amy974•12d ago

Tried two resume styles side by side and one flopped hard

I sent out 30 resumes with a fancy graphic design template and got zero callbacks in 3 weeks. Switched to a plain text format with bullet points and got 4 interviews in 10 days. Has anyone else found that simple layouts beat creative ones for corporate jobs?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.leo12d ago

Hard disagree honestly. A creative template landed me a design role at a tech startup that plain text wouldn't have touched. Depends way more on the industry though, your mileage will totally vary.

logan_young2912d ago

Depends way more on the industry though" - that's the key part. What kind of startup was it? Like were they already sort of artsy/creative or was it a more traditional place that just happened to be open to something different?

jamesroberts12d ago

Wait, hold on. You're saying a company actually passed on a plain text resume and only looked at the creative one? That's wild to me. I figured most tech startups would just filter out anything that doesn't look like a standard resume. What was the creative template like? I'm genuinely curious if it was just better design or if there was something else going on.