Visual Resume Vs. Traditional Resume
There is a vogue about visual resumes these days. It seems that almost every uber-corporate sector recommend candidates to maintain a visual resume. But why is this so? It is actually believed that when an aspirant creates a visual resume, he/she is able to develop a firm impression in the modern professional.
But here we are again left to ponder how justified the statement is. It is always better to avoid generalizing visual resume as the ultimate tool towards the success of an individual in the professional sector.
Let us have a look at the drawbacks that visual resume suffers from:
Not ideal for online job portals
It is quite true that visual resume is full of impacts. But a simple question can reveal one of its major shortcomings: can it be uploaded on online job portals? The answer will invariably be, ‘No’. Job portals are all wordy and highlight on the educational and professional credibility of the applicants. Some of them do have options of uploading the images of the candidates, but that’s actually very rare.
The purpose behind such a traditional format is that the organizations who host the job vacancies wish to take printouts of the resumes, scan them, decide whether they fall in ‘rejected’, ‘approved’, or ‘to be considered’ categories, and file them accordingly. Hence, the prospect of visual resume in such areas is very thin, rather totally absent in platforms like those.
Solution: You can create a visual resume website, then add the website URL into your traditional resume.
Fake resumes are a nightmare
What employers wish to see is how suitable a candidate is for a post and what his/her supporting qualifications are. Unfortunately, they can be tricked through a visual resume, and the company can end up picking the wrong guy for the job. A recruiter who is hiring someone by looking at his online portfolio should always ask a traditional resume.
For a job seeker, it is always there is no hard and fast rule on sticking with a particular kind of resume. Make sure your visual resume doesn’t give away false information. Always remember: not every organization will accept visual resume. As a candidate, you must have separate copies of both visual and traditional resume.
Visual resumes can be expensive
As a candidate, if your design skills are not great, then creating a visual resume can be an expensive affair. There are many sites offering custom visual resumes (hardcopy), and after receiving these copies of visual resume, it can be impossible to edit them.
You cannot do anything about it – neither can you omit a particular section or edit anything. This is again a major drawback of visual resume as the candidate has to submit the same resume everywhere, irrespective of the specified requirements of a particular organization. He/she can tailor-make the resume as per the requirements of a particular organization by placing another order. That’s going to cost a fortune for any job seeker.
Although it may sound backdated, traditional resume gives the advantage of customizing the resume as and when the candidate required and a particular job demands.
Solution: Always have your visual resume online. For instance, create a visual resume website. Creating, editing, and adding new information is possible any time.
If visual resumes are full of shortcomings, why does the modern generation take interest in the same? This hints that there are more reasons than one that makes visual resume score over the traditional format. Let’s find out what they are:
Job seeker can provide more information
Candidates can hardly express themselves properly through the typecast wordy formats of traditional resume. More information means more words and letters, which lengthens your conventional resume to a greater degree.
Who really has the time to read 10 pages of textual information about you?
Traditional resumes ultimately hints that the employers might get bored while going through pages and pages of resume or simple overlook them and dump them in the trashcans! This is really pathetic as the entire labor and time involved by the candidate for working on his/her resume is a sheer wastage of time — and now the resume doesn’t serve any potential purpose. At the same time, candidates with immense educational and professional credibility and acclamations often fail to decide what to put in and what to leave. This is exactly where visual resume is highly recommended.
Through visual resume candidates can provide more information about them, but obviously in a crispier and attractive manner. A visual resume; a conglomerate of images, web links, audio files and video footages, thus appears more of an interactive video to the employers than monotonous autobiography. So, they take more interest in the same, and at time do not mind spending a couple of minutes more while going through the same. This is where candidates with visual resume can at times give balls to those having traditional resume!
Recruiters love visual resumes
While traditional resumes are jungles of educational, professional and personal details of each and every candidate, a beautifully and professionally made visual resume will always be a superior option. It conveys the same old things, but in a much impressive manner.
The highly interactive multimedia based format may often leave a permanent impression in the minds of employers and make the particular candidate score over other applicants with same credibility or even more!
Candidates can portray their soft skills
Education and professional experience are definitely vital in a resume, but are they the only criteria a particular job demands? It is never so.
Say for example, a person applying for the post of sales manager might have all the required educational skills, such as a marketing degree, post graduation or graduation under his belt. He/she might even posses a hefty resume that shows the candidates professional liaison with many well known companies. But he/she might be stammer! This will never be reflected in a traditional resume. Unfortunately, this will become a bane when he/she goes for selling his/her company’s products to potential clients. This stammering can often obstruct the candidate from expressing himself/herself properly and make him/her lack confidence. Thus, it will lead to repeated failures in reaching him/her targeted projections in a particular period. Eventually, the candidate might wash his/her hands off the job!
So, traditional resumes can also be tricky at times where visual resumes appear fairer. Besides this typical example, visual resume is the most appropriate platform that portrays the soft skills of a candidate, such as boldness in articulation, way of language throw, creativity, confidence, etc. which can be hardly found in a traditional resume.
Now this is certainly a very rare — and probably silly — example, but a visual video resume, from recruiter’s perspective, is always better.
Chance to get a better job without sweating
The greatest advantage of having your visual resume online, as a website, can incrase your resume’s accessibility to more and more employers and organizations. This often occurs across the borders of the nation too, and paves way for international offers for a particular candidate. Most interesting thing to know is that all these happen without the knowledge of the candidate! This can never ever be possible in case of traditional resume.
