Designers are the creative minds who can transform any physical and virtual asset into an eye-catching product. Their creative skills and ability to conceptualize and convert ideas into reality are required by several industries. They can work in automotive, web & graphic, real estate, photography, advertising, fashion, retail, and any other industries where creative skills are highly in demand. This shows that there are several industries for which a designer resume can be written.
How to Craft a Designer Resume
Whenever we think about a design, whether interior, fashion, or graphic the first think that comes to the mind is creativity. So when applying for a designer job, ensure that your designer resume demonstrate your creative talent. There is no need to pour in all your creativity in designing the resume. You can show your talent by using simple layout and formatting. But you can also take the liberty of being creative since it's a designer job, provided you don't overdo it. You can also play with the structure of the resume depending on the chosen field.
How to Format a Designer Resume
Contact Details
No matter what industry you are applying to, your designer resume needs to start with your name and contact details. Since you're in a creative field, you can use your designing skills to lay out this information. You regular address, telephone number, and email must be in the second line.
Professional Summary
Your professional summary must reflect your personality and creative talent, and noted achievements. It needs to be written in a short and catchy paragraph in three to five sentences just like the way you introduce yourself to recruiters verbally. When you're drafting the summary statement, don't ignore the company's benefit. Show the hiring manager how you're the most suitable candidate for the job and why the company must hire you.
Let's say you're applying for an interior designer job. In that situation, your professional summary must read like this:
Creative, intelligent, and dedicated interior designer with 8+ years of experience in designing any size of residential and commercial projects. Adept at collaborating with contractors, engineers, and architects and ensuring projects are completed in budget and schedule. Won awards and recognitions for three commercial and two residential projects in four years. Strong designing skills and high aesthetic sense for colors, layout, lighting, and furnishing.
If you're a fresher, then use a Resume Objective. But ensure that it doesn't read like a wish list. Most inexperienced candidates, due to being carried away by enthusiasm for applying for the job, do this mistake very often. They just draft it in a way that shows what they are looking for, which doesn't appeal to the hiring manager. What they lack is the understanding and maturity that fail them when it comes to writing an objective that could appeal to the employers.
Key Skills
Designing skills are paramount for any designer job. That's why when laying out all the key skills required for the job, pay attention and list them as much as possible. If you're uploading your resume on the company's website and other job portals, see that you include those keywords used by the employers for describing skills required. The benefit of this is that whenever the employers search a designer resume using those keywords, your resume can easily be found. So by facilitating online search of your resume, your job hunting can deliver fast results.
If the number of skills that you hold are much more than required, but can be useful on the job, include them. To keep the length of the resume in control, list all your job skills in 2 columns. This will help in grabbing the recruiters' attention. Besides key skills, do include soft skills such as:
Main Achievements
Listing your main achievements will showcase you've the design ability utilizing which the prospective employer can provide a much better experience to clients and customers. This will strengthen your professional summary and the key skills you've mentioned above. So list down the most noted achievements in your career that can fortify your job application. Use professional wordings to showcase what you cherish a lot.
Work Experience
As a designer, you are expected to utilize your designing as well as soft skills to facilitate and expedite projects for the employers. That's why the work experience section of your designer resume must combine what you did and how you contributed to the job. But when narrating them, make sure you use action words so that they don't read like duties and responsibilities. In fact, your experience must detail what you have done so that the hiring manager can see what you're capable of.
Education
There are specific education that goes with the designing job. If you're applying for a Graphic Design job, mention your degree in graphic arts. In case, the application is for Industrial Design, then a relevant degree that can show you have cleared the fundamentals of the subject is required. Any relevant certifications that enhanced your knowledge and skills for the job can also be listed.
The designer job title is used in many industries. Therefore, we have provided you with real-life designer resume samples in the links below. Whatever designing field you belong to, you can find the respective sample for your personal use.
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