Colored resumes/coloured cvs?

[andywestken]

I've been involved with recruitment recently and some of the resumes/cvs we received were colored/coloured!

Now I'm wondering whether my own should be upgraded to use color?

Is this a good idea? Do most laser printers support color these days? Does is look cool or tacky?

Andy

[Moschops]

Stand by for a bazillion different opinions :p

I think a CV should look professional and should be to the point. I can appreciate that in some industries there is scope for demonstrating one's creative ability in the CV itself, but in the technical industry, less so.

Black ink on white paper, tuned to the job applied for, making it as easy as you can for the reader to verify that the skills and experience you're presenting match the job requirements. Pretty colours and clever layouts are at best a mild distraction (I also try very hard to make it a single side of paper, without having to resort to a tiny font - it forces me to clip irrelevant stuff and in doing so ensures that everything written down is very relevant indeed).

Next (utterly different) opinion is incoming any second now... :)

[atropos]

I completely agree with Moschops. CVs should state the applicant's skills, education, and experience succinctly, and be free of disctracting elements.
A CV is a resume, not an art project.

That being said, there are many people who feel that, in order to stand out in a large pool of applicants, there should be more creativity in the construction of a CV; "let your personality show through," as it were. I think this is a fine idea - up to a point. Using colored paper sounds okay, as long as it's not too outlandish (definitely no hot pink). For the font, I would think that any readable one would be fine, so long as you stick to it for the entire CV.

However, if your CV has clip art, emoticons, multi-hued type and varying fonts, glitter, or little hearts in place of the dots of the letter 'i', you're doing something wrong. very wrong.

[1yR4jE8b]

Simple, soft colors for section headings are fine (like the colors used in Microsoft Word styles). Anything else looks childish.

[andywestken]

Thanks for the input.

I do remember being told to use white, high quality paper with Times Roman when I was at school. But that style looks so old fashioned these days.

I already modernized my cv to use some or other sans serif font for the headings. And now I'll follow up darkestfright's suggestion, to check out Word's soft colors, and make the headings colored.

Hopefully the job agencies don't pick up on the habit of computing book authors to put their mug shots on the back of their books and get us to add photos to out cvs!

Andy

[chrisname]

Apparently, serif fonts tend to look better on paper while sans serif fonts tend to look better on a monitor, so that can be something to bear in mind. I'd probably go for Arial or Helvetica anyway. If it was a troll application, I would, of course, use comic sans ms.

[Moschops]

Don't forget to do it with Latex for nice kerning and spacing.

[ResidentBiscuit]

I read an article sometime ago about this. It was written by someone in the software who was doing some hiring. He said that after reading through dozens of black and white resumes, he was actually pleased when he saw one with color on it and gave the guy an interview (he had the knowledge to back it up, but the color helped give him an upper hand).

I wouldn't say go overboard with green background, pink text, and frills on the side, but maybe a blue box with your projects listed would be nice.

[3hM2Nwbp]

They always hire the guy that prints out his resume in wingdings.





I have never been in an employer's position, but I do know a few employers personally. From my experience, the only thing that they care about is what they can read on the resume. How 'pretty' the resume is, is irrelevant to the position. The only thing that matters is if the applicant fits the requirements. In my humblest of opinions, the "wow" should happen when the employer visits your website -- which is one of the items listed on your resume.

[Moschops]

I am so out of touch. I have no website and, indeed, effectively no web presence linked to my name :( My CV must be a very boring experience for the hiring people.

[chrisname]

@Luc Lieber,
I would agree that the content is the most important thing, but if you have a stack of CVs to get through, and one of them is eye-catching (but tasteful), you'd probably read it first (and I suspect that just having your CV read first is an advantage if the guy reading it has to read 20 more afterwards).

@Moschops,
I don't think you need to have your own website (unless you're a freelancer).

[Moschops]

I've got one linked to my stage name, Dick Rambone, but that's really for my other CV.

[chrisname]

I can only think of one kind of stage where a name like that would be appropriate, in which case, you're either extremely lucky or extremely unlucky depending on who the other, uh, "actors" are.

[andywestken]

Thanks again for the input.

After playing round with Word's assorted styles, and printing off the few I likes best to see what they look like on paper, I've ended up with what I think is a resonable, restrained color scheme.

Andy