To have or not to have a Visual Resume

Off late I am seeing lot of confusion around whether to have a 'Visual Resume' or not in many job seekers. Here is my take on the same;

For a lot of job seekers a resume is a well formatted static Word Document; or the same word document converted in PDF. Where they can write long and complicated sentences about what they have achieved so far in their profession and in personal life, well to some extent. These resumes are created based on a predefined template. Unfortunately the templates are not very different from each other and they look quite similar at the end of the day. And as we all know these resumes are among the first items that are being viewed by the potential employers for screening a candidate.

In today's world HR professionals receive around 800 resumes on an average for each job posting made... Now this number is by far an obnoxious one for even the most efficient HR professionals to look through each one of them. In such a scenario they try various 'Rejection criteria' to shortlist the resumes that are worth exploring further. Things like educational background, companies the candidate has worked for, candidate's tenure in each company etc. becomes the regular points for rejecting a candidate. Visual resume definitely plays an important role as an attention grabber in such a scenario.

Imagine yourself as a HR manager and you have been given a task of screening 800 resumes in a day, what would you do? Would you go through each resume in detail before selecting/rejecting a resume? No, because there is not enough time for the same and it is simply boring to go through similar looking sheets of paper or word documents of strangers who mean nothing to you. And if you suddenly spot a vibrantly hued or interestingly depicted visual resume which;

1. does not need detailed reading,

2. few seconds of screening gives you fare idea of the candidate's professional and personal achievements,

3. and the creative side of the candidate is right on your face,

Would you not shortlist the candidate for further exploration? Yes, you would.

That's exactly what visual resumes are supposed to do. "Create first impression" which may later become the "Best impression". And create curiosity among the Hiring managers and Interviewers. In fact, because of the same reason it is perceived that the candidates with visual resume are more suitable for a Telephonic interview or a Face to Face interview. Whether the candidate gets the job or not completely depends on how the interviewer interpreted the candidate and whether he/she sees a right fit.

As they say "Pictures can speak thousand words without uttering one", therefore go ahead and let your creativity come out while creating your resume! Show off your skills to your potential employers in your first impression itself!


You can view my one here: Visual Resume - Srijata Bhatnagar

How important is an engineering degree to be a 'good' Product Manager?

Of late we are seeing this new trend of companies seeking a BE/BS graduate plus MBA to be a mandatory requirement for a prospective product manager (PM) position. Until a couple of years back it was only the likes of Google, Yahoo, Amazon, had this criteria for a prospective PM. However, nowadays almost every company is making it clear in the JD's. Even if the PM role is mainly for customer experience, user experience for front end products in Web or mobile.

I had a couple of chats with other product experts to understand why is this happening, and this is what came out of it;

1. Companies believe if the prospect is an engineer he/she will be able to talk to the developers more easily and in their own language.
2. An engineer understands the product better than a non engineer.
3. An engineer can buck up his skills on UI/UX and consumer experience, but a non-engineer cannot learn engineering terms that quickly.
4. An engineer can pick up business skills on the way, but a non-engineer cannot do the same with equal ease.

Well, I agree that for some technical PM role it is important for the candidate to understand technology and perhaps know a bit of coding. But I fail to understand how engineering degree can help the candidate understand consumers better than non engineers.

In fact recently the Institute of Product Leadership published an Infograph on the current state of Product Management & Marketing in India and they have rightly mentioned a Product Manager needs to have a Brain of an Engineer, Mouth of a Diplomat and a Heart of a Designer. However, I would like to slightly change the attributes for a Product Manager working on consumer facing products, as the focus of their thought process needs to be consumer centric and not engineer centric. These Product Managers should have a Brain of a Consumer.

And this can only happen through experience. If a prospective Product Manager has a solid experience in the function that an organization is looking for in the prospect it may be good idea not to reject the prospect only on the basis of his/her educational background. A telecon may provide a greater understanding of the suitability.

I know this may be expensive affair in today's hiring condition, where rejection is much faster than selection, this little more pain can actually get organizations better prospects who could take their products to a different level all together.

Would love to hear from other Product Managers and Industry experts on this... and what they think is the right approach. Please in-box me or connect with me on Linkedin.

Product Management Baseline Research (India) infographic