardest part of getting a job is just getting noticed in the first place. After all, how can you impress a recruiter with your wealth of knowledge at an interview if you can’t even score an interview in the first place?
Whilst Story Resumes can’t guarantee their resumes will result in your dream job, as a career expert who has coached multiple clients, I’d hazard a guess that their resumes will definitely get you noticed. After that, it’s up to you to wow a recruiter and demonstrate why you’re the best person for the job.
2. They do the artwork for you
Unless you’re a graphic artist, you probably don’t have the skills to design an engaging visual resume and/or you don’t have the time to target a reliable artist to do it for you. Sure, there are some online resume products out there that you can use to try to design one yourself. But how many busy people have the time, inclination and patience to do that either? And, being a graphic artist or in the creative arts field, you are kind of expected to present a visually appealing resume. Story Resumes can be part of your creative online portfolio.
What do I love about Story Resumes?
1. The visuals
As a new service, they only have six samples of their work on their website so far, but take a look for yourself and I challenge you to tell me that if you were a recruiter, you wouldn’t stop in your tracks and want to read more about the job seeker who was innovative enough to submit something so engaging?
2. The stories
I love the fact that this company knows how important it is for your resume to ‘tell your story’. This is something that I have spoken about before on this site. Recruiters don’t just want data and they don’t just want pretty, they want to understand more about you, your values, your personality and your story. A resume that is crafted like a story has a much better chance of resonating with a recruiter than one that looks like every other resume that crosses that recruiter’s desk that day.
So, if you’re a frustrated job seeker or someone who just wants to skip the whole frustration part of the job search process, I encourage you to take a take a look at Story Resumes and spread the word of this great new service.
Here’s an example:
