I have for the past several years sought out the elusive “storytelling resume.” Is it a version of the traditional resume, as I write about in my book? Is it a blog, as I’ve written about before, most recently here? Is it a social-media resume, as I’ve written about here? Several career professionals have told me they create story resumes, but their examples never seem to quite what I envision a storytelling resume to be (even though I’m still not quite sure what that vision is).
Perhaps the storytelling resume is like the snazzy, multimedia creations being touted by the site VisualCV, now in beta testing. These “documents” (and I hate to use that term because it suggests something static) can contain photographs, charts and graphs, video, audio clips, and additional documents (such as letters of recommendation or examples of your work).
The VisualCV of Kristen Wright, part of which is pictured above, includes a video clip of Kristen that helps you get to know her better, little mouseover popups about her employers and schools she attended, a bar graph showing her performance (that enlarges when you mouse over it), and downloadable PDFs that include samples of her work and letters of recommendation, all presented in an eye-catching and appealing design.
I’m still not sure if VisualCV is THE storytelling resume, but it tells more of the job-seeker’s story than most I’ve seen.
When you go to the site, wait a few moments for the little Flash “commercial” to run, and then you can see a bunch of VisualCV samples that you can browse through.
Neat concept. I’ll probably try it and report on my experience.