Interactive Resume

http://www.rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/

by m4tthumphrey • 13 years ago

424 198 13 years ago

rleonardi.com

uberalex• 13 years ago

It's very pretty, but using the down button to go right is a bit counter-intuitive.

r-cid• 13 years ago

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

mattdmrs2• 13 years ago

It works wonders with touch enabled devices like smartphones and tablets

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

Pretty, but it's time consuming to read. I still prefer to read a paper resume up to just two pages. Imagine everyone has an interactive resume like this: my eyes are going to hurt.

seferphier• 13 years ago

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

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

seanmcdirmid• 13 years ago

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

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

Why wouldn't I? If I need to refer to a particular work, I would have to use my arrow key scroll for 20 seconds to find that. So every time when I need a reference from his resume, I had to go through the trouble. It is pretty, but not a resume I want to read.

As a programmer how about me drawing a state diagram as an interactive resume? I have to follow a decision path and it's damn time consuming.

I think part of his resume is broken in Firefox too.

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

I'd prefer a two page resume, and later on a nice fat portfolio.

lotsofcows• 13 years ago

Cute. Got my attention. Not sure about the flashing text at the beginning though - too hard to read.

linker3000• 13 years ago

All the way through I was just thinking Commodore 64..Commodore 64...

Nice idea, but would still want something on paper in a relatively conformable format.

ananth99• 13 years ago

Nice Resume, but took a lot of time to go through it. Could've gamified it in a more intuitive way. :)

croisillon2• 13 years ago

What's interactive about it? Right arrow doesn't do nothing, only down and up. So it's like scrolling down a page, a nice page but there's nothing gamified or interactive here.

agumonkey2• 13 years ago

'2D streamable' resume then ?

croisillon2• 13 years ago

scrollable?

collyw• 13 years ago

Is that not more of a portfolio example rather than a resume?

itsmequinn• 13 years ago

Are you all kidding me? This resume is amazing and if he isn't being super humble in describing most of his skills I don't know how he created this.

jasonlmk• 13 years ago

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

deltaqueue• 13 years ago

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.

ritchiea• 13 years ago

Well the other positive about this resume other than it being fantastic is that you know for certain you don't want to work anywhere that passes on you because of your beautifully designed, creative resume.

lewisflude• 13 years ago

Really nice site! Only bit I'd change is how experience is communicated. Everything being set to "expert" or "master" (aside from animation) made it kind of hard to believe and kind of robotic.

But still, the overall charm more than made up for it and my day has been made slightly better. :)

chatman• 13 years ago

Quite annoying.

gngeal2• 13 years ago

I think this was supposed to be "interactive résumé", as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with power management. But it's definitely cool. :-)

kozhevnikov2• 13 years ago

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

owenmarshall• 13 years ago

Speaking of pedantry...

In the USA a CV is often seen as distinct from a resume. They are used amongst academics and high-skill professionals to show an individuals full career history, with emphasis on education and publications.

It can be interchangeable with a resume, but it may not be.

gngeal2• 13 years ago

What I had in mind was that it would remove the ambiguity. I actually clicked at the link expecting some nifty power management stuff and came away not disappointed only because I enjoyed it.

blahpro• 13 years ago

Pretty cool! Some feedback: lose the flashing instructional text.

code_scrapping• 13 years ago

It's fun but terribly difficult to read and understand. I hope he provides the "traditional" version as well for the people who just want the information and not the whole shabang.

rschmitty• 13 years ago

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

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

It's hard to maintain a version of what he did with the distraction. A recruiter would have to put 3x more time into this. Scroll, stop, take time to read the font and try to make sense of the table.

That's a lot of mental activity. Whereas a quick traditional resume gives information in text and is easier to spot. Then if recruiter wants to see the profilo, say his github personal page, sure, a link.

eamsen• 13 years ago

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.

vojant• 13 years ago

It's awesome resume for graphic/designer. Very very creative!

wil4212• 13 years ago

Why does it matter if you're an NBA fan.

rkangel• 13 years ago

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.

wil4212• 13 years ago

I thought the same thing about the graphs!! I was confused what I was supposed to be looking at when I saw the second graph.

svabhishek2• 13 years ago

The resume is great and displays the proficiency that he has over design but .. Will a recruiter with CVs and Resumes flooding his inbox .. really have a time to look at this ?? I don't think Rob would apply to a company through a recruiter though :D

PS : Again .. I am looking at this from a Recruiter's perspective

jdappletini• 13 years ago

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.

svabhishek2• 13 years ago

@jdappletini ... Right he can have a Single Page Resume as well. That would be of great help to people !

billyto• 13 years ago

You can build that and still working on fox news?

JackFr• 13 years ago

That's sure some ironic snark.

cpfohl• 13 years ago

Very Cool, tiny bit of feedback:

The transition out of the water is a bit jarring...

mattdmrs2• 13 years ago

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

D_hemming• 13 years ago

Spacebar skips to next section, did it say that at the start?

kozhevnikov2• 13 years ago

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

colinramsay• 13 years ago

In the "innovative resume" department, check out this one from a few years ago:

http://zef.so/employable/

seivan• 13 years ago

I'd hire you in a heartbeat.

andrewingram2• 13 years ago

Cute, and very impressive. But I cringe whenever I see a resumé where someone rates each of their skills on a scale. We're all familiar with the idea that true masters are generally the first to admit that they have a lot more to learn.

lmm2• 13 years ago

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.

mh_yam• 13 years ago

Haha, that is great. My Python would be at like 2 then. lol

traviscj• 13 years ago

I hate to be that guy, but... [citation required]. (Not trying to heckle, just would like to hear it first hand, so to speak.)

hrabago• 13 years ago

I've always thought that if I created something that other people could apply skills or talent on (a game, a language, an API), that it wouldn't mean I'd be a master at using it, and that it wouldn't be far fetched to think someone could master using it even I could master building, fixing, or enhancing it.

angersock• 13 years ago

Pity be the fool who puts C++ above perhaps a 6.

I recall Mike Acton basically saying in an interview that if an applicant claimed expert knowledge of C or C++, the gloves came off during the interview--Acton is one of (possibly the?) head tech bros as Insomniac Games, and has done a lot of work dealing with such arcane things as using the Cell SPUs optimally. I would not want to take on that challenge in an interview unwittingly.

makr17• 13 years ago

IIRC, they couched it with guidelines...

1 - I've heard of it ... 9 - literally wrote the book ... 10 - invented it

so by that measure guido _should_ have rated himself a 10.

nezumi• 13 years ago

That form is filled in by engineers before they give interviews, to help HR get good coverage when setting up a series of interviews. It's not used for anything else.

pwelch• 13 years ago

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?

andrewingram2• 13 years ago

My personal preference is a combination either a demonstration (which this is a very good example of), or a short well-written paragraph that's sufficiently free of common resumé tropes to convince me that I should make contact. Possibly both, but the hardest part about these things is keeping them concise.

dabernathy89• 13 years ago

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.

anupshinde• 13 years ago

Amazing. I was only looking at character/animation ... and then read your resume backwards :P

CoryG89• 13 years ago

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

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

There seems to be some confusion between a resume and a portfolio.

While this is clever, unfortunately what it does is make the job of getting the candidate's details harder. Say I have a pile of resumes and what not on my desk, and this. I want to compare them. Easy with the pile of 2 page resumes and attached portfolios, but with this I have to muck on a computer, trying to make out various bits and bobs, then even note them down myself so that I can compare. In fact, I clicked twice and gave up.

People have suggested this is a great way for a designer to show case skills. But IMHO, this is a colossal disaster. What it has does is allow design to get in the way of the content, and worse still, make the content less accessible. Yes, very cute, flashy, clever and skilled, 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. If it make life harder, it has failed. Does it make the recruiters job easier? No. Does it facilitate the passing on of vital information? No. Clever skills, but a design failure.

Really, I fully understand and appreciate that hackers appreciate the raw skills, and so we should, but I don't think people have their hiring HR heads on, and have also forgotten the basic point of design.

Sorry to swim against the tide here, but given a pile of competent resumes, I'd probably skip this applicant.

wodow• 13 years ago

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.

drsim• 13 years ago

Spot on. There's no doubt as a candidate you need to be comparable but you differentiating yourself is a multiplier.

I applied for a marketing job at a fire safety firm. I'd never worked under a marketing job title (business development was my background) so I needed to differentiate.

I burned off the bottom of my cover letter with some cheesy line like 'let me set your marketing on fire'. Got the interview.

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

Partly, yes. The link would be called "Portfolio".

glanotte• 13 years ago

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.

adamb_• 13 years ago

Exactly. If a prospective employer can't see the value of you taking a calculated risk and creatively applying your skills before you're hired, what makes you think they will afterward?

FLUX-YOU• 13 years ago

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.

teh_klev• 13 years ago

"Send email requesting a 2 page resume"

It's an extra step in the process for the hiring bod, the resume should come before this.

Also first time load on IE, Chrome and Firefox did this:

http://i.imgur.com/Wn62Rh4.png

At first I thought this was some cryptic "why the lucky stiff" malarky.

Only after hitting refresh did the site load properly, I almost closed the tab, he might not be so lucky with someone who is a little less patient or in a rush.

And finally what happens if the site goes down or gets slashdot/hn/reddited?

Don't get me wrong, this is a nice demo of this person's skills (except for the use of the down arrow key to navigate right which is a minor usability foible) but it's a portfolio work and shouldn't be used solely as employer first contact when applying for a post.

__abc• 13 years ago

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>

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

Well, yes, some people will, obviously.

notahacker• 13 years ago

Prototypical resumes don't get shared on social media sites either...

peterjmag• 13 years ago

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.

pbhjpbhj2• 13 years ago

Dreamweaver is probably used in corporate web design settings quite a lot being a part of the Adobe toolset and all. Perhaps he's pandering to his market?

What tweaked the nose of my bete-noir was the entry of HTML and CSS under "Scripting and Programming languages" - but I think it's fair to say he knows what he's doing, seriously impressive design work going on there.

phaus4• 13 years ago

I see quite a few places advertise for Dreamweaver experience, so it makes sense to put it on a resume. He's first and foremost a designer, so I don't think it will hurt him too badly. Besides, just because someone uses a tool that you don't respect doesn't mean that they don't know how to code without it.

Tichy• 13 years ago

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

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

Yes, and due diligence.

mikeryan2• 13 years ago

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.

phaus4• 13 years ago

Good. Save that poor soul from having to keep working for Fox News.

In all seriousness, I thought it was not only an awesome idea, but extremely well executed.

tlogan• 13 years ago

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

russelluresti3• 13 years ago

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.

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

Point one. No, I never said or implied what you are saying.

Point two. That is frankly so convoluted, I can only assume you just want to oppose what Im saying, but honestly don't know why.

lhnz4• 13 years ago

> 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.

alan_cx9• 13 years ago

No, not confused. The fact you have widened the issue out to "all cases" seems to imply you might be.

The aim of this resume is like all other resumes, to get an interview. If not, its not a resume, its part of a portfolio.

Last point relies on making that comparison in the first place, which is a straw man. No reason to compare like that. Its your own invention.

hammock• 13 years ago

Resume 1 is extremely easy to fake, resume 2 is an authentic signal.

From parent comment:

There seems to be some confusion between a resume and a portfolio.

nathan_long• 13 years ago

> 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.

wooyi3• 13 years ago

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.

rimantas2• 13 years ago

You know, a woman screaming "Fuck you!" at every passer by on the street will also attract my attention. But I doubt I'd want to date her.

teq• 13 years ago

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.

elwell• 13 years ago

Exactly. Could use a PDF link at the beginning.

whytaka• 13 years ago

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.

smsm422• 13 years ago

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.

reledi• 13 years ago

The best candidate I have ever interviewed [...] 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.

Almost nobody does it because it's not expected. Why not ask future applicants to bring in some code samples and walk through it?

AJ007• 13 years ago

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.

danso• 13 years ago

Now that the site's assets been knocked out, the author should think of making the site more readable to text readers/search engines...here's what the unstyled site looks like

LOADING MASTER EXPERT PROFICIENT FAMILIAR BEGINNER DESIGN ILLUSTRATION CODE ANIMATION Multidisciplinary Designer LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 N B A F A N Sports Fan Live and Work in New York City Scroll down mouse or press keyboard's down-arrow to move forward Swipe from right to left to move forward Interactive Resume of BEGINNER FAMILIAR

Inc82• 13 years ago

Wow, I really can't believe the negativity there. This is creative and amazing. The guy seems like a winner. The comments on here are dreadful. The point here was to make a statement and get eyeballs. This site already has accomplished that.

rimantas2• 13 years ago

I can believe and understand the negativity, because:

a) making a statement and getting eyeballs is not always a good thing—a lot depends what kind of statement it is and how exactly eyeballs were attracted.

b) understanding when you shouldn't do something just because you can is a very big plus for a creative person. Alas, this resume shows the extreme lack of it.

jaredgeorge2• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity, what would you have edited out of this (to you point 'b')?

jaredgeorge2• 13 years ago

I completely agree. This resume is a great way to filter out companies looking for front end drones to sit in a cube and work in a bureaucracy.

He's identifying himself as fitting into a certain culture of organization. Some of the comments here are a perfect example! Anyone that criticizes this as "inefficient" or that it's "making getting the details difficult" is missing the point. He doesn't want a soul-dead HR minion to find his details.

acoleman616• 13 years ago

Awesome enough that I made it all the way to the end!

danm_cc• 13 years ago

Ctrl-P -> 29 blank pages. Maybe script in some printable form. Other than that, great stuff.

egonschiele• 13 years ago

I was going to say something sarcastic, but if I could print this page and get a proper resume I would be blown away. Wouldn't be hard to do with the proper stylesheet either. Even so I am blown away already by how cool this is!

fpp• 13 years ago

Very impressive - would be even better if it would include a bit of CSS to format the print-out like a normal CV / profile (currently generates about 30 basically empty pages in Chrome & FF)

jhspaybar• 13 years ago

Wow. Hit this on mobile. I'm not sure what it looks like on desktop, but on mobile it's amazing. Swipe to move, everything perfectly in place. I too often roll my eyes when someone ranks themselves a "master", but whoa...I actually believe this guy.

ultimatedelman• 13 years ago

took a look on mobile chrome. pretty awful experience, tbh. looks pretty, but i was expecting a swipe to take you to the next step automatically. unfortunately once you get to movement, each swipe is like one tick on the scroll wheel... i couldn't get past the first gate after like 20 swipes, got fed up, and left.

gokulk• 13 years ago

iphone 5 & iOS safari... most amazing thing I have seen on a web browser. the experience was seamless and it actually felt like you were playing a video game.

joeyespo• 13 years ago

It's pretty fun when you zoom out to 25% too.

avisk• 13 years ago

Looks nice. shortcut to jump to specific levels would be good.

nobodysfool• 13 years ago

I used the scroll wheel all the way through, the whole page shakes when you do that.

ThomW• 13 years ago

The Foxnews pie chart should add up to more than 100%. :D

deepam• 13 years ago

Creative indeed. But the time spent in scrolling down, absorbing the content and then scrolling back, may irritate the short-of-time interviewers.

level09• 13 years ago

I like how people are getting creative about scrolling these days. A few years back no one though about hooking interactive animations to page scroll.

sbhere• 13 years ago

If I leave him in level two for too long, will he lose a life?

lazerwalker• 13 years ago

The first time I loaded the page (OS X 10.8.5, the latest version of Chrome), I got an unstyled mess of black text on a white background. I refreshed the page again and got a blank blue screen. I had to refresh a half-dozen times before getting the actual content.

Which points to the problem with this sort of thing. A lot of the design work here is stellar, sure, but that doesn't matter. You've already lost the job to the guy with the dead-tree resume.

bobwaycott• 13 years ago

Same exact issue here, in Safari.

jqueryin• 13 years ago

Very cool UI wise, but not sure how maintainable it is from a development perspective. Can anyone shed some light on if he was using a tool to build this out? The code found at http://www.rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/script/main.js is extremely hard to read.

kobot• 13 years ago

I don't think he used a tool; it looks like it was coded by hand to me. I'm a bit iffy on whether or not he is actually a "javascript expert" - global variables littered everywhere, no attempts at design patterns at all, horrendously long and confusing variable names.

Still a cool project though.

philip1209• 13 years ago

My digital resume was a popular github project:

https://github.com/philipithomas/cv-philipithomas (It's deprecated - link to live is no longer accurate)

I'm in the process of trying to reinvent it. Here's the current iteration:

https://www.philipithomas.com/resume/

It's an ongoing project, but I think that either using a static site generator or javascript templates. I'm also planning on incorporating navigation like I used on this project:

http://scheduling.philipithomas.com

Kerrick• 13 years ago

I also put mine on github, though it never became popular -- possibly due to the terrible README.

Project: https://github.com/kerrick/hire.kerricklong.com

Live: http://hire.kerricklong.com/

kcbanner• 13 years ago

Honestly, I find these absolutely obnoxious

bmetz• 13 years ago

Tried to write him a note encouraging him to check us out. The comment box doesn't work. Designers, shrug. Seems like a pretty cool person!

mike_ivanov• 13 years ago

Could you send us your resume as a Word file please?

peter303• 13 years ago

Resume management is mostly computerized text management now. You want to keep the format simple and use the clearest and most direct wording.

In the interview or pre-interview they may ask for samples of your work. be more creative then.

wooyi3• 13 years ago

You are right if you're submitting your resume electronically or to a HR database. I doubt this resume was meant for that. Different formats for different uses.

princess3000• 13 years ago

The lack of imagination here is just staggering. Holy cow. I mean first and foremost you're just getting a link to this directly, who's to say he doesn't also have a RESUME.DOC file that he sends out, including a link to this page?

Beyond that, I feel like this guy just might be looking for companies that are willing to take 60 seconds out of looking through a stack of nearly-identical paper resumes to indulge something a bit different. Maybe this is his way of filtering out companies who would "skip this applicant" because he didn't send in a .pdf resume with a list of buzzwords. And of course this isn't the simplest way to get across the information in a resume... that would just be a well-designed text resume. He's trying to flex his skills and show you what he's capable of, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that he understands that this is not the single most efficient way to get that information across.

logicallee• 13 years ago

maybe they just don't want him writing version 2.0 on the clock.

On the other hand maybe writing resume presentations is his favorite home hobby.

That would certainly be an interesting parallel with startup employers' expectations of programmers, who are supposed to craft github repos at home in their spare time to get hired. Really, this is the design equivalent.

mncolinlee• 13 years ago

He probably does have a RESUME.DOC file. The point here is that his interactive resume is very likely to reach people who would not otherwise see his generic *.DOC file. It looks like he got some job interviews simply by doing this work, so whether it adhered to your platonic ideal of the perfect resume or not, it succeeded. That's all that matters.

A+ for a solid advertisement for himself.

The point of the hiring process is not to compare paper candidates, but to compare human beings.

victoriap• 13 years ago

It's already a big plus for him, if he sends this online resume only to his own network. The animation clearly pictures his capabilities and indicates the type of people he wants to work with.

cyansmoker• 13 years ago

It took exactly 22 seconds for the 'loading...' message to disappear. After this, I had to read blinking instructions, then keep pressing the down arrow, which doesn't really qualify as "interactive."

As the information was scrolling through my screen, I found it difficult to read but I didn't want to release the down arrow key because I wanted to be done with it.

Just my experience. My 'UX' experience, unfortunately.

mh-• 13 years ago

that experience would be infuriating, but FWIW it wasn't mine, and I'm overly-sensitive to that sort of stuff (I never would have waited 22 seconds, or even 10.)

it took 3 seconds w/ cold for me to see the instructions. I scrolled through the experience like I would a normal page (albeit translated to left and right.)

worked fine.

while not my cup of tea, I'm not a visual person, this seemed well done.

akjetma• 13 years ago

yeah, i'm guessing this is horrible on a setup without inertial scrolling.

Pro_bity• 13 years ago

The fact that this is on the front page of HN and that you are commenting on it says something about the effectiveness of effort.

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

If he does have a more standard resume, I certainly hope the file is called hisname_companyname_date.PDF, rather than resume.doc.

jamesmcbennett• 13 years ago

There is a link to a .pdf two page resume on his site.

rootlocus• 13 years ago

It doesn't look very interactive to me: http://imgur.com/J5ym1W3

jmilloy• 13 years ago

A key part of design is choosing the correct medium for the content/audience/users. While this demo displays a few raw technical skills, it's also a completely incorrect choice of medium. A well designed resume does not look like this. In fact, a well-designed game also does not look like this. Is there any well-designed thing that would look like this?

I was sorely disappointed also because I am excited by the idea of interactive display of content, but this isn't it. An interactive resume could, for example, summarize experience and skills briefly, and offer easy access to more detail and portfolio examples. And, of course, scrolling through non-interactive content (using up and down to go left and right, no less) isn't the greatest example of "interactive".

jedanbik• 13 years ago

This is fun! I loved the colors, the graphics, the scenery.

My suggestion: in addition to space-moves-you-forward and shift+space-moves-you-backwards keyboard controls, you should also give this functionality to the left and right arrow keys. Good luck!

thrillgore• 13 years ago

This is a great exercise of talent and skill.

Too bad the HR department would never hear my side of the argument.

brandan3• 13 years ago

30 years of side scrolling gaming history on computers. four arrow key options for movement. this person chose up and down to represent left and right.

user interface experience ( ) master ( ) proficient ( ) beginner (x) antagonistically counter-intuitive and user-unfriendly

GhotiFish2• 13 years ago

You are wrong to judge his skills this harshly in this domain, he introduced the only thing you needed to know, and he stuck with it the whole way through.

It's unstated actions that have to be intuitive, but this page outright explains the only action required.

Nothing counter-intuitive or unfriendly here.

brandan3• 13 years ago

ah, yes. up is left. there's nothing counterintuitive about that.

elf25• 13 years ago

quite possibly the dumbest thing i've ever seen. yet, uniquely brilliant. still, only a might hire in my book.

Strategist• 13 years ago

I liked this actually, but overall, I think it was more trouble than what it's worth. Maybe if tweaked or done differently, it would be much better.

Rather than bash it though, I'll give some constructive criticism.

1. I noticed a few glitches during the tour. As the guy runs through the world, some of the effects lagged, and didn't display the parts of the resume/portfolio that it was suppose to.

Once I ran back and forwards through the level multiple times, only then did they displayed correctly.

2. With this being interactive, it kind of distracts from actually looking at the resume itself. I felt myself more concerned with progressing through the world, than actually looking at the qualifications.

3. The controls would have been better if it were <- and -> to move the guy. Pressing up and down is a bit strange, as I think most people prefer using a keyboard over their mouse to go through this.

Pros:

1. Very Creative, and cool idea.

2. Refreshing take on a resume/portfolio.

3. Shows off your design and coding skills.

4. It's unique.

Cons:

1. Probably not the best way to convey your information to possible employers.

2. Controls are a bit weird.

3. Not all the animations worked off the bat, and were delayed (I had to run through the level multiple times before it worked).

Suggestion:

I think if you're going to do an interactive resume/portfolio, you should just make it into an actual video game. Simple one level game where the user unlocks parts of your information as they progress through the level.

However, I think you should include at the bottom of the page or something, a link to a normally structured resume and portfolio as well, for people that may not have time to do the interactive/game thing.

Closing Point:

You've got a lot of negative, and positive feedback from your post. Don't let yourself be discouraged, but also be willing to listen and use this feedback to do it better, and adapt/change things where needed.

Good luck with your ventures!

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

Cool project. A few small suggestions:

(1) Fix the spelling of After Effects.

(2) You might want to reverse the order of jobs so that the most recent is listed first, since that is what recruiters will be most interested in seeing.

(3) The text within your job description boxes can be tightened to highlight your specific contributions and their impact.

aboodman• 13 years ago

Beautiful. Really great, creative work. Would definitely invite for an interview, if I were in the market for this skillset.

doomrobo• 13 years ago

The only language listed that was actually a programming language was Javascript (the rest being HTML, CSS, and JQuery).

ethanazir• 13 years ago

nonconformist personality type problematic for organization hierarchy; refer to consultant relations department regarding successful publicity stunt.

jgoldsmith• 13 years ago

Besides being a pretty neat way to filter out companies that are willing to put a little bit of extra effort into their hiring process, this is also one of the few appropriate uses I've seen of the Lobster font ;)

Rajiv_N• 13 years ago

While this format may not work for everyone, for a UI person, I think this is an awesome way to apply. Great Job!

How difficult would it be for you to allow printing in a resume format (hidden div with info, activated using the CSS print layout option???) At least then there is the option of printing your resume from this page directly. You might even be able to provide a link in the corner of the page to activate printing. Just an idea. Good Luck!

anishkothari• 13 years ago

This is pretty incredible. I am in awe of your skills.

ffrryuu• 13 years ago

10 second limit is up. Next resume.

sebnukem2• 13 years ago

I know several people who will dismiss this resume because "it doesn't open properly in Microsoft Word."

redthrowaway• 13 years ago

This is incredibly impressive. Here I was feeling good about what I got done today, then I saw this.

pcunite• 13 years ago

Awesome ...

chrisc202• 13 years ago

How much would it cost to hire someone to do this?

Non-technical guy. I would love to try this out. It is attention grabbing. I have used bobble heads, cakes with my sales proposals to get into the door. Corny, but stuff like this works. I sent Robbie a message. If anyone else knows how to do this or something similar please message me.

gsands2• 13 years ago

I've done similar sites, and would love to do another. Just send me an email: jazzinthemorning at gmail.com

dude3• 13 years ago

I hope he didn't have PersonalLogic hosting plan

sidwyn• 13 years ago

Anyone saved a cached version of this?

gsands2• 13 years ago

always can do: google.com/search?q=cache:<url here> so in this case: http://google.com/search?q=cache:http://www.rleonardi.com/in...

spader725• 13 years ago

the site is down. Anyone got a mirror?

avalaunch• 13 years ago

This is some pretty horrible advertising for StartLogic.

I assume the site was taken down because of the traffic spike. Apparently Totally Reliable Web Hosting and Unlimited Bandwidth can only go so far.

morgante• 13 years ago

Guess it's time for me to redo mine: http://me.morgante.net/about

jigneshhk• 13 years ago

He just jump out of the water like that?

dlf• 13 years ago

I liked that part where I made the character dance.

frozenport• 13 years ago

I find it strange that the buildings (Statue of Liberty, have faces on their first level). Why is this?

izelnakri• 13 years ago

Impressive but I didn't get the Expert in Javascript, Proficient in JQuery part...

Sam121• 13 years ago

Become a Fan of you, i want to learn this level. One line from my side "For me this is 1000 time better than GTA 5 " :)

badwetter• 13 years ago

Doesn't work on the latest Chromium for me, using Gnome-Shell 3.8 So maybe not the best way to showcase oneself, if it's not reliable.

pahans• 13 years ago

looks nice. but honestly i dont think it serves the purpose "resume"

juskrey• 13 years ago

my eyes

mones• 13 years ago

Unfair competition! All candidates should be given equal chance via the same means of presentation. He's just trying to sneak around the gatekeeper.

ffog• 13 years ago

What is this fascination with showing skills as some kind of graph? How did this start and why does anyone do it?

typon• 13 years ago

I can't tell if it's jealousy, but the comments here are dreadful. I wish good luck to this dude, clearly a very gifted web designer.

Interactive Resume

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