Personal Online Resume

lil_lisa

Ok, here goes. Threw this site together just before Christmas super quick for a few jobs and am actually quite happy with it, would love some criticism or reviews

www.lisadunne.com

Thanks in advance!

Trojan

Hey Lisa,

I'm not mad about the colour scheme, but that's more of a personal preference.

Regards layout of content, given this is your Resume, I think you need to reverse everything. What I mean by that is display your latest, most relevant info first.

For example, when I visit the site first I don't know what you do or want to do, or what your skills/experience are. Make this text less about "welcome to the site" and more about "I am a web developer with X years of experience in A, B and C" or something along those lines.

Then make the Work and Education sections reverse order - your degree is far more important than what secondary school you attended - so put it front and centre. Use more lists and bullet points instead of paragraphs that are harder to scan.

A personal rule of thumb: I think recent graduates with lots of summer experience should put Education before Experience, and folks with approx 2-4yrs+ should do the opposite.

Check out Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" for more info on web layout and content.

HTH.

Edit: I just noticed your Resume link (which is telling!). It feels a bit duplicated or infinite loop or something. Anyway that's the way you should have the site ordered

lil_lisa

Thanks for your advice, I've taken it all in and will work on it soon.

Trojan wrote: »

Edit: I just noticed your Resume link (which is telling!). It feels a bit duplicated or infinite loop or something. Anyway that's the way you should have the site ordered

What do you mean by this? As in, there's a resume on the resume on the resume type of loop?

Trojan

Yep, your resume site is the resume, you shouldn't really have a page on it called resume. If it was "resume (PDF version)" or something that'd be different.

OK I have a spare 10 mins and am going to give some honest advice, might be a bit harsh!

First of all, my first impression was that it is very unprofessional looking. That would be grand for a personal site, but it doesn't give a great impression for potential employers or clients. You might just about get away with it if you worked in another industry, but as you do work in IT, it really has to be much better than that. Without being nasty, it looks like one of the first websites I made when I was 11 or 12. Just not very professional at all.

Design:


What jumped out was that the colours/background are very garish and I imagine that colour of green looks icky to most people. The stripes aren't very nice either. I'd go for a plain background, preferably in a more subdued colour. You can always add colour in headings, buttons and pics. The font in the heading is also quite tacky and looks too amateurish. Some sort of graphic/image would look better here. Personally I'd go for a banner type thing and put my contact details on it. The navigation buttons are also very dated looking to me and you don't need to have one called 'menu'. It should say 'home' and there shouldn't be a massive space between it and the other buttons. That manga style photo isn't really appropriate for a resume site, why not just put your real picture on?

Content:

I'd just avoid the paragraphs and stick to a more CV based style, but it's up to you. I'd put college at the top of education and focus on that. I wouldn't bother with the details about primary school. Work - again, start with the most recent at the top. And perhaps avoid phrases like 'for the guts of...' - it sounds too colloquial and I'm not sure they even say that in America. Hobbies shouldn't be listed under 'awards', perhaps you should create two different pages here. Personally I'd call 'hobbies' something like 'interests' and put something more substantial on. You don't need a separate link for Resume as the whole site is the resume. I'd put the details here onto their relevant pages (work and education) and put your objective on the very front page of the site. For the contact part, remove the phrase 'there are several ways to get in contact with me' (it's stating the obvious and is waffley) and perhaps avoid using 'drop a note to me'. I'd organise the 'links' part into categories like education, work, resume sites, other, etc. It's too random right now.

Basically, I just think it needs to look a lot more professional, organised and polished. You can still give it a personal touch but I'd do that by using some nice graphics, eye catching (but not garish) colours etc. I know you probably haven't focused on design, but since almost anyone can make a nice looking website now, a badly designed one is going to reflect badly on you. I think most of the content is grand but I'd just try to keep the tone business-like and to the point. You can always link to a personal site/blog. Hope some of this helps! Best of luck.

lil_lisa

Thanks guys, this has been a great help. Considering it's one of my first websites to create without a template of any sort, I'm happy just to have a good layout and functionality. It's great to get this critique (especially when it's not always easy to see), now I know where to work on! Thanks again.