Give your resume a makeover in Tableau

Transforming your resume into a Tableau visualization is both advantageous for your career and extremely fun!

 

There is no better data to visualize than your own life’s work. You worked hard to get to where you are now, why not take advantage of Tableau to show it off.

 

Step 1

 

I recommend using a recent resume as a guide for your viz. All the information and dates should already be on there, so you can easily access it. Begin by drawing a plan of action on a piece of paper. Take it section by section and decide which type of charts will efficiently display that part of your resume. Then draw the sections as a rough sketch of all the graphs.

 

Step 2

 

Now that you know which sections you want to include and how to best represent it, you can plan how to structure your data. It will be different for everyone, so find something that best works for your data and graphs. In my case, I decided to keep sections as individual tables and created the tables in Alteryx with a Text Input tool. This way I can easily update my tables as needed.

 

Step 3

 

Open the latest version of Tableau Desktop and connect to your data. Because I decided to keep my sections in different tables I connected to my tables one by one and created a graph for each section. The sections and graph types I have chosen are as follows:

 

• Education and experience as a Gantt chart
• Current job stages as a Gantt chart
• Technical and soft skills as two separate shape charts
• Travel history as a map

 

I also decided to add a section for certificates (as I plan on collecting a few of them in the near future) and hobbies as pictures. Lastly, I included four icons which act as buttons to take my viewers to my LinkedIn profile, Tableau Public profile, Twitter profile and Data School profile irrespectively.

 

Step 4

 

After creating all the charts, you needed, arrange them in a dashboard and pick a color theme. Try not to go too crazy with the colors, it can be distracting. I decided to go for pastel colors which allowed me to use a variety of different colors as they are easy on the eye. You can also stick with one or two colors and play around with the color intensity.

 

Step 5

 

Double-check your new resume and make sure you didn’t forget to edit the tooltips.

 

Step 6

 

This is the most important step of all. If this step is skipped, you probably did all that work for nothing. So, this next part is extremely important.

 

…Ready…

 

…Okay…

 

POST YOUR VIZ ON TABLEAU!

 

It is also a good idea to share your viz on LinkedIn so people can discover you. No doubt you will stand out from the crowd!

 

Below is a screenshot of my Tableau resume, but you can view it in Tableau Public here.

 

 

Happy vizzing!