Creative direction: Resumes should reflect the career you seek

If you're looking to land a job in a creative field, it's going to take more than your run-of-the-mill cover letter and resume. You need to fully express your creativity to a potential employer right off the bat.

"People try to use one style of resume for everything from banking to theater to advertising to science research and it doesn't work," says Steve Langerud, director of professional opportunities at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.

So while accountants and bank tellers might be able to get away with classic circum vitae, creative professionals need to go up, over and beyond to get their potential employer's attention and make an impression.

To start, we better define who creative people are.

"Traditionally, we would consider parts of the arts, advertising, marketing, event management and design as creative fields," says Langerud.

While these traditional fields of creativity remain today, there is also a growing definition of what can be counted as creative.

"The need for people in many fields to think about how they web together ideas, network people and cross industry boundaries has made creativity a top skill to demonstrate in organizational leadership," says Langerud.

So if you're going into a creative field, where do you start?

"The electronic portfolio has revolutionized what is possible for candidates to present and employers to expect," says Langerud. "Overall, in creative fields, paper is dead."

The Internet has opened the floodgates to personal websites and online portfolios. Joe Duffy, creative director and founder of Duffy & Partners in Minneapolis, has hired many creative people in his day. Duffy remembers how portfolios used to be something tangible, made up of work created professionally or in school.

"That's changed significantly with technology," says Duffy.

An online presence gives the creative person an expansive place to display his or her works.

"It gives you the ability to get it out in front of many people," says Duffy.

But before throwing your stuff on the World Wide Web, you need to secure ownership of a place to put it, anything from a domain name to a Twitter account.

"If you use them, be consistent with your message and image," says Langerud. "But even if you don't use them, own them."

Don't think you're technically savvy enough? Find a friend that is and ask for their help. You can give them help using your creative expertise in exchange.

"As a team, put together a killer site," says Duffy.

Make sure not to go overboard. It's easy to get caught up in what you're doing. Duffy says that he can tell within 30 seconds of looking at a website if someone is going to get an interview. If your website and resume aren't up to snuff, you might be hurting your chances of being employed.

"While candidates may want to be a little more inventive and show off their originality in order to stand out, it's important to show restraint when using creativity in your resume," says John Scanlan, assistant director of Cleveland State University's Career Services Center. "Candidates should select items that they feel will best illustrate their skills and experience in an engaging way without overwhelming their audience."