I think considering nearly ALL design students are sending me this sort of cv you can near guarantee that most people who apply to non design positions are doing the same and literally sending out colourless text only CVs.

You’ll probably stand out from the pack of CV’s by just adding a splash of colour and changing it to landscape alone without even getting any more creative than that! Of course for a non design job one does not want to get ‘too creative’.

I recently went to Sally’s end of year student art gallery viewing, so will be blogging about that soon.

Thank you so much for your kind words about my blog! I hope you enjoy today’s blog, I just finished it a moment ago – some beautiful images from the artists.

Read this post with mega interest! If going for non-design jobs, do you think a well designed ‘landscape’ cv could be acceptable?

I’ve been thinking of ways to ensure my CV doesn’t look boring/standard, and thought that having a ‘splash’ of colour somewhere and using the lanscape orientation would help it to stand out a little.

Opinions?!

Thanks….By the way Amanda, I LOVE reading your blogs, you’re such a cool designer!

Unless you are bad with colours and have little in the way of creative skills, then don’t risk it! Same goes for fonts really, if unsure I’d stick to boring rather than risk getting it wrong.

Someone badly picking the wrong fonts and colours for a cv is far more a disaster than sending just black on white simple text.

Sally said that she was advised against sending out something like this by her lecturer, but yet she then received compliments from design firms saying how they impressed they were with it, so it’s definitely the way to go for designers.

Not sure about sending out something that whacky and wild for a non creative job! BUT … I do think people could get a bit more creative with their CV’s than most people actually do. A bit of ‘style’ to your CV will surely help to get it noticed in the pile without being seen as unprofessional as long as you don’t go too far with it.

Thanks for the comment Barny

Working in the NHS; I often see some very bland submissions, from people who have obviously been pushed towards a very formal approach by the NHS’s standard submission process (a website and PDF/Word forms).

It’s well worth putting the effort in, as you’ll get the best opportunities if your CV stands out from the crowd. Agreed, best to always have a good CV on standby ‘just in case’, you never know

A word doc full of text will definitely end up in the pile for a design job, I have a pile of them right here as testament to that.

If you are applying for design jobs or placements (bearing in mind how extremely competitive the design industry is) you’re going to be pretty much ignored if you don’t at least try to wow them with visuals.

i am very happy in my current job so at the moment not in much need of my CV to be sorted but is always useful to have straight away if the worst does happen!

I always wanted to design mine in a web page kind of format, (being a web designer) but is just easier to write it up in word and quicker when desperately looking for a job. But I think after seeing this I will spend some spare time knocking my new improved CV up!

At the end of the day having something that will stand out from the crowd is what it is all about, and a simple word document generally ends up on a pile of the same looking pieces of paper.