Recently, we had all the Manasclerk Company folks’ CVs/resumes redone by a professional writer. Yes, I am well aware of the irony that a group of people who have all been paid to write had to hire someone else to write consulting bios. But that’s the way it is: a good writer seems to be flummoxed at his own tooting.
One of the team had the bright idea to run mine through Tagxedo, a wordle-type generator. The results are above.
What’s interesting is how much you can see that you don’t see otherwise.
This is true of almost all forms of data visualization. You get to see what you don’t without it.
Charles Joseph Minard’s diagram showing Napoleon’s losses over time and space during his disastrous invasion of Russia.
Great visualizations, like Charles Joseph Minard’s diagram showing Napoleon’s losses over time and space during his disastrous invasion of Russia (which Tufte made famous for me), transform how you see something. You feel it for the first time, you get s true understanding in just a few seconds.
Some people can do the same with tabular data. They look at rows and rows of numbers and can immediately feel the real story behind them.
Most people aren’t like that, of course.
So we recommend throwing your resume into Tagxedo and seeing what comes out. It will show you a bit of what hits the eyes of recruiters, and perhaps give you some insight into how you are selling yourself.
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