Looking for the Creative Job Hunters

When you are looking to hire creative people, do you only look at the content of the resume, or do you consider the resume itself?

You certainly want your Creatives to be talented in the content they produce, whether it’s designing an ad campaign, creating a hairstyle for a client, developing a new app, or coming up with a way to control flooding in a rural village. It’s helpful, though, if they apply that same creativity to problem-solving, whether it’s dealing with budget issues, overcoming personality conflicts…or even just getting the job in the first place.

The folks at MentalFloss offer us 11 very creative resumes that certainly got our attention. I think my favorite is the one that looks like an Amazon product page, but the candy bar wrapper is a close second.

As someone noted in the comments section, doing something like this might work in certain fields, but try this in IT or Finance and you might not get very far. But really, that is kind of a shame, since those fields could often benefit from some creative problem solving. In any case, I don’t think the commenter was paying attention, since most of the jobs these people were applying for involved marketing,and game or web design — in other words, they showed off something that reflected the job they were trying for.

When we are looking for new Creatives, it is easy to fall into old habits and just look for lists of jobs that candidates have had, or portfolios of work they’ve accomplished in the past. But the whole idea of creativity is to avoid old habits, right? There is more to a Creative than their past experience; there’s also their creativity. You want Creatives who can bring a new idea to solving a problem and accomplishing a goal, so why not look at how they work toward the objective of landing a job? Their approach tells you a lot about how they will work on your projects, and frankly, it tells you a LOT more than a list of companies and dates will tell you on its own.

If you want your people to be creative in the way they approach their work, you need to be creative in the way you approach yours, too. If one part of your work is hiring new Creatives, then be open to new ideas about doing that.