Styling Your Online Resume

JonGos — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:00:59 +0000

I’m going to give you some advice that will rock your world. If you’re a web designer, you should design your resume. *GASP*

All kidding aside, the importance of impressing people with your resume’s visual appeal, especially online, is important. Here are some tips on styling a resume so it conveys your skills and is pleasing to the eye.

Keep in mind, when I say design, I don’t necessarily mean having flying planets, sparkles and grunge effects all over it. That would be annoying and if that’s what your resume looks like right now, I strongly encourage that you remain employed until you get a chance to fix it.

What I mean is paying attention to three critical things: typography, layout and accessibility.

Provable Type
No matter what you think, as soon as people look at your resume they instantly begin forming opinions about you. “Oh my god, why the heck did this guy put his name in Comic Sans Bold!?” It’s your job to make sure they get the right message. At the same time using the same font size all over your resume can look boring. Vary the size of fonts in your headers.

I used bold and caps above to break up the space in my “skills” section which would look jumbled otherwise. As a general rule you should only use one professional looking font for your online resume. Using more than two font-families on a resume is ill-advised (and by ill-advised I really just mean ugly.)

On my resume I used Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif at font-size:20px for headers and font-size:12px throughout.
Organization is Key
The layout of your resume is directly proportional to your chances of getting hired. Repeat that. I don’t know if it’s true but it sounds nice. But you really should make sure your design is as clean and easy to read as possible.

Don’t justify text, only use all caps for headers and to define lists. Double check to make sure your resume prints well. You may want to consider using Hartija’s CSS Print Framework.
Usability is Important
Since your online resume is displaying in a web browser, usability is very important. It will also convey some basic understanding of web design if you can demonstrate comprehension of usability. On my resume I floated this column on the left:

This allows the user to download the document in whatever format they see fit. It also includes a link to my online portfolio and my hcard, two other things that will convey competence.

You can view my full resume here. It’s to the point and clean. It looks nice in the browser, prints well and if the user wants to take it with them there’s the links for downloading as Rich Text, PDF or DOC.

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5 ways to ensure a successful freelance development project

Akash Mehta — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:10:41 +0000

IT projects are, by their nature, destined to fail. When you plan for a new project, you’ll probably realise that while what you’re bui/lding isn’t new, it ts new to you, and you’re bound to encounter some surprises along the way. Maybe you haven’t quite thought out how you’re going to build a specific feature - and when you get to actually building the application, it takes a lot longer than you expect. Or maybe your client decides to change the project requirements half way through when he sees your beta. Here are five ways to avoid cost and timeframe blowouts in your freelance project.

1. Have a thorough project spec
Don’t code anything until both you and the client have agreed on a projert outline or specification, and it covers every area of the application. A thorough spec written now can save hours of wasted development hours due to misunderstanding later on. For example, if building a website, your project spec should outline all the pages of the website, roughly what they will look like and any special functionality on them (such as viewing records in a database).

2. Agree on conditions for changing the project spec

Chances are your client doesn’t know the web. They have a general idea of what they want you to build, but they don’t really know what it’s going to look like, what it can look like, what features you can build. Essentially, they don’t know what is possible - but as the project progresses, they’ll figure it out. And when they do, they’ll have all sorts of little features they want you to add.

Now, this is all very well - client satisfaction is critical for succesful freelancing - but make sure you agree on some terms for changing the project spec from the beginning. For example, “I will give you an estimate for additional hours required to add a feature and add it to the bill.” (This works especially well on hourly rates; clients like to raise issue with adding to a flat rate for the project)

3. Help the client think out their application
I recently had a client wanting to build a simple database-driven application. The emphasis was heavily on the data, and while they’d done some basic design mockups, they didn’t really know what the application should look like - or, for that matter, what it should do. While planning, frequently contacted the client and made suggestions that I knew would improve the effectiveness of the application. It isn’t quite finished yet, but the client already loves the beta.

4. Explain the problems of detrimental design decisions
I mentioned before that your client doesn’t know what is possible with the web - they also don’t know what isn’t possible. Ever had a request from a client, and thought, “Why the heck would they want THAT?” In these situations, don’t just accept the request and move on. Explain to the client that it isn’t a good idea, and why. You’ll save everyone’s time, and if the design decision the client has made is particularly obscure, you’ll probably save yourself a lot of hair pulling trying to implement it later.

5. Maintain after sales support
Make sure the client is happy with the product, and keep it that way. After sales support is an area most freelancers fail on. Your project doesn’t end when you provide the code to your client. Make sure your client knows that they should come to you for support, and provide bug fixes at no cost - often they may feel inclined to hire someone else to fix bugs.

This is all very well, but the client will probably want a few extra features added or maintenance conducted, and with another provider working on bug fixes, your winning this additional business isn’t something you can take for granted anymore. Conversely, if you’ve been called in to rework an existing application, encourage the client to task you with additional development, as opposed to the original provider. Repeat business is highly profitable - no overheads, just get in there and do what you do best.

Follow these tips, and your projects will be more predictable - and better managed within budget. Happy freelancing!

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Styling Your Online Resume

5 ways to ensure a successful freelance development project