The Times, They Are a Changin'

I just have this impending sense of doom.

Tomorrow we go to fill out our new paperwork for the new company. "It's just a formality," they say. We'll see. The majority of it, yes, I can understand. The change in benefits, the switch of the 401K provider, the updates to personnel information.

The resumes, I can't see. "Just for their records." Yes. Of course. Just for the record of who we're going to get rid of and who we're going to keep.

As an artist, I hate resumes. They don't even begin to describe what we do. The portfolio is the piece you need to see to truly judge an artist. I've hired artists. I know what we're looking for. Unfortunately, the generic corporate hierarchy isn't always quite so understanding.

That's not to say I don't have a good resume. It's just that it's depressing to pull it out and update it. It usually means something has gone horribly wrong somewhere along the way.

I'm not under the illusion that I'll be in the same place for most of my life. When it's voluntary, that's one thing. But when someone tells you to start submitting resumes, it's all gone bad.

So... On Submitting Resumes:

Look at any of the job search sites and they'll give you a long list of what-to-do's and what-not-to-do's. The one that really gets me is the suggestion not to EVER make a creative resume, because it makes it look like there's no real content.

Huh?

The person who wrote it has obviously never dealt with a creative person in their life, and certainly never tried to hire anyone for a creative position. While a professionally presented resume in Times New Roman, printed on a nice ivory linen is certainly nothing to sneeze at if you're looking to be an accountant, the ones that stood out in my stacks of applicants were the ones who put a little more thought into it.

One artist made a flip-book with his resume at the beginning and samples of his work throughout. It worked as both a foot in the door and a portfolio showing, all at once. I could tell immediately if I wanted to talk to him or not.

If I'm looking for an artist, I want to know what they're capable of, not how well they can organize their life history into a Word template. The creative pieces I received got my attention. If the resume printed on them didn't match the quality of work, then it was tossed, but it was the sample of the work that sparked the initial interest.

Back when I was applying for my last position, the resume I sent out became the subject of one of my interviews, sparking almost as much interest and as many questions about the work as the rest of my portfolio. No, I'm not going to tell you what I did. Life's not quite that easy...

Put some thought into the whole resume thing. It won't make it any less depressing to work on in a crunch, but it may open a few more doors.

Next time: Wait and see...