During the recent period I have been exploring practices of 'applicants' to stand out in the long lists of candidates applying for vacancies. Working intensively with companies in the creative industry, hence also with many designers that are able to 'give a visual identity' to their person and professions - I am still very surprised how non-designers seem to use a very straightforward text layout and TimesRomans identity to their resume.

Luckily there are people that make the difference and this also gets immediate attention. It does show the creativity of how to best communicate experience, passion and personality. Examples enough one would say - see here.

Also 2-page summaries of job-relevant experiences is not what people want to show anymore. It is us recruiters seeking efficiency in finding the right candidate most efficiently and we put the burden of reducing lenght, content and richness to the applicant. The applicants seeks on focus on his/her diversity in previous job assignments and experiences gained. Good example is how people now enrich their LinkedIn profiles with visually rich materials. A good step forward. 2 years from now I foresee this has become a truly dynamic representation people's experience - the new standard.

NOW let's look at the other side, the side of the the job-advertisements.  Here we seem to have ended in a commodity trap. If not already structured by our network friends of Linked In, other job-bulletin boards have also commodities the format of presenting your company to the job-seeking professionals. Of course when you select these portal-providers, you decide to drop the opportunity to directly show who you are as a company other than in pre-structured sets of words only.

Solution? Create a link to the company web-site. Here we can present our company in the full of its beauty. Are we? I find it difficult to find examples where an actual job-post on a company website is truly different from the commoditised job-portals. I have to admit that ours is doing so as well - but I am committed to start changing this. We have started with an extremely simple response form and an invitation to upload your CV. No limitations, no expectations other than 'presenting yourself'. A small step to avoid a data-driven approach to having people present themselves (read: filling in pages of web-forms to be entitled to apply).

Still I am looking for job-postings that truly represent the values, passion, brand of the company that is seeking that next talent to join them. Not only in words, but its its total 'experience' as it is presented.

If you have good examples, please respond here.