I’ve created my Interactive Résumé (or Curriculum Vitae) using Tableau. Here I’ll show how you can create yours.
Tableau is a very intuitive software that creates amazing dashboards (and more). It’s not cheap, but if you’re a student like me, I have great news: Tableau is free for students.
There is also a free version of Tableau for everyone: Tableau Desktop Public Edition. All your data visualizations (up to 10 GB) are stored on your public profile on the Tableau Public Social Network.
First things first, I used Tableau Desktop Public Edition version 2019.2.1 to this project. I also used Microsoft Excel for Office 365 MSO 16.0.11727.20222
Tableau Desktop Public Edition version: 2019.2.1
Microsoft Excel for Office 365 MSO version 16.0.11727.20222
Create an Excel spreadsheet with all your academic, professional and personal information
Tableau can read data from Excel files to create powerful data visualizations. The first step to create you interactive résumé is to put all information you want in it into Excel worksheets.
Have in mind that each worksheet you create will turn into a table or graphic in your résumé. So, if you want loads of tables and graphics, you’ll have to create a proportional amount of worksheets.
My résumé has eight parts: introduction, work experience, academic history, training, awards, publications, participation in events and languages; and my spreadsheet also has eight worksheets.
In my repository, you can find the spreadsheet I used to create my interactive résumé. Feel free to use it as a model to your own résumé.
Create your résumé
I used “A4 Portrait (827 x 1169)” as the default size of my interactive résumé, just like a standard one. This was a personal preference of mine, but you can create yours within any size you want. Click here to see some examples.
I recommend you to put your contact information on the top. Keep it simple: up to 6 contact informations besides your full name (e.g. current city you’re living in, e-mail, telephone number, LinkedIn profile, personal website).
Graphics are great to summarize information. Build a Gantt Chart to show all your work experience or academic history (or both) over the years.
Your résuée will become more beautiful if you add some custom shapes to some informations. Tableau makes it very easy by adding custom shapes from literally any PNG image. Learn how to to this here.
At last, read this wonderful tutorial by Lani Beadle to learn how I’ve created every single part of my curriculum.
Custom layouts for different device types
Tableau allows you to create and edit custom layouts to your dashboards, optimizing the visualization on mobile devices and desktops. Use this in your favor: create custom layouts to your résumé and impress everyone with your amazing skills! Afterall, you can never tell from where that opportunity you were waiting for will come.
Use visualization best practices for each visualization, such as: if your primary user will be on a phone, stack your views vertically one after another so that each view is usable; on a tablet, bigger is better, so, use large marks to make sure people can select them with their fingers; and always put your most important view at the top. Learn more here: 7 best practices for mobile business intelligence.