What fun
to be in an industry where almost anything goes! In
advertising and the arts, you have a license to be creative
with your résumé. After all, creativity is one of your
strongest qualifications for the job. It is the need for this
creativity that determines when résumés like the ones in
this chapter are appropriate. Using a creative résumé takes
a very special type of person. They are not for accountants,
bankers, and executives.
Needless
to say, these résumés are not scannable, but the chances of
a gallery, museum, graphic art firm, or ad agency scanning
your résumé are almost nonexistent. Scannability in creative
industries is not an issue in almost all cases. When
scannability is an issue, simply create an ASCII text file résumé
and send it along with your creative version (see the Scannable
Resume Design Guide).
No
matter how creative you want to be, you must still keep
readability in mind. If your audience can't read your résumé,
what good is it?
Here I
most gratefully acknowledge the work of Gregg Berryman. I have
in my library a copy of his book, Designing Creative Résumés
(Menlo Park, CA: Crisp Publications, Inc., 1985). His book is
a great resource for creative résumé ideas and, although it
is out of print at this writing, it can be found in many city
libraries.
