As all designers know, a quality portfolio and plenty of experience are often the deciding factors when a client is thinking about offering you work. Most designers on DesignRush spend a lot of time creating a stunning portfolio, so they can wow a potential employer. But this is not always enough. No matter how amazing your portfolio is and how much experience you have, unless your design resume is top notch, you might not even get a foot in the door.
Designers must learn to sell themselves. The creative arena is highly competitive and there will always be up-and-coming upstarts snapping at your heels. In many cases, a resume is the first thing an employer sees, so if yours isn’t up to scratch, it will be tossed in the trash without further ado.
Here are five important ways to boost your design resume so it stays at the top of the pile.
Make it Stand Out
You’re a designer, so use your skills to ramp up your resume and transform it from a boring white page into something that really catches the eye. Show off your creativity. You don’t need to go completely crazy with crazy fonts and bold formatting choices, but playing it safe is not going to help your cause.
List Your Design Awards
Listing some awards on your resume is always going to help. When faced with a pile of similar resumes, employers look for things to differentiate one candidate from another. If you have an industry award, this makes you stand out. If you are at the beginning of your design career, you probably won’t have won any awards yet, so start applying for a few. Enter design competitions and pit your skills against some of the best designers in the business. You never know, you might win an award AND a prize! And if you do, don’t forget to add it to your resume.
Make it Digital
Most designers have online portfolios these days. It makes sense given we live in an online world. To boost your chances of securing work, make sure your resume is digital and downloadable. Include a link to your resume in your portfolio, so interested parties can download your resume and find out more about who you are and what you can do for them.
This is your chance to sell your skills, so make it count.
Link Your Resume to Social Media
It may not be wise to link your resume to all of your social media accounts, but it is definitely worth linking to a LinkedIn profile, as this is where many headhunters start looking for suitable candidates. Include your LinkedIn profile on your resume and vice versa. Keep your resume updated at all times, so if someone spots your profile and checks out your resume, they can see your latest achievements.
Link to a Blog
A creative blog is a perfect accompaniment to a design resume. Show off your skills and thought leadership to prospective clients. Post blogs on topics you feel passionate about and demonstrate your ideas and expertise.
First impressions really do matter, so bear this in mind when putting together a design resume.