Interactive Resume (rleonardi.com)

It's not too bad with the trackpad on my macbook. Seem's to be designed for mousewheeling

most ppl won't find the time to make something like this.

the interactive resume, itself is a showcase of his skills.

You would prefer a two page portfolio from a designer? That's crazy.

'2D streamable' resume then ?

Agreed. It's an actual testament to his skillset being put into use, and conveys more about his ability than a paper resume would.

Agree completely, and well done to the OP.

So far I've seen "you can't print this out!" (who cares?) and "some of the transitions could be smoother!"

This one is my favorite:

"This isn't a one-page form. It's not going to fit on my desk. I'm going to pass on this candidate."

Seriously people? You think this guy doesn't have a hard copy of his resume? Your goal is to hire a talented candidate. This exercise demonstrates talent, and was created for exposure. Not optimization of communication in the form of a one-page CV that will end up decomposing on some hiring manager's desk that doesn't have the decency to reply to candidates he or she will not be hiring.

Ladies and gentlemen, Chairman of the Pedantic Society. 'Resume' is acceptable spelling [1], or 'CV' as it's correctly called.

[1] http://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=resume

What do you not know about him after running through this "course" that would change your mind about his skills?

It's lovely and refreshing, but I agree. You can't run the course in 7 seconds, so there is no way to quickly get a picture about you and whether you fit into the position the recruiter tries to fill. I would just add an overview at the beginning of the course, or a link to your LinkedIn (or similar) profile.

Putting a bit about personal interests into a CV is pretty standard - you want to display that you have some personality.

The placement is a bit off though - it's in an early important placement, and arbitrarily dividing up sets of skills. His personality is also well shown by the style of the resume itself!

Also, is it just me that is irritated by the vertical style of the "skills" graphs at the start and then the horizontal style when underwater? Was confused what I was looking at for a moment there.

100% agree with you. 9/10 people don't read resumes but skim them and putting so many clicks between and the content will hurt.

But 1) This is solid show of skill 2) He should/can simulatenously maintain a simple version.

That's sure some ironic snark.

Definitely, he should use something like a ladder. Shouldn't be too hard for him given he did the balloon thing.

Not the next section, but a standard browser behaviour of scroll-down-a-tad on any page, shift+space as well.

I'm told that Google asks employees to rate their technology skills on a scale of 1-10. Guido van Rossum puts his Python skills at a 7.

While I agree that true masters admit they have a lot more to learn I kind of like the idea of rating yourself. How would you convey to someone that you have worked with a certain technology but would not put it as your main experience?

Not just that, but rating one's skills doesn't really show anything useful. How many years have you worked with each technology? What have you built with each one? What makes you a 'master'?

Sidenote - I'm curious how one could rate him/herself as a JavaScript 'expert' but only 'proficient' in jQuery. Not impossible, but seems unusual.

This is exactly what I did, I thought about it as well. Seems like most people might end up reading the actual content backwards.

Would a single, promiment link at the start to a vanilla CV/resume have negated this? Then you would have the best of both worlds.

In that case, I think it works for both parties. He ruled you out as a potential employer. The person who admires it would probably see the candidate as a good fit.

1. Send email requesting a 2 page resume

2. Add to resume pile

Done! This situation should never occur on your behalf:

Say I have a pile of resumes and what not on my desk, and this.

Really?

I've been stuck with many piles of resumes and to have this show up would not only be a breath of fresh air vs the prototypical format, I GUARANTEE I would be talking about this one.

Even if I didn't hire the person, I would be showing people this resume around the office.

</$0.02>

If he's looking for an animation- or illustration-heavy position, I think this is perfect. I'm sure it'll catch the eye of at least a few creative directors out there, at which point the standard HR process becomes a bit moot. I mean, he can always send a plain old PDF resume if he finds himself applying online for some random position, but I doubt he'll need to.

Anyway, I really like it. No, it's not perfect—he loses some points for listing Dreamweaver as a skill—but it's good fun, and it certainly makes him stand out.

Do you really need all the details, since you can immediately see he has the skills? Why bother checking his university grades?

I run an interactive agency in NYC. Showed this to my creative director and business partner and we pretty much reached out immediately. This kind of creativity and skill isn't easy to come by. YMMV.

I never hired anybody because I got candidate's resume via HR or recruiter. It was always thru some connections and things like this.

There are two assumptions in your post that I'd like to point out, and poke some holes in.

First, you seem to be missing the actual point of a resume. No one makes decisions on who to HIRE based on a resume. The point of a resume is to get an INTERVIEW. Your resume could actually lack any details of the normal stuff that goes on one (education, experience, skills, etc) - but as long as what you provide gets you that interview then it's done its job. As someone who's done interviewing at interactive agencies, if I saw this I'd probably set up an interview.

The second is your assumption about the purpose of a resume's design. Your thinking lies all on the company's side - making things easier for the recruiter and facilitating understanding of the reader; allow me to offer an alternate line of thinking. In an interview, it's not just the company determining if it wants to hire the prospect; it's also the prospect determining if she/he wants to work at that company. This resume has taken that to a step earlier. This person is purposely making his resume more creative and "difficult" to weed out prospective employers that don't value those things (this is actually something I do as well, though not to this extent). This person obviously wants to work for a very specific type of company and doesn't want to waste his time interviewing at companies that don't match his desire (like companies that use recruiters or where resumes go directly to HR people instead of hiring managers). So I'd argue that the design of his resume is specifically working very well at weeding out places where he wouldn't want to work and attracting the attention of places he would like to work.

>> But it shows that the so called designer has failed to understand what the point of design is. Design is supposed to facilitate, NOT make things harder.

You are the confused person here.

Design isn't meant to facilitate understanding in all cases. You're letting one specific use cloud your understanding of a general concept.

Designers design with specific aims in mind. These could be expression of content, ease of use for a specific culture, expression of a feeling, wow factor, or rigid conformity to a set style/concept, etc.

Do you believe that somebody that simply wrote in a black-and-white grid that they are proficient at beautiful animated interactive designs is proving this ability with the same authenticity as this guy was able to?

   Resume 1:

   Beauty: 10/10
   Animation: 9/10
   Interactivity: 7/10

vs.

   Resume 2:

   A time investment in creating something that shows this.

Resume 1 is extremely easy to fake, resume 2 is an authentic signal. You are free to throw resume 2 into the bin, but you are a fool if you do so.

>> Does it facilitate the passing on of vital information? No.... it shows that the so called designer has failed to understand what the point of design is. Design is supposed to facilitate, NOT make things harder.

If the "vital information" is "how many years of experience in software X does this person have?", you are correct. But why should that be the information you care about?

If the information is "can this person make nice graphics and do amazing things in a browser?", yes, it does. It both gives the information and demonstrates its veracity.

>> given a pile of competent resumes, I'd probably skip this applicant.

Given the pile of companies who will think this is awesome, the creator will probably skip those who don't.

>> Say I have a pile of resumes and what not on my desk, and this. I want to compare them

I agree that the "pile of text" or "page of images" resumes will not be easy to directly compare to this person's. But does that really matter? The resumes are there so you can move on to an interview, right? Aren't you convinced that this person is fun and has great skills? I certainly am.

As someone who has seen lots of visual/interactive resumes and done research in this field (I created Vizualize.me, an infographic resume site), I thought this was well done. We can argue design wise about its merit, but the point is, the desired outcome was achieved - it got your attention, it's on the front page, and it was unique. When I read this resume, I'm not paying attention to the actual content but rather to how different and interesting this is. This isn't supposed to merely appeal to a HR person or make HR's job easier. That's a very narrow way of seeing it. The best way to get a job is NOT through the HR department. It's to get the attention of higher ups who make the hiring decision. They are the ones who would more likely appreciate the creativeness, dedication and work put into this.

The purpose of a resume is to get attention and in that he's succeeded.

Obviously this would not replace an actual resume for the purposes you need.

Exactly. Could use a PDF link at the beginning.

The vital information the designer needed to communicate was his skills. He did not say it, he DEMONSTRATED it in the first second the user landed on his page. If this man applied to work with me, he would instantly be a strong candidate.

Resumes are mostly useless. First of all, people lie on resumes. All the time. Second of all, even assuming everything is 100% true, what does it means he knows CSS? I can learn some selectors and properties but be unable to apply them to create a visually appealing page, or I can remember nothing but be able to create stunning sites while constantly looking up technical details (just to remove the doubt, real people are neither, it is the extremes). If he worked on project SuperPowerX in Yet Another Big Business Corp., how do you know if he was the most awesome engineer there or just muddled through and had everybody else pick his slack? Of course, you have an interview, but you can only learn the most basic things in the interview. You can do offline interviews - like homework of a kind - but it introduces significant delays in the process.

The best candidate I have ever interviewed (unfortunately, we didn't end up hiring him, but not for the lack of effort from our side) came to the interview with examples of his code and explained what his code does and why he did it this way. Everybody loved that. Unfortunately, almost nobody does it.

Having a place where the candidate shows what he can do - prior to the interview - is awesome, plain and simple. It immediately removes a whole layer of questions for the decision maker - you know who you're talking to, what they are capable of, how they prefer to do it at some level, etc. - and makes the decision much easier to make and less risky.

From what I've seen I am guessing about .01% of web designers out there could do what he did, even with ripping code off from someone else.