Professionalism: What Are Infographic Resumes?

     Infographic Resumes are resumes that use informational graphs (infographs) to explain work history, education, skills, areas of interest, references, and other relevant information. Rather than explain everything through text, a balance of texts, graphs, and pictures are used. This style of resume is particularly useful for those in artistic or design fields as it can allow one to show off graphic design skills. (For examples of infographic resumes, I recommend using Pinterest.)

      Recruiters typically spend only a few seconds looking at each resume. An infographic resume can not only help set your resume apart from standard text resumes, but also make the information in the resume easier to skim through. There is no visual standard or preferred format for infographic resume; they are catered to the individual person and sometimes even position being applied for. While some may use the infographic resume as their standard resume, other job applicants may simply add it to their portfolio or use a "blended" resume style that incorporates one or two graphs into a traditional text resume.

No matter how you choose to create your infographic resume, it still needs to be well-organized; create interest in the applicant (i.e. you); and have nearly all the same information that a traditional resume would have in terms of experience, education, and skills. Additionally, using graphs may allow for more space to add in additional strengths, reference quotes, and other things that may not typically fit on a one-page text resume format.

For those that may not be comfortable designing their own infographic resume or may not have access to programs such as adobe illustrator, there are many online tools and tutorials available. There are tutorials showing how to create timelines using a spreadsheet (such as Google Spreadsheet or Microsoft Excel). If you have AI (Adobe Illustrator), this links to a great tutorial I found on youtube for making timelines using AI. If that's too technical for you, Vizualize.me is a website completely devoted to helping you create graphs for your own infographic resume. For those that aren't interested in creating their own or simply don't have time, there is an almost endless number of graphic design professionals available. (Simply search for an infographic resume designer on a search engine such as Google, and there should be plenty to choose from or check out options on fiverr.) In any case, please consider using the latest trend in resumes-infographic resumes. One of my favorite infographics (by Tina Chen) can be found here.

Here is a video that discusses the positive and negatives sides to using an infographic resume, and some general guidelines to consider when creating one: