Re.vu: A New Life for Your Resume

Infographics became wildly popular a couple of years ago, and they're still going strong. Presenting information in a creative and easily digestible manner is especially appealing to job seekers, which is why many of them decide to put a spin on the traditional resume. You can do it for free and easier than ever with re.vu.

You might be thinking this is yet another online resume service, but I assure you that re.vu is different from the rest in the most amazing ways. When I found out about re.vu, I was simultaneously delighted and cursing myself for not hearing about it before! After all, it's not exactly “new”; the startup was founded in 2011, but somehow it slipped under my radar. It's a powerful and beautiful tool to manage your resume and portfolio in one place using a straightforward and pleasant interface. The host of options it offers makes it the antipode of the extremely minimal Resume.io, but this doesn't mean it's complicated to use.

The sign-up process is simple; all you need to provide is your name, email address and a username of choice to directly link to your profile (re.vu/username). If you have a LinkedIn profile, re.vu will offer to import your data upon registration.

Of course, you can enter everything manually and freely choose what you want to display on your profile. The main advantage of re.vu is modularity: you can rearrange the elements (widgets) on your profile, and they are all optional. In other words, re.vu doesn't force you to enter data which you might not want to share, giving you complete control over your profile. This is a great plus in my book, and I'm sure many other users also appreciate this.

The information on your re.vu profile is presented in the form of widgets, and you can modify their content through the My Profile – Edit My Profile menu. The visual aspects of your profile (themes, background image and widget arrangement) can be accessed and changed directly from the Design menu in the top toolbar.

The true power of re.vu reveals itself in the profile editing options. Alongside usual, basic personal info (name, headline, short bio and a photo), you can upload a traditional resume and make it downloadable from your profile. Not only does re.vu let you set links to a dozen social media sites, but it also makes it possible for you to link to any website you wish, be it your personal blog, the official site of your company or your online portfolio.

Speaking of portfolios, re.vu supports that as well, so you can upload samples of your work and attach them to your profile. This results in a detailed, professional and well-organized resume with everything neatly put in one place, which is great for your personal brand.

Your education and work experience are presented in separate widgets, with the latter being displayed in the form of a timeline. You can mark important events of your career and have them stand out in the timeline to impress prospective employers.

However, the “Infographics” section is where the real fun begins, because here you will set up the majority of widgets and create your awesome infographic resume.

Widgets you can add include language skills, job duties, vital stats, interests, skill development, pastimes and quotes. They are all highly customizable in terms of data you can enter.

For example, Vital Stats can refer to books you've read, countries you visited or to whatever you think is relevant. This is particularly suitable for people with limited or no working experience, as they can use re.vu to highlight their skills, interests and activities other than strictly job-related ones.

Once you're happy with the look of your new infographic resume, re.vu will help you promote it in some really genius ways. You can use a QR code with a link to your profile and submit your resume to search engines directly from re.vu.

If you prefer traditional means of promotion, re.vu will give you links to spice up your email signature or to embed on any website. Last but not least, you can promote your profile on social networks - also directly from re.vu settings. Tracking your influence and progress is easy thanks to the Analytics feature which provides (almost) real-time stats about your resume.

Re.vu is the full package: a resume, an infographic and a portfolio in just one service. As such, it's an invaluable addition to your personal branding toolkit. True, there might be other very similar services, but re.vu stands out as the one with the most user-friendly approach to turning your resume into an infographic. Hey, even the President uses re.vu, so why wouldn't you, too? :)

Ivana Isadora Devcic is a freelance writer, copyeditor and translator fluent in English, Swedish, Croatian and Norwegian. She's a Linux user and KDE fan interested in web design, productivity and personal branding. Ivana tweets about the world around her as @skadinna.