QR Codes Keep them Simple!

Following on from my last blog post, if you are going to use QR codes you should make them as simple as possible, for example if I wanted to generate a QR code for this blog post I would get the following.

Put this through a URL shortening service like is.gd and you get the following:

It’s a lot smaller and much less complicated isn’t it?

Is This a Good CV? I’m not so sure…

A friend on Twitter posted a link to the above CV with the quote “This is an awesome CV” and to look at it from a distance sure it looks really swish. From a design standpoint it is really cool, It’s beautifully put together  and looks like on the surface this guy is awesome. But looking deeper there is very little in the way of content on the CV sure it shows that he has a sense of humor, but to be honest it looks like it’s mostly hot air.

I’ve got no knowledge of the industry that Hagan Blount is in, and I’ve got nothing against him, but this CV seems to be all form and no function.

Dissecting the CV:

The map looks cool and makes it look like he’s well traveled (At least in the US) but most of the steps in there are stuff that went wrong not reasons I’d hire him.

I like the fake post-it note at the top of the page, I’m not sure anyone would bother using it though.

The Career section looks good, I like the logos, I like the design, but the content seems to be a string of digs at the industries he was in or reasons he left/failed, dates would have been nice though

The education bit tells you all you need to know, again I like the logo being there, if I were recruiting him I’d like to know how long he studied there for and maybe what his degree was about.

I like the use of QR codes, kinda… He’s making the recruiter do more work though, not making their lives easier, the QR codes both scan but I’d have used a URL shortening service for the second one as it’s got a lot of dots. I appreciate the market he’s going for and that this makes him very “new media” (I assume QR codes are new media, they were invented in 1994 but are only just starting to see widespread use outside of Japan, although a friend noticed a job advert recent that called email new media…).

He does make the assumption that the person recruiting him knows what a QR code is though, there is no explanation for these boxes of seemingly random noise on his CV.

I’d have skipped the praise bit, and if I hadn’t I’d have made it smaller, the praise is full of platitudes and hot air, this would drive me away as it looks made up.

The sidebar with the statistics seems a little odd, he only wrote 60,000 words in 2010? I wrote 30k+ in November last year and that was for one project I did in my spare time. Also I’m not a creative. I’m not going to go into his blog posts and what not as I’m not sure a recruiter cares about this. This section goes down hill and wastes space.

In summation there are a lot of good ideas here design wise but it kinda falls apart on content. I think the design of the CV possibly makes me expect better content though, he sets the bar too high for himself. If I was a recruiter my first reaction would be to go wow this looks really cool, then having read it I think my reaction might be oh… Meh…

Does he shoot himself in the foot with this, I don’t think so, I don’t even work in the same industry as him so what do I know, I guess the point of a CV is to get yourself noticed, and this CV certainly does that.

Via Hagan Blount