Position:
Designer and Illustrator
Responsibilities:
UX/UI Design, Branding, Illustration, UX Writing, User Research,
Project Summary
Finding the right job is hard, and finding the right employee is too. Resumes and cover letters can only show so much, and even design portfolios only showcase a portion of a person. In a sea of potential candidates, resumes, cover letters and portfolios, it is difficult to stand out.
I decided that a neat way to showcase my experience, soft skills, and work ethic would be to create an interactive resume. One that would highlight my technical background and work experience, as well as my soft skills and what makes me a good employee and teammate.
As is to be expected, it started with a basic sketch.
The sketch was a good way to organize my thinking. I resolved that I would keep the organization very simple with a clean minimalist homepage with three options to choose from.
- Hard Skills
- Soft Skills
- About Me
After the initial sketch, I took the next step and made a more in-depth prototype that incorporated my plans for the general layout of each screen including where visuals and text would go. I also included where navigation buttons might go.
I designed the layout and feel of the three main pages first. The most important being the homepage. I did not need to think very long before coming up with the idea to use a visual aid in the form of pretzels. A hard pretzel for hard skills, a soft pretzel for soft skills, and a pretzel twist for the about me section. The soft skills and about me pages used a similar minimalist layout and matching the color scheme to the homepage.
The hard skills section was the most straight forward. I put together much of the same content that can be found on my resume and LinkedIn. I included contact information, my website, and a brief description of who I am. Then I did a bulleted list of my skills and experience, my education, and a visual that featured my experience (in years) of different software programs.
The soft skills section took the longest amount of time to complete. I spent a lot of time reaching out to past clients and co-workers to assist me in developing this list. I also reflected on my own work and work style, and ultimately came up with a list of seven soft skills (in no particular order).
- Creativity
- Empathy
- Collaborative
- People Skills
- Problem Solving Skills
- Time Management
- Technical Skills
I am an illustrator and so I used my drawings to highlight each of these soft skills.
Putting it all together was a lot of fun. 
Figuring out the most user-friendly way to make it interactive was also fun.
About me section:
