In this day and age, only the graphics that stand out from the rest leave a lasting first impression. An impactful resume that highlights all your skills and talents will only hold value if the design is as remarkable. But what exactly is the secret ingredient to having a killer layout for your resume? If you've been eyeing a job in healthcare for a while now, then perhaps you'll need an outstanding design that tells your employer that you're a cut above the rest.
In this article, we will be sharing an insightful and informative conversation with graphic designer Anneka Burghout on our episode of the Caring Support podcast. We talked about how great design can benefit job seekers regardless of their industry and stage in their careers, as well as how design, in general, leaves a positive impact on both consumers and companies. Find out more about resume design below.
Anneka Burghout is the Director of Marketing at Caring Support. She is an accomplished graphic designer and marketing specialist who is always looking to help others succeed. She is also an expert in brand development with a great track record of increasing exposure, sales, and revenue.
Many pieces of advice for those on the hunt for a new job were shared in this conversation. How does a well-designed resume impact your success rate? How can technology be utilized when making or using free resume templates? What design details make a good impression on HR? To know more about thoughts and insights on resume design and design in general, continue reading these points to consider, especially those shared by Anneka Burghout.
Anneka Burghout believes that a resume design significantly impacts the success of your job hunt. Both as a graphic designer and a professional in a recruiting position, Anneka has seen good and bad resume designs, and no matter what industry you are in, Anneka thinks it's totally worth it to grab the opportunity to stand out - after all, a resume is usually the first impression that a recruiter gets with someone.
She adds that if the recruiter's first impression is a document filled with text that doesn’t really make a lot of sense to the eye - crammed with information and isn’t divided into sections - then the brain doesn't usually like it. But if you take a little bit of extra time and divide the sections of your resume to highlight what actually matters, that’s a great first step to make it so much more visually appealing. To elevate this organized method of making your resume, ensure that you add a bit of colour and design to make your resume stand out immensely next to otherwise black-and-white pieces of paper.
Most workers have created many resumes in their lives - from font size to job title to job description to relevant experience, the resume has to be beefed up and made appealing enough to the hiring manager. Anneka confesses that updating her own resume is something she doesn't enjoy very much, so she wanted to contribute to making it easy.
Anneka works with Caring Support, a healthcare employment platform that helps thousands of healthcare workers in their job hunt. She further shares that they've been focusing on taking the heavy weight off of the healthcare worker. Anneka believes that, especially for those who are in such high demand, they should not be spending hours every day searching for jobs, applying, and writing cover letters. One way she realized Caring Support could help is with the resume builder tool.
She suggests that employees take advantage of technology to help build their resumes. With the healthcare worker profile that already exists on the platform, Caring Support makes it pretty straightforward to allow someone to show off their information, such as contact information, soft skills, work history, and the like.
Just like most employees, doing something like resume building all over again when they’ve already written it all out once is tiring, so technology is definitely helpful and even necessary to put pieces of information into a simple pick-and-choose solution that you can go back to whenever you need to. A nicely designed resume layout, a different colour scheme, and all the important details your employer needs to know - what's not to like?
Anneka designed both the website and platform. For both, she wanted to keep the user experience easy and straightforward to use. Anneka discussed having lots of experience going through the job hunting process, and she concludes that it’s always so time-consuming as a candidate. It seems to always be: look through a bunch of job postings, click apply, fill out a bunch of answers to questions, upload a resume, and repeat over and over again. She asks why makes someone repeat the same actions over and over again.
From the recruiter's standpoint, it always seems to be: post a job, wait for candidates to come to you, and sort through resumes of candidates that aren’t qualified or right for the position being hired for. As a recruiter, Anneka knows what a company is looking for, so why not just use some filters to see the candidates they actually want and, in turn, get way better candidates that way?
But it could be time-consuming for employers, and this is one of many reasons why they created the Caring Support platform in the first place. As much as the design is what people see and have to use, Anneka had to take her own experience and everyone else’s on the team into account to know what they did and didn’t want and create a product design of what they thought would be a much better experience for everyone.
When Caring Support was being created, Anneka knew that she would have full control over the brand design, especially the look and feel of it. The target audience is healthcare, and they literally have "care" in the name - and that’s the message Anneka and the rest of Caring Support want to get across to people. Anneka also shared that she personally always wanted to create or work with a brand that had pink or purple colours because those are not used very often in business, and this was the perfect opportunity for her.
Anneka had gone through brand designs and redesigns before, and in many companies she worked with, their brand colours were either blue or green. In design, they follow something called colour theory, which is basically the science and art of colour. Each colour is perceived by people in a different way, evoking an emotion and communicating a message. That’s why most brands use green or blue, the colours of ambition, strength, growth, and money. Meanwhile, pink and purple are warm and calming colours often associated with care and compassion, which seemed to fit perfectly.
Logo-wise, Anneka believes Joe, the founder and CEO of Caring Support, had an idea in his head about including a house. She had tried a few options of a house mixed with something else, but what seemed to resonate with the team really was the cross inside the house. The cross is most often associated with healthcare, and the house gives the thought of home care. We wanted something simple, and I think overall simplicity is what we were going for.
Taking the same principle to resume writing, the colours you choose must be in accordance with the field you're in. You must also strive to make a creative resume that's organized, outstanding, and professional, including all the important information like filling the skills section with your relevant skills and highlighting your work experience, as well as formatting details like white space, body text, mixing a serif font and sans-serif font, line spacing, usage of bullet points for organization, usage of a white background for simplicity, and the like.
Anneka hopes that she has contributed to it a lot. She shares that she heard from many users that they enjoy using the platform for its ease of use, which is exactly what she's going for, so she tells us that she's happy about that. Sometimes, she goes a while without going on the platform, and then she'll jump into it to see something and enjoy its ease of use and uncomplicated user interface and user experience. Anneka reiterates that she loves to hear from clients that they love how user-friendly it is, and this makes her really happy because that was and will always be their biggest focus.
Anneka believes that we live in a world where first impressions are everything. While we don’t necessarily need to have a good design eye, we need to give a good first impression on paper. As she spoke about earlier, there are tools like our resume builders, which make it much easier to create a professional-looking resume in seconds. But if that’s still not something you want to take advantage of, Anneka suggests that making your resume look at least a little bit visually appealing in the sense of sectioning things off is still very important, as recruiters don't want to look at a giant block of text.
Anneka also believes that recruiters want to see that you care enough to put in a bit of effort, which is what's great about Caring Support - they’ve made it easy to just go through your profile and fill out the information. You’ll notice that it's sectioned off nicely, making it easy to do it section by section. If an employer comes across your profile, your putting in effort to fill in your information will most likely give you results.
One last tip that Anneka suggests is that since we live in a world of social media, and whether we think your social media is for personal use only, it’s out on the internet, and recruiters nowadays know how to social stalk. Anneka shares that we should be careful about what we post. Here's an article written about this topic, so in your social media, you have to show that you care, and the favour will be returned in some way or another.
In her own words: "I was always a creative person, I took lots of art classes when I was younger, and found a passion for graphic design in high school. My first graphic design job was actually working for a couple of small startup companies, both headed up by our very own Joseph Jongsma. We had a digital media advertisement company, where I created all the video advertisements for companies, and then we had a 3D printing company where I came up with custom designs for companies wanting 3D-printed products. That eventually took me to a bigger company, Zomaron - now known as Paystone- where I was part of the design team and then switched to doing the e-learning design, creating the e-learning modules for new starts to the company.
"After that, I did some freelance work, which gave me a chance to do a variety of different projects, which was a nice change. Joe and I always had a great relationship and kept in touch, and I knew that he eventually wanted to start another company, so a couple of years ago, he asked if I was still up for the challenge of helping to create Caring Support and of course, I said yes!" she added.
We hope you enjoyed this conversation about design and the importance of making a good first impression when looking for a job or simply networking. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. To learn more about Anneka, you can connect with her on Linkedin.
Caring Support is the ideal choice for healthcare professionals looking to advance their careers in the industry. With our extensive network of leading healthcare organizations, we provide unparalleled access to myriad job opportunities, ensuring that candidates find the perfect fit for their skills and aspirations. Caring Support also offers a user-friendly interface, allowing users to navigate through job listings easily while also providing valuable resources such as resume-building tools and interview preparation tips.
Additionally, Caring Support prioritizes privacy and security, guaranteeing confidentiality for all users. We understand the unique challenges faced by healthcare employees, and we have tailored our platform to meet their specific needs. By using Caring Support, you can confidently take control of your career and unlock limitless possibilities within the ever-growing field of healthcare. Create an account today at Caring Support or log in if you already have one.
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