Open for Business: Picture your resume as a picture

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Your credentials in a box

In the today’s world of five applicants for every job opening, it’s important to be noticed.

Let’s assume you make the initial cut from the screening criteria of an online application database or that you’ve successfully networked into HR or the hiring manager.  You still need to communicate your credentials to a low level reviewer in about 2 seconds.

If you’re still in HR, it’s a good guess that they’re scanning dozens of resumes filled with words.  Here’s an idea – provide a picture instead.  Not a photo, but a table (with color!) that shows how well you match the position.

It’s easily envisioned of course, because you’ve done your homework and you know how well you suit the position.  Furthermore, you know how to build tables.  But here’s the trick – you need it to print well as a PDF.  This is not intuitive.

Life Cycle Assessment
Beth Kujan, sustainability engineer

To successfully create a PDF document that contains a matrix of your skills uses the whole of Microsoft Office suite, but it’s worth it.  PDF documents are compact enough to be accepted by online application programs.  In fact, the matrix by itself can be small enough to be a supporting document (usually > 50kB.)

Start with Excel – set up your matrix in a table.  Then format the cells of the top titles to an angle of ~30 degrees off vertical.   The check marks that indicate where you obtained the experience that meets the requirement can be any color or clip art piece.  To get rid of unsightly lines, color them white.

Now copy that table and past it into PowerPoint.  Don’t use the standard paste, use “Paste Special” and paste it in as a picture – any type of metafile will do.  Now that it’s a picture, copy it again.

You’re ready for Publisher.  Open a blank sheet (A3 portrait.)  Paste in your picture.   Now you can size the matrix, crop it and add text around it.  You can paste in text from your cover letters and add your resume on a second page.

Now for the tricky part – converting to PDF.  Normally doing a “save as” and choosing PDF from the drop down menu will work.  Not this time.  Instead, from the file tab, choose “publish as PDF or XPF.”  Choose PDF, which is not necessarily the default.  The simple matrix you see in this article was 45 kB in PDF form.

A picture speaks a thousand words and managers love checklists.  Now you have both.

Beth Kujan is one of the organizers of the Morris County Career Network, which meets on the second and fourth Monday of each month at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown to help professionals in transition.

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