How About an Experience Map Instead of a Resume?

Have you seen Prezi.com? It's a free online presentation platform that goes way beyond a traditional slideshow. Instead of flipping slides, which may or may not have animations in them, Prezi turns the presentation into a large canvas and the viewer's perspective moves. Animations can also be added. To me, this creates a much more engaging presentation!

Prezi also opens new avenues for self-presentation, as in an interactive resume. View mine here!

Note: Prezis can be navigated by scrolling and clicking/dragging, but I recommend using the keyboard directional arrows or the on-screen navigation arrows for the first time seeing a presentation; otherwise you may miss some of the smaller elements.

A Prezi would, of course, need to be supplemental to a more traditional resume. Also, since the free version requires that presentations be publicly available, one should think carefully about putting names and contact details in their presentations.

Word Cloud of my Resume

I'm actively seeking a career-breakthrough kind of job right now and have therefore been thinking... too much thinking... but really thinking... One really big question I've been exploring is "how can I present myself to potential employers so they see the real ME, and not just ANOTHER artificially brief (or way too long) cover letter and keyworded resume?"

I suppose how creative I am should depend on the organization I'm applying to and who in the organization will be screening my cover letter first. But in the anonymity of applying to jobs in other cities without any network connections, I'm wanting to get creative!

So last night I had a hair-brained idea to make a word cloud of a job description I was looking at. It was actually pretty helpful in getting a mindset to write my cover letter. Then it dawned on me how useful it could be to make a word cloud of my resume! So:

It took a little tweaking and removal of some superfluous words but I love it! Thanks to www.wordle.net.

If you're reading this, I would love your opinion, no matter who you are! What do you think, put this in a very brief cover letter?