The overworked HR person slumps over his couch with a six pack of Coors in hand. He stares at the thousands of emails flooding his inbox. “I can’t read one more cover letter about how Girl Scouting prepares a student for a marketing job! And I still have hundreds to go!” PDF file after PDF, Word document after Word document, and beer after beer blur together until Girl Scouting, tech interning, and design experience become a sea of swimming Times New Roman. With this mindset, he then opens the next email: YOUR APPLICATION.
Have you wondered what happens to your resume PDF file once you’ve submitted it for a position? Hundreds and thousands of similar files with very similar qualifications go to HR committees, which are often stressed and underfunded. After thousands of applications, yours needs to stand out to prevent the overworked HR person from collapse!
How? Try a creative mechanism to write your application, such as Prezi.
You might have heard of Prezi-if you watch TED Talks, follow the tech scene, or attend a tech-savvy university. It is a zoomable online presentation tool, that revolutionizes powerpoint in a graphic-friendly way.
Using Prezi to write resumes and cover letters is incredibly effective. As part of our “Kill the Cover Letter” campaign, we saw that interns who used creative mechanisms like Prezi for resume and cover letters were 10X more likely to get an offer. You can see some great “Prezumes” online, one of which is from Angelie Agarwal, who is the Chief Evangelist at Prezi.
Love this Prezume? Want one of your own? Angelie gave us some great tips on creating an amazing Prezi that will stand out from the pack!
TARA: Why is Prezi a great tool for students applying for jobs?
ANGELIE: Whether you’re applying for a job or contest, standing out from the other applicants is so important. You don’t want to get lost in a sea of Word documents! People forget that the Office Suite has been around for 30 years, and is based on 35mm slides from the 50’s. Prezi treats the eyes to something completely new. For every 100 resumes, there might be one Prezume, which is great.
Students are also applying for a lot of forward thinking jobs, and many are applying for jobs within the field of social media. Applying for a forward thinking position with an old technology makes no sense. Using Prezi makes you a leader in that arena, rather than a follower.
T: What are the important tips and tricks for a Prezume?
A: Just like any other technology, Prezi can be used well and can be used badly. You want it to be professional, informative, and creative.
Therefore:
• Keep it minimal. The zooming action of Prezi is already engaging and catches the eye, and too much content can be too much to look at.
• Focus on the relevant information: Just like with any resume, some information is important to employers and some is less so.
• Just like paragraphs in a traditional resume, use frames to group relevant information that goes together.
• Your use of colors and fonts should be professional-don’t use six colors on a Prezume, as it’s not very easy on the eye.
• Hide the details and make them very small, so that only those interested in learning more about that particular detail need to see it. For example, on my resume I listed Stanford and the details of my time there. The details were small so that only those who wanted to see them needed to zoom in.
• Embed videos! If you’re applying to a job where you must demonstrate a skill, embed a video of yourself performing that skill.
• To ensure that the HR person knows how to work your presentation (there are directions sent with every link) you can include a “Press Play Here” and an arrow pointing to the play button.
T: What are some common pitfalls associated with making a Prezi/Prezume?
A:
• Too much zooming and rotating is difficult to watch. Once again, keep it minimal.
• Frames must be used effectively-when you have a lot of information, frame effectively and group related topics.
• Awareness of audience-while Prezumes can be a great tool for some jobs, others might additionally need a PDF file of your resume.
• Be creative!
T: Do you have any great Prezume stories?
A:There are so many great stories of individuals who have gotten jobs, won contests and done amazing things with Prezi. The largest prize won thus far has to be NYU grad Jonathan Chan’s $50,000 for his presentation on savings programs. He was featured on CNBC live!
There’s no doubt that Prezi is an exciting tool to use for an application, especially in a field where creativity, graphic design, or technology is emphasized. Yet, though they are the perfect way to catch an HR department’s attention, you need to excercise caution. Applying to an exceptionally traditional firm (we’re thinking of the types who don’t know what an iPod is yet) will not appreciate deviation from established technologies. In those cases, including a PDF resume in addition to a Prezume will be to your benefit.
Nevertheless, from the curator of TED Talks, to a 50,000 contest winner, to our own Kill the Cover Letter Applicants, Prezi has been an amazing chance to stand out in an applicant pool of thousands.
The haggard HR employee reaches for his sixth beer of the night, and opens the next file: your application. “What’s this? A link instead of an attachment?”
Your Prezume opens, and he watches your presentation.
“Refreshing! Awesome!” he cries.
You have the job.
