A flash resume especially with animation can make your profile stand out from the crowd and can be of huge help in getting you an interview invitation. However there are 6 things that you should keep in mind while doing animation in the flash resume.
The animation should be appropriate for the position that you are applying for and be professional in nature in general. The animation should convey your sincerity and dedication to the job that you are applying for. See that the animation is appropriate for the job. For example a dancing Mickey Mouse may be appropriate on a resume if you are applying for job as an animator but would hardly be so for the job of an architect or C programmer.
Remember that the objective of a resume, flash or otherwise, is to provide the employer with needed information. Although the animation can make your resume more attractive and can be a demonstration of your abilities as a designer as well, this should not interfere with the primary purpose of the resume. The animation should improve the readability of the resume and make it easier and more pleasant to read. Irrespective of how good they look, remove any feature or animation that decreases the readability of a resume.
Adding complex animations can increase the size of your flash resume. Unless you are distributing the resume on a physical media, like a CD, the size of the flash resume is an important factor. A larger size would increase the loading time of the resume if it is hosted directly on the web and it would take longer to download if it's as an email attachment. In any case it'll affect the readability which is the one factor that should not be compromised.
Not all flash animations are compatible with all versions of Adobe or Macromedia Flash runtime. Which is the most commonly used tool used for viewing Flash files. You should not use features in your animation that are not compatible with the older versions as you can do pretty much everything with the older features and some minor advantages of using the newer features are seldom worth creating additional compatibility issues. Alternatively you can pack your flash resume as an exe file that'll run on any PC, but due to security and virus threats many people are reluctant to open an exe file that they have received from an unreliable source.
A flash resume is an excellent opportunity and platform to display your skills and creativity to prospective employers. You should not waste it by using ready made or duplicated animation or format. This is especially relevant if you are applying for job as an animator or graphic designer that requires knowledge and experience of working with flash.
Whenever feasible, you should create separate movie clips for animation components and later call them from the main timeline. It gives a modular structure to the whole project and makes it much easier to do some minor modification if required. Additionally you can also use these movie clips as components for other flash animations. Doing all your work on the main timeline will make the whole process much more complex and harder to manage.
Creating a flash animation is an art and there is no sure shot formula for success but the points mentioned above will be helpful to you in making a flash animation that is appropriate for your resume.