Special Résumé Looks Can Do Quite a Job At Getting You Noticed
 
By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

To stand out from the competition, some job seekers are creating résumés with aesthetic features that defy convention. Recruiters say these efforts demonstrate creativity, attention to detail and other characteristics that can help draw their interest.

Last year, Pat McConnell, then the president of technology firm Vexcel Corp. in Boulder, Colo., was sifting through a large stack of résumés when he landed on one such document. The shiny brochure was a contrast to the cookie-cutter résumés surrounding it.

"He did extra things that made me look at his résumé a lot harder," he says of the document's creator, Daniel Houle, a 41-year-old former consultant.

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Mr. Houle's résumé resembles a marketing pamphlet. It's four pages long and features complete sentences divided into paragraphs. Across the top, in large letters, are the words: "patrick, i wasn't looking for a new challenge, but you know what perry's like" -- a reference to David Perry, an executive recruiter who persuaded Mr. Houle to consider the senior sales position he eventually landed at Vexcel, which was purchased by Microsoft last year. Mr. Perry co-wrote "Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters," about creative job-search strategies.

Allan Zander, a vice president at SolaCom Technologies Inc. in Quebec, says he receives as many as 300 résumés when he has a position open and around 40 a month at other times. He says fewer than 5% have creative designs.

Among the more eye-catching ones, Mr. Zander says, are those that display corporate logos representing an applicant's current and past employers or clients. "I'm always interested in companies someone has worked at before," he says. "When you recognize a logo, it helps train your eye to exactly where you want to look on a résumé."

Another design element Mr. Zander says he admires is the pull-out quote -- a short bit of text displayed in large type. A candidate for a senior-level project-manager job once used this tactic to highlight her top skills and references, recalls Mr. Zander.

Stephanie Hester, 37, a free-lance writer in Raleigh, N.C., designed her résumé to look and read like a news release, allowing her to show her writing skills and career history. "It has opened the door for me at least 75% of the time," she says.

Kevin Watson, 44, of Ottawa says he got an interview for the first job he applied to online after revamping his résumé layout in November. He says he got no responses the previous six months to five postings he answered. The engineering professional also sent his new résumé to three executive recruiters and all offered to send it to clients.

There are caveats: Some of the software programs employers use to store résumés don't recognize tables, logos and graphs, says Jay Hargis, managing partner of New England Assessments, a human-resources consulting firm in Boston. He suggests sending a hard copy of your résumé by mail in addition to the online version.

Some also go overboard. "If it's hard to understand or it takes too much time to read, there's a good chance I'm not going to look at it," says Kurt Ronn, founder and president of HRworks LLC, a recruiting firm in Atlanta.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Corrections & Amplifications:

Pat McConnell is president of Vexcel Canada Inc., a subsidiary of Vexcel Corp. in Boulder, Colo. This article incorrectly says he is president of Vexcel Corp.

View original publication online in the Wall Street Journal