For this semester I have to create a CV which will be used for applying to real jobs in hopes to find a placement for next year. I have created plenty of CVs for retail in the past however they are never that successful. However in this class I have learned that including a photograph is more of a ‘American’ thing and it is not recommended to prevent ‘age discrimination’ (As well as your birthday information). I always included these in my CVs however I will make sure to not include this in this CV and future CVs.
The main issue for me making a CV is that I do not have work experience to include in my CV which I brought this up to my lecturer which I explained how I have applied for lots of retail jobs and have never been successful. I then gave my thoughts on it which I thought a retail job would not be really relevant to a design job which my lecturer then gave a explanation saying how it would show teamwork and the ability to work with others. During this talk I also mentioned how I had a visit as part of graphic design in school to Henderson Print which my lecturer said I could include that as it is relevant.
Now having my CV content typed out I ran it through CV360 which my original draft scored 62% which some key changes included to shorten my bio to around 80 words (was 139) and to ensure to include my name. Lots of the feedback would be fixed anyway such as the structure, format etc and lots of the ‘fixes’ were incorrect for things I have included. Of course I lost a lot of marks for not having a work experience section which is what I think scored my CV score so low.
At home I was thinking about what else I could add to my CV to make it stand out a bit more which I thought adding my volunteer experience would be a good choice as it shows collaboration, creating content and health and safety awareness. It is not Digital Design related at all apart from the photography but shows skills I have which I would be able to use in a work environment, just in a different way. I think this would be better than having nothing to show examples of these skills which I could bring up many examples in a interview to demonstrate these skills.
Now with the shorted bio and the added volunteer experience and the visit to Henderson by CV360 score increased by around 20%.
Being much happier with my CV I went to Figma to design a layout to later bring to InDesign. I usually design my CV in two columns however my Lecturer gave a good point to design in one column as it makes it easier for the user to quickly scan through it and find what they are looking for. I also experimented with two columns however I do much prefer the single column as it is much more readable.
I created a CV in one column however this was then across two pages so I went back and designed a two column version to compare them. I do think the one page two column looked a lot better and easier to read as it is just one page which a second can also be missed. After some re arraging of content and editing the scale I got a nice balanced CV with space at the top and bottom for my Logo/name with my contact as well as space at the bottom which I thought I could incude a QR code here to link to my portfolio site etc. I made sure the QR code was the same scale as the logo for a nice constancy.
In my CV I included a custom QR code which was labeled as ‘free’ so I created a QR code with my logo inside it. However after a few weeks this QR code expired and I had it sent to two companys so I couldnt just change it and that was it fixed.