Building a Responsive Resume Part 1: The Case of the Responsive Resume

Contents:

  1. The Case of the Responsive Resume
  2. The Skeleton
  3. Interactivity and the PDF

I read an A List Apart article the other day about designing a responsive HTML resume. The author of the article made a couple of good points but he left a lot out and didn’t really make a good case for why the web might be a better medium for resumes than PDFs. I thought I’d fill in the gaps with a couple of posts.

First, let’s talk about why we might want to make an HTML resume rather than just use PDFs. Andrew, the author really hates on PDFs, but they have a lot of uses. They’re easy to download and store for archiving, they work well on all operating systems and they’re easy to print.

Websites on the other hand while still easy to print (assuming you have a good print stylesheet) are difficult to download and more difficult for companies to store, especially for people who aren’t familiar with printing PDFs.

But, there are lots of reasons to make one. As Andrew said it shows a love of your craft, but it can do a whole lot more. If done right you can keep all the benefits of a PDF while adding a lot of interactivity as well.

So what are the specific advantages of a responsive HTML resume?

  • it shows you know what you’re doing and are up on trends
  • easily accessible
  • easy to update
  • images and color aren’t out of place on the web
  • interactivity

A bunch of people posted links to their existing responsive resumes. Here are some of those which, while not necessarily the best looking in every case, all tried to do something different from just a basic text representation by adding something interactive:

I’m going to try to build a sort of general purpose resume template that we can all use that incorporates the best points (as I see them) from all those resumes I’ve seen so far, plus a couple of things that I think would be nifty. We’ll work through building it together, and at the end I’ll post a link to it’s download. If you’re interested, click here for the starting docs.

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2 Responses to Building a Responsive Resume Part 1: The Case of the Responsive Resume

Hi,

I had the same reaction to the article by A List Apart – great concept – just wished for more grit. I built my own responsive resume after getting inspired by Andrew Hoffmans take on the matter.

My Resume

enjoy – I’ll check back for more updates. thanks

dgraham says:

Hey! Thanks for the reply. I’ve been sadly inactive as of late, but I’m glad you appreciated the content. Thanks for the contribution.

Your resume is beautiful, I like the way it loads gradually fading in. Very nice effect!

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