With the Student ADDY awards coming up, and several students in the class who won including myself, I think it would be appropriate to consider awards and honors for a résumé. It makes a great impression to the reviewer when you show them that you have accomplished things. It show that you are more than your education, which is what reviewers are looking for. They want to so separate real candidates from those who are all talk.
Listing awards from contests and achievements in the field of the job is an obvious choice to include. If you don't have anything that relates to the job directly you could include achievements that show your character and commitment, such as becoming an Eagle Scout, or joining Business Professionals of America. Be sure to make them relevant to job seeking at least. Underwater yodeling contests and other such stuff don't really help all that much, however impressive they may be. I remember one résumé accomplishment one guy listed was something like "called in a guy to make balloon animals at previous job." Also listing too many minor awards can make you look like you're overcompensating for inexperience.
On a lighter note here's a site dedicated to giving people an award for dying in incredibly stupid ways. I would not recommend listing it if you ever receive one as you will be dead and no longer in need of a résumé. I would also give them an award for their terrible looking and hard to navigate site.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Résumé Paper
When fine tuning your résumé making sure to use good paper is a must. It could put all you efforts of refining your identity to waste if you show your reviewer that you don't pay attention to quality because you just used whatever lame xerox paper happened to be in the printer. Especially if you are a graphic designer it helps to have a decent paper choice that makes a statement about the quality of your work.
Some things to consider about paper:
Weight
Typical office paper is 20 lbs. It is meant to be thin to get quantity over quality, and when you hold it against the the light you can see blotchy consistency. Even though your résumé might be just black text, which works just fine on office paper, you still want to give off a better impression than "just fine." Anything above 35 lbs starts becoming cardstock, which will make your résumé feel like a brochure or something. Something close to 24 lbs will give you a weight that feels firm, crisp, and strong, without becoming to thick.
Color
White is the most common and looks professional, but there are other options if you feel they fit the situation. Ivory and other variations of off white. Anything with to much color should be avoided. As close to white as possible is probably safer.
Texture
Linen, bamboo, and parchement papers are popular in stores that have "résumé" paper. Avoid using anything too glossy, but also don't get crazy with the texture. Some art papers can be like printing on a denim jacket and could also murder the printer.
Printer Type
Check to see if the paper you are using is laser paper or inkjet paper. Laser paper is made to withstand higher temperatures used in a laser printer. If you go and try to use inkjet paper in a laser printer it could screw up the printer and then you will be out more than just a job interview. Since you will likely just have text then a common inkjet printer is usually fine for a résumé. If you have colored boxes or some other graphic element that you feel you need a laser printer for then just check to make sure the printer can accept it. Especially the imagepress in room 502. Don't put construction paper in it. Seriously don't.
Watermark
If you do use a paper that has a watermark on it make sure it is on the front and printed right side up otherwise you might look silly if they happen to notice.
Some things to consider about paper:
Weight
Typical office paper is 20 lbs. It is meant to be thin to get quantity over quality, and when you hold it against the the light you can see blotchy consistency. Even though your résumé might be just black text, which works just fine on office paper, you still want to give off a better impression than "just fine." Anything above 35 lbs starts becoming cardstock, which will make your résumé feel like a brochure or something. Something close to 24 lbs will give you a weight that feels firm, crisp, and strong, without becoming to thick.
Color
White is the most common and looks professional, but there are other options if you feel they fit the situation. Ivory and other variations of off white. Anything with to much color should be avoided. As close to white as possible is probably safer.
Texture
Linen, bamboo, and parchement papers are popular in stores that have "résumé" paper. Avoid using anything too glossy, but also don't get crazy with the texture. Some art papers can be like printing on a denim jacket and could also murder the printer.
Printer Type
Check to see if the paper you are using is laser paper or inkjet paper. Laser paper is made to withstand higher temperatures used in a laser printer. If you go and try to use inkjet paper in a laser printer it could screw up the printer and then you will be out more than just a job interview. Since you will likely just have text then a common inkjet printer is usually fine for a résumé. If you have colored boxes or some other graphic element that you feel you need a laser printer for then just check to make sure the printer can accept it. Especially the imagepress in room 502. Don't put construction paper in it. Seriously don't.
Watermark
If you do use a paper that has a watermark on it make sure it is on the front and printed right side up otherwise you might look silly if they happen to notice.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Job Scams
When we were talking about keeping your contact and personal information to a minimum on your résumé to avoid potential scams it got me thinking about Job scams. Here's a couple ways you can get screwed over.
One scam involves a fake interview in which you are required to travel. Often they will get your résumé from the internet and pose as a well known company. They offer to pay your travel costs if you buy your airline ticket through the company's travel dept. They ask for your credit card number and tell you they will contact you with your flight info...except they never do. :(
A number of shipping scams can befall hapless job seekers. One of the scarier ones involves a work from home position where you act as a redirecting warehouse receiving packages that need to be shipped to different places. It can be deceiving as it required no out of pocket costs, and even the shipping labels are prepaid. However the items are bought with stolen funds, likely from another scam, and the scammer is using you as a middle man to make it harder for the police to track them. When they investigate the packages bought with stolen credit card numbers they will be led to you instead. D:
So be careful when a company or client you didn't apply to yourself approaches you based on your résumé. They could be hamburglars.
One scam involves a fake interview in which you are required to travel. Often they will get your résumé from the internet and pose as a well known company. They offer to pay your travel costs if you buy your airline ticket through the company's travel dept. They ask for your credit card number and tell you they will contact you with your flight info...except they never do. :(
A number of shipping scams can befall hapless job seekers. One of the scarier ones involves a work from home position where you act as a redirecting warehouse receiving packages that need to be shipped to different places. It can be deceiving as it required no out of pocket costs, and even the shipping labels are prepaid. However the items are bought with stolen funds, likely from another scam, and the scammer is using you as a middle man to make it harder for the police to track them. When they investigate the packages bought with stolen credit card numbers they will be led to you instead. D:
So be careful when a company or client you didn't apply to yourself approaches you based on your résumé. They could be hamburglars.
Transferable Skills
Last weeks Lynda lecture had some really interesting stuff on résumé building. Particularly the transferable skills that you can put down which show the reviewer your capabilities. Some people will turn in a relatively blank résumé the first time around because they can only think to put down past job experience and education. It's important not to overlook the activities that we do that help us build skills useful to the job market. Spend a lot of time chatting online or posting in forums? Typing is a transferable skill. Act as a mediator between friends fighting? Diplomacy is a useful office skill. Able to quote every line from movies you watch? Information retention is important when working directly under someone. Don't overlook the small things or you can sell yourself short.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Send in the Clones
Often characters are referenced in other works of fiction. Other times characters are blatantly ripped off. This cam lead to some hilarious results. This is a list of goofy knock-off characters.
First on the list is the king of ersatz Micky Mouse. When Walt Disney found out that he didn't own the copyright to his first major success, Oswald the lucky rabbit, he just gave him different ears and continued making money.
Next up is Alan Moore's Masterpiece Watchmen. When Moore originally proposed the story he wrote it about a bunch of characters that DC Comics had recently acquired from Charlton Comics. Of course with the amount of death and whatnot in watchmen they wouldn't have been able to be used in future projects, so Moore's editor convinced him to make original characters based on the existing ones.
Lastly is Yurripe from Angel Beats who is a clone of Haruhi from the immensely popular Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi series. Both are characters who run a school club dealing with supernatural shenanigans. Both have the same eff the police attitude. Both look the friggin same. In this case it's more like an homage than anything but man are they the same person.
First on the list is the king of ersatz Micky Mouse. When Walt Disney found out that he didn't own the copyright to his first major success, Oswald the lucky rabbit, he just gave him different ears and continued making money.
Lastly is Yurripe from Angel Beats who is a clone of Haruhi from the immensely popular Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi series. Both are characters who run a school club dealing with supernatural shenanigans. Both have the same eff the police attitude. Both look the friggin same. In this case it's more like an homage than anything but man are they the same person.
Be$t reSume evarr!!!!1
Her experience is a bunch of nonsense that includes the Ds she made in math and and various community service projects and a link to her deviantART. In her skill set she reveals that she has photoshop and that she believes she is pretty good with it. Also that she is an artist who doesn't like to pigeon hole herself. Then talks about how she likes to draw anime. Her hobbies list tells her potential employer what he should have already figured out at this point; that she likes to goof off and play video games all day. Also she mentions her cosplay wardrobe.
Her long term goals are truly inspiring. She one day hopes to get the high school in House of the Dead at her local arcade, and to spend the rest of her life with her motorcycle. Lastly she closes with a bit about how she can be the breath of fresh air her employer is looking for and that now the reviewer can move on to the next step; meeting in person. Also be sure to get her some coffee. But no decaff or there will be hell to pay.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Copyright and Piracy.
Talking about works of art that have no copyright last week reminded me of a situation that I sometimes run across on the internet; that is orphaned work. The company KID used to be a maker of some of the best and most original stories visual novels had to offer. A visual novel is essentially a PC game where you read text and click to advance, sometimes making choices choose-your-own-adventure style. It's basically an interactive book with illustration and music. Well anyway the company went bankrupt and another company that didn't really do much of anything with the property it acquired. The sad part is that one of the best visual novels of all time, Ever 17: The Out of Infinity is now stuck in distribution limbo probably for a long time.
Since the makers are no longer selling, and buying a used copy on Ebay for $150 isn't going to support the makers in any way, the only reasonable option to enjoy this classic is to pirate it. This is the sad fate of many works that have a huge fan following, yet nobody seems to be selling copies anytime soon. So are is piracy bad no matter what, or does rescuing lost classics from copyright hell take priority?
Since the makers are no longer selling, and buying a used copy on Ebay for $150 isn't going to support the makers in any way, the only reasonable option to enjoy this classic is to pirate it. This is the sad fate of many works that have a huge fan following, yet nobody seems to be selling copies anytime soon. So are is piracy bad no matter what, or does rescuing lost classics from copyright hell take priority?
Fair Use and Appropriation Ethics
When asking oneself what qualifies as stealing when dealing with mediums which borrow from other works such as collage and parody, I have always thought of lit like this: If the work you are borrowing from can be recognized as the work of another artist then you can get away with collage. For example everyone brings up Duchamp's mustache on on the Mona Lisa. The art was the statement it made and no the actual image. Furthermore everyone who had even the most basic knowledge of art would know that he didn't create it. The point I'm getting at is that if you can use pop culture in your collage, homage, and parody because people are much less likely to mistake you for the originator. If I were to make fan-art of some not-well-known artist's work someone could easily mistake it for original artwork. What bugs me is when an artist tries to pass work off as their own when they ere either utilizing or borrowing heavily from other works. All this is to say what is ethical to use, not necessarily what is legal.
However when someone takes work and removes he pop culture elements and takes other design and storytelling elements it can lead to just as much of a scandal as if they had taken the original work itself. One case I find relevant to this is the case of Nick Simmons, son of Jean Simmons, who makes comics.Without getting too much into it, because I imagine he feels pretty silly about it now, he basically used heavy reference form another comic, to the point where fans of the original cried it was traced. The original work in question had a pretty large fan base and huge internet backlash resulted in many images of his comic overlayed on top of images from the other comic to make the point that he had essentially traced them.
The publishing company halted distribution of the comic following the bad publicity and accusations of plagiarism. The interesting part is that the author of the original comic never did anything. It was all fan action over the internet that brought everything to light without the need for any kind of copyright claim. It's doubtful whether of not the original author, who is already highly successful even cared. When asked what he thought of the whole situation he had this to say:
"To be honest, the fact that Gene Simmon's son is a manga-ka disturbs me more than whether he's really copying or not."
So it really depends on who's work is being borrowed from as to whether or not legal action will happen. If an artist is successful enough they may not be bothered by, or even be flattered by people using their work. That doesn't mean that it's okay to steal their work, that's talking more about ethics than anything. Lesser known artists are more likely to be offended in my opinion, and rightly so, because their livelihood and reputation are more dependent on their work. So don't steal their shit.
However when someone takes work and removes he pop culture elements and takes other design and storytelling elements it can lead to just as much of a scandal as if they had taken the original work itself. One case I find relevant to this is the case of Nick Simmons, son of Jean Simmons, who makes comics.Without getting too much into it, because I imagine he feels pretty silly about it now, he basically used heavy reference form another comic, to the point where fans of the original cried it was traced. The original work in question had a pretty large fan base and huge internet backlash resulted in many images of his comic overlayed on top of images from the other comic to make the point that he had essentially traced them.
"To be honest, the fact that Gene Simmon's son is a manga-ka disturbs me more than whether he's really copying or not."
So it really depends on who's work is being borrowed from as to whether or not legal action will happen. If an artist is successful enough they may not be bothered by, or even be flattered by people using their work. That doesn't mean that it's okay to steal their work, that's talking more about ethics than anything. Lesser known artists are more likely to be offended in my opinion, and rightly so, because their livelihood and reputation are more dependent on their work. So don't steal their shit.
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