This is how you can stand out
5 people who did decided to do something different about their application materials, and successfully landed new jobs.
The biggest challenge jobseekers face today is other applicants.
In my experience, a recruiter needs to process 50-500 applications for each position they work on, and they typically work on 5-15 positions at the same time. You do the math. Chances are, every week I read “team player”, “data-driven”, “highly motivated professional” about a few dozen times that they start to lose meaning, probably because of some kind of semantic satiation.
So how can you stand out against your competition and come on top?
Think creatively
Colors and cute graphics alone won’t do the job. Einstein said “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” Among the most creative CVs I read, it seems like creativity was expertise having fun. These candidates understand what it means to be good at their job, what the target company is looking for, and presented them with a different take. Here are 5 people who managed it.
Software Engineer: CV as an API
Joe switched from his previous legal career to become a software engineer during the pandemic. After he finished his coding bootcamp and started looking for jobs, he realized that most companies ask candidates to build an API as part of the interview process.
“So I thought, why not cut to the chase show them that I can build an API? And while they’re testing it, they’ll have to read my CV.”
He also linked his Github repository which has unit testing, and unit testing is another common part of backend engineering challenges. Check out his CV as an API here. Two birds one stone!
Marketing Manager: A personal, fun, and effective CV (Triple threat!)
This one is, hands down, the most interesting CV I’ve ever come across. This came from a former candidate of mine. When I read the CV, I realized this person might not be the hire we were looking for, but the CV was so nicely done that I felt like I had to speak to them to see who this person is. Turns out, they are exactly how the CV described them to be.
Personal: they included enough interesting details about themselves at work and outside of work that I remember them as a person, not just a bunch of experiences pieced together.
Fun: the colors and graphics smartly highlighted key information, and broke up chunks of texts to make it easier on the eyes.
Effective: the CV included all the important information the recruiter will be looking for, including achievements and numbers that illustrate the scale of their impact.
Product Manager: finally, a cover letter that worked
You might have heard that cover letters aren’t that important in the application process, that it was more of a nice-to-have. Well, Laura Wong proved us wrong. This week, I came across a post by Mind the Product on how Laura landed her first product manager job. Laura used to be a social media strategist, so she created a chart in her cover letter that stated the overlaps between her social media role and the potential product role.
Many people have attempted to connect the dots between their previous careers to the new job, but few have truly understood the new job as well as Laura did. You can check out her social media work here.
Software Engineer & Designer: a gamified personal website
I don’t know Nate Parrott in person, but I found his Twitter profile by chance and what was probably my favorite personal website. Nate designed his site so that actions like browsing his blog posts or sharing your name will earn you points, and these points in turn can unlock things like his CV or his email address.
Machine Learning Engineer: a chatbot for recruiters
Some time last year, I found a Machine Learning Engineer who built a chatbot on his personal website for recruiters that wanted to contact him for a job. The chatbot asked the recruiter a series of questions for them to share more information about the jobs, like the location, the company, the seniority level of the role. Unfortunately I cannot find the chatbot anymore or remember the name of the person, but I hope this can serve as another inspiration for your job search.
Creativity is expertise having fun
What all these projects had in common was that each person was able to present their skills and expertise in unique ways that they make an impression on whoever’s reading their application materials. When in doubt, show not tell. I know you can too and looking forward to seeing how you can present yourselves creatively too!