How to Use Visuals to Help You Get Hired

The art of crafting resumes can be tricky in the digital age. So, how do we balance creativity with professionalism?

Amy Schultz, who is the head of the global acquisition team at Canva, brings a wealth of knowledge on crafting resumes that both catch the eye and capture the essence of who you are as a professional. Amy joins LinkedIn News Editor Andrew Seaman on the latest episode of his Get Hired podcast to discuss the evolving norms of resume design and strategies for standing out in an increasingly competitive labor market. They also discuss how job seekers can utilize tools like Canva to add that extra flair to their job applications, including the do's and don'ts of resume customization and tips for making a lasting impression on hiring managers in your application materials.

You can listen to the episode above or on Apple Podcasts by clicking here. A transcript of the conversation is available below.

TRANSCRIPT: How to Use Visuals to Help You Get Hired

Andrew Seaman: I was taught in high school to add graphics and grab attention with my resume. As I got older, I realized that it can be a bit of a gamble when adding those elements without some guidance. So what do you do? Well, we're talking all about it on today's episode of Get Hired, right after this break

From LinkedIn News. This is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs and the ever-changing landscape of our professional lives. I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's Senior Managing Editor for Jobs and Career Development, bringing you conversations with experts who like me, want to see you succeed at work, at home, and everywhere in between. When it comes to design made easy, there's pretty much one tool that people are using nowadays, Canva. In fact, I use it several times each week in my work to create graphics, banners and a bunch of other things. Well, there's someone I know at Canva who's also incredibly well versed when it comes to resumes and getting hired. Her name is Amy Schultz. I actually worked with Amy years ago before she moved to Canva, and I've had the pleasure of keeping up with her over the years. Amy leads the global acquisition team at Canva and is joining us today to talk all about making you and your resume stand out to potential employers while avoiding some common mistakes. Here's Amy.

Amy Schultz: I lead the amazing talent acquisition team at Canva and we're the custodians of the candidate experience. We are there to listen and learn from our candidates and ultimately support our hiring managers in trying to find them the best skills for the positions and the teams that they're looking to bring on and grow.

Andrew: Yeah. And so you see a lot of resumes, you see a lot of applications, and I think a lot of job seekers, they're afraid of graphics partially for good reason because they've been warned over the years don't be too flashy. But do you think there are any other reasons that we're seeing a lot of just sort of black and white text only resumes these days?

Amy: I think you are spot on in that perhaps that's kind of what we've been telling candidates for years. But things are changing and we recently conducted a survey Canva where we surveyed 5,000 hiring managers and 5,000 job seekers globally. And one stat that I think will be really helpful for your listeners to know is that 71% of hiring managers that we surveyed expect text-based, purely text-based resumes to become obsolete in the next five years. And 57% of hiring managers actually prefer resumes with more visuals. And I think that there's a lot of reasons for that. But the shift to hybrid work, Andrew, I think has meant that we're leaning more on asynchronous communication and visuals can be a great way of more effectively communicating in an async environment.

So it's not surprising to me that hiring managers are now also expecting to kind of see that way of communicating in the hiring process because the hiring process is changing and the job search has gone visual, and we've been seeing this for years. I think social media has created new ways for companies and candidates to connect. Hello, LinkedIn. Hiring teams globally are now having to do more with less. In fact, research suggests that recruiters spend on average about 7.4 seconds reviewing a resume before deciding whether potentially this candidate might be the right fit. And visuals can be a great way to cut through faster.

Andrew: That's really interesting because people have been told so often about the dangers of putting graphics on their resume. It's probably a good discussion to have about where that comes from. And please correct me if I'm wrong. Basically for people out there who submit resumes to a company or through a computer system, the computer system, even though it doesn't seem like it tries to make that person's life easier by pulling information to say, okay, I'm going to extract all of your prior work experience and put that in the appropriate field. And that's usually when people get upset because they say, "Oh, I just uploaded my resume. Why do I have to write everything again?"

Amy: Yes.

Andrew: And that's because the computer doesn't know necessarily where everything goes. And the warning for a long time has been, listen, if you put graphics in there, it's going to do a bad job parsing that information, the resume was still going through and a recruiter will still see that resume, right?

Amy: That's right Andrew. And I think a lot of applicant tracking systems have done work to improve the passing of CVs that do include more graphics and LinkedIn, now that we have profiles with our profile pic on there, we started to see a shift even in folks including their profile pic on their resume. So bit by bit we have been seeing, I think CVs become more visual and more applicant tracking systems now absolutely do pass through CVs that have color, different fonts, and I would encourage job seekers to not view a resume as a static doc anymore.

Andrew: Yeah, and I think a lot of people will view a resume as a printed sheet of paper-

Amy: Yes.

Andrew: That's in their mind. But most recruiters, people in talent acquisition, hiring managers, they're going to view resumes on their computer as a PDF. And hiring managers aren't opposed to having clickable links in resumes, right?

Amy: That's right. You are spot on. I think most hiring managers are viewing your CV on their laptop or even on their phone. Top tip, if you are including clickable links, check them, click them, make sure they're going through to what you want them to go through because, have clicked on links that perhaps have gone through to documents you're like, I'm not sure that's the one that you wanted to send through to us. Just being super careful and intentional. We don't want a ton of them because that creates more noise, but including one or two clickable links, one of those could be through to your obviously LinkedIn profile. And then another could be through to an example of a piece of work that you did, something published, a website that you created, anything that is going to help a hiring manager get a fuller picture of you even starting to think about things like a digital portfolio, which is another more dynamic way of including examples of your work.

And for ages, I feel like I've been guilty of this, of seeing a digital portfolio as something that, oh, that must be like that a graphic designer has or a marketing manager. But no, I think a digital portfolio is any kind of work samples. And that could even be an example of a doc that you put together that was approved or got funding or budget for something like any examples of how to help a hiring manager see how ultimately you are going to make their life a bit easier and can get a sense of how you are going to communicate and collaborate in an async hybrid world. Being able to remind and demonstrate that at every touch point is so important.

Andrew: We'll be right back with Canva's Amy Schultz. 

Andrew: And we're back with Amy Schultz, who is Canva's Global Head of Talent Acquisition. Do you have any guiding principles for adding flourishes to your resume or graphics or things like that? Because at a previous employer, I remember we were hiring for an intern and this one person's resume stopped me in my tracks. It was the most beautiful resume to that point I had ever seen. It had charts, it had graphics, it had really a nice color scheme. And then when I started looking at it, I realized none of the charts made sense. And I was like, "Okay, this is really beautiful, but it doesn't tell me anything. And in fact, it raises a lot of questions." So obviously you want to make sure that whatever you put on there makes sense and actually speaks to who you are and what you can do. But what other principles do you think exist for including graphics or visual elements to a resume?

Amy: Great question. So I think three sort of key or simple rules, keep it clear, keep it simple and keep it concise. If someone's starting out and you have selected maybe a particular industry or company that you are interested in applying to and working in, just do some really quick web-based research. Look at maybe the colors that companies within this industry might use or their tone of voice or the type of font text that they use, and you can incorporate that in your resume. We all ultimately want a resume that will cut through. And so I would encourage any job seekers out there to select a template or a layout that they feel represents their personality and really spend the time articulating your achievements rather than doing the long laundry list of roles and responsibilities that we for a long time were taught was what should be on a resume.

And the structure in the organization I think is really key to visual communication. And the example that you gave just now, Andrew, where you're like, "Oh, this looks pretty." And then you're like, you look at it again, you're like, "What's it telling me?" I think when we want to stay clear and concise, that means what we put in there has to support the skills that you want to communicate. And to your point earlier, it has to tell a story. So no point in having something pretty if it doesn't actually align with anything that you have included in your work experience description.

Andrew: Yeah, and I like what you mentioned about reading the room about the industry you're going into, the company you're going into. So if you're going into maybe a law firm or you're going into academia, you may not want to put a ton of graphics, but you could still put some color in there, some visual elements to make things pop a little bit. And you can sort of look at it and say, okay, if I was the dean, if I was the hiring manager or something like that, would this be too far? And it's just knowing the vibe of where you're going into, right?

Amy: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, reading the virtual room and thinking, how can I make this as easy and as memorable as possible? And yes, you don't have to have all of the snazzy animations to do that. It could just be a really nice clean layout with some color. And if you're someone that has been looking at black and white text all day, that can pop and that can grab your attention.

Andrew: What about your LinkedIn profile? Because obviously if you apply for a job, especially on LinkedIn or even on a company's website, they will probably look up your LinkedIn profile, you may even put it on your resume. How do you visually stand out on LinkedIn? I

Amy: Always have said, I think LinkedIn is a way of telling your story in your own words and being able to stand out on LinkedIn that might be creating content, that might be posting, that might even be commenting on a post that you found relevant and re-sharing it. Because I find that when you need your network, you need your network to work for you. And if you've been working for your network and seeing your network as this two-way street, it's not just something that you go to when you need, it's like a living, breathing ecosystem. And if you are contributing to that, that can actually help you stand out.

Andrew: Yeah, I think a lot of people, they sometimes get confused about how their resume and their LinkedIn profile should work either together or should they be separate and really they should align together on the position you're going for, but also they can align visually. So if you have colors that you're putting on your resume or your application, you could also include those on your profile. So the idea is not that they're two separate entities, it's more or less if someone gets your resume and they go to your LinkedIn profile, does all the experience align? Does it seem like the same person? Because you don't want it to look disjointed, right?

Amy: So true. With your profile banner, we can upload different images and maybe that image is similar to what you include on your CV. So there are plenty of simple ways to make it flow, and I think that it's a symbiotic relationship between your LinkedIn profile and your resume. I think your LinkedIn profile is kind of that macro view and then your resume is the opportunity to go a little bit more micro and a little bit more tailored for a particular opportunity or audience.

Andrew: Yeah. What I always like to remind people is especially when you create content, like you mentioned, it's almost like you're starting an interview before you walk into the room because they could see what you're reading, they could see how you are talking about different topics, and then your resume, you don't really get that. You get sort of what you do and hopefully if you're good at writing a resume, it'll say how you do it and how well you do it, but it goes a little bit further than your resume, I think.

Amy: Yeah, I think at that broader level it definitely does.

Andrew: Out of curiosity, because I'm assuming people who want to work at Canva, I hope they're going all out on their resumes. So what are the most innovative, interesting things you've seen over the past few years when it comes to standing out on a resume?

Amy: At Canva, we probably receive and review tons of applications. We got over 400,000 job applications last year. And yeah, we always appreciate candidates that have experimented using the product, and we're seeing that more and more now where candidates using Canva for their CV or even to create a presentation to share at a different point in the hiring process. But candidates use our colors and have incorporated little graphics in their resumes, like visual logos of companies that they've worked at, maybe using video if they're going for a sales role, including a video of them pitching Canva, so you get a feel for what they might be like speaking to a customer. And people absolutely go all out. But honestly, Andrew, the ones that stand out are the ones that have been super thoughtful and super tailored and have thought about our values, our culture, and really try to tie that in, in an authentic way.

Andrew: My last question for you is, if people are listening to this and maybe they're still a little worried about taking that leap and including some elements, what is your advice to them?

Amy: Start simple. If this is your first adventure into moving away from a purely text-based black and white CV, that might just be switching up the layout, experimenting a little bit with font, including a little bit of color, but ultimately focusing less on that laundry list of roles and responsibilities, more on the examples of results and impact, and just start to lean into visuals just a little bit. And a starting off point for that could be including a company logo as opposed to just writing the static LinkedIn as an example, because that's just going to help you pop that bit more and get that recruiter or hiring manager's attention, remembering that recruiter's spending on average between seven and eight seconds. So if you can grab their attention simply in that amount of time, then I say lean into that and experiment and try.

Andrew: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Amy.

Amy: Thank you, Andrew. It was lovely to speak to you.

Andrew: That was Canva's Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Amy Schultz. You can find out more about her in the show notes. Also, remember, it's up to you to put our advice into practice. Still, you always have a community backing you up and cheering you on. Connect with me in the Get Hired community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. Also, if you liked this episode, please take a moment to leave us a rating on Apple Podcast. It helps people like you find the show and don't forget to click that follow, subscribe, or whatever other button you find to get our podcast delivered to you every Wednesday because we'll be continuing these conversations on the next episode right here, wherever you like to listen.

Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. This episode was produced by Alexis Ramdaou. Grace Rubin is our associate producer. Assaf Gidron engineered our show. Joe DiGiorgi mixed our show. Dave Pond is head of news production. Enrique Montalvo is our executive producer. Courtney Coupe is the head of original programming for LinkedIn. Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn, and I'm Andrew Seaman. Until next time, stay well and best of luck.