CultusOnce upon a time there lived a young man who was looking for a job.
Well, you must have read such lines a zillion times during your childhood while reading stories. The only difference: those lines spoke of a king in place of a young man. And you must be wondering what this has to do with the resume building task! But this is what can help you land a great job and make you feel like a king! It is the latest trend of resume building, which still keeps the styles of these tales relevant. And if you want to make the recruiters interested and get a great job, it is important for you to shape your resume in a storytelling format.
Attract recruiters easily with the stories
Telling a story through a resume can have multiple advantages. The primary one among them, of course, is to make the resume more attractive. Remember, you recruiter has to go through a large number of resumes: more than you can imagine. And most of them are written in almost the same format. They contain just your name and contact numbers, mention your career history, and so on. This, of course, creates monotony. Shape your resume in such a way that it offers a shift from the old norm. Instead, presenting yourself through the stories can help to make your resume more relevant to the recruiters.
Tell about your qualities subtly through the stories
What story do you need to tell? And how is it possible to include it in a resume? To get an answer to this, you need to review your career thoroughly. Check out the roles that you have played in the companies where you have worked throughout your career. What are the challenges that you have faced? How have you solved them? Tell them in an engaging way to your potential recruiters. Include your success stories, your achievements, your expertise, and your problem-solving ability. Make them feel that you will be the person whom the company will need at times of crisis to solve issues and help it return to the path of success.
Identify the stories that you want to tell
Planning to go for a storytelling resume?
Then your first task is to find the stories that you want to include there. Not all your career achievements can be included there, as you need to provide them in complete detail. Hence, you should look for the best one. Once you have identified the stories, which you want to include in the resume, you need to take special care in writing them. Ensure that you are able to summarize the complete information within a short space, so that the you can limit the resume within a page or two.
Express more in less space with images and infographic
The old adage has been overused, but still it remains true: even today, a picture speaks a thousand words. So, use the pictures and images to tell your story in the resume. It makes the task a lot easier. The best way to do this is probably creating an infographic, which will help you explore all your career opportunities. You can include dialogues or interesting data to make it more interesting for the viewers. It will help you create a visually engaging resume, thus ensuring that the viewers will be interested enough to go through it. However, one thing that you should always remember is that you need to keep it quite simple, so that it can be understood easily. The visual cues should be included, so that the readers can understand the context properly.
Colors – a must for storytelling resume
Is your life completely black and white? Of course not. All its aspects must have been extremely vibrant till date. Ensure that it is reflected in your resume too, although in a manner subtle enough to suit the corporate requirement. A splash of blue or a bit of some other color in the headings can help to improve the look of the resume and, at the same time, make it attractive for your potential recruiters. And the most important thing that the colors do for your resume is – they help to create the ambiance for the story you are planning to share with the recruiters through your resume. Thus, these colors can play a major role in giving the right shape to your resume, so that it can be attractive and, at the same time, remain corporate enough.
With every passing day, forms of storytelling resumes are gaining increasing popularity. They are becoming more and more relevant, as recruiters are looking for something, which is different from the age-old ideas and practices. Hence, if you want to attract the attention of the recruiters within a short time, going for a storytelling resume can be a really great idea.
Richard White works as an editor at Yellow brick path. He enjoys varying his work and researching new and different approaches to his work. He shares an interest in career counseling and recruitment.