With Steve Jobs off sick, Apple seems to have taken ’small is beautiful’ a bit too far.

Make sure your CV avoids this fate

Today I received a designer’s CV in the post. They wished to be considered for any relevant full-time creative posts in the future. I gladly receive many such CVs, which understandably vary in quality. This one, however, really annoyed me for the following reasons:

1. Because they’d miscalculated the postage by 6p, I had to pay this PLUS a £1 handling charge. In all my time as a Creative Director, I’ve never had to pay to see a designers work!
2. In the letter, they claimed admiration for a piece of work on our website, but attributed it to the wrong client
3. Instead of including examples of work in the envelope (which would have been nice considering the hassle I had receiving it) the CV featured clip art of flowers – not very inspiring.
4. The CV was littered with typos and over the top rhetoric.

The CV did include a URL to an online portfolio (a long and complex URL which could have been shortened at tinyurl.com). Why the designer didn’t just email it too me I don’t know. The thing is, the work (although nice enough) wasn’t relevant to our business. It’s a shame because the CV did allude to experience in some of our core areas, but failed to include any examples.

Then, to add further insult, another web-link was supplied to the designer’s Flickr account. ‘Perhaps this person has some skill with a camera that I should know about’, I thought. No, just a bunch of holiday photos – very nice, but not really relevant.

This designer obviously has some talent, but their lack of attention to detail, ambition and common sense has, on this occasion, really let them down. As a Creative Director, I always take time to look carefully at a designer’s CV. I’m using it to build up a picture of the person’s skills, personality and attitude. It forms my first impression, so it must impress me. Here are my list of dos and don’ts to consider:

PLEASE DO:

• Plenty of research and preparation
• Present yourself professionally, sensibly and with style
• Make sure you’ve paid the correct postage
• Mention agency work you admire (but please get the details right!)
• Big yourself up, but with some humility
• If the role involves print, include examples of relevant work (even if you have an online portfolio)
• Don’t forget the wow factor.

PLEASE DON’T

• Tart up your CV with clip art
• Leave lazy typos and spelling mistakes
• Put in irrelevant work unless you feel it enriches your CV
• Tell me about the cleaning job you had as a student (only relevant education please)
• Include sob stories
• Include overlong URLs on printed CVs (use tinyurl.com)

With shrinking budgets, increased competition and an abundance of high quality freelancers, things are going to get much tougher for designers searching for full-time positions. It’s vitally important they plan and execute every CV submission with love, care and originality. There’s a place Creative Directors file shoddy CVs…