Creating Awesome Digital Resume in Notion — Worth it or Not?
Should I ditch the conventional PDF resume for it?
In my entire lifetime, I have never really understood resumes. It’s an A4-size paper that does not help us share our story effectively and results in a limiting user experience. You can find all the information about one’s experience and profession on LinkedIn, their personal website, and their portfolio, so “why a traditional resume PDF?”.
When I do hand out a resume, I always have the feeling that there is information that I want the recruiter to know that isn’t included. Most of this information can be found on my personal website and in my portfolio, which adds depth to my professional experience and I cannot fit in an A4-sized resume.
Although I can say I have worked for a certain company, will recruiters understand what that company does and how I have grown into the roles in that role? My answer is, most definitely, no. I would have to add more information and depth to it for them to understand. There is not enough space on the page, and the user experience is horrible.
The user experience with PDFs is terrible, and I’ll explain why.
I find it exhausting and dreadful to constantly have to update that pdf file. The same file is named in 15 different ways, such as Harsh resume v1, Harsh resume v2, etc. **Furthermore, I have to export every time I make a little change, which bothers me a lot.
Most of us have our files in the cloud, so who needs a local file? Not to mention if you keep your resume in your drive for cloud storage, you’d have to upload it every time you export the PDF after an update to the information.
I was tired of Microsoft Word resumes, they suck!
InDesign, Photoshop, Figma, and Canva resumes must be exported, and there is a lot of hassle after the export, so I was looking for something that could solve my problem.
I had already been using Notion for a while and was quite fascinated with the tool and what it could help one create. As a designer who relies heavily on user experiences, I had the idea of trying to create my resume. I wanted to test how feasible the user experience can be in comparison with the old clunky resume PDF files on local storage.
What did I find after creating my notion resume?
- It was easy to edit and update.
- Multilingual support was a bonus, not that I needed it but some might.
- I was able to add more depth to information by creating toggles and pages.
- Once I had the share link, I just had to share it with recruiters — no hassle of exporting, renaming, storing on a local machine, or uploading to Gdrive.
- Even if I had made any updates I didn’t have to worry because the updates were seamless and every recruiter with my resume link would see exactly what I could see in my notion resume.
To say I was proud and it turned out f*king AWESOME wouldn’t be an overstatement.
Why it turned out to be f*king awesome:
- It has all the details you need about me, such as education, experience, courses, and skills.
- I can link my portfolio, LinkedIn, Medium, email, etc. And it was damn easy to do so.
- It supports many languages and you can switch between them directly on the resume
- It doesn’t have the A4 page limitation which bothered me when I would add information to the resume.
- It looks great on smaller screens as it’s responsive.
- Recruiters will always have the updated version no matter what.
- I could add depth to the user experience if I want to by creating pages and toggles.
I could add a page named “+ more about my experience at Company” for the recruiter to navigate into and dive deeper into my professional experience — how I played the role in the company and how I have grown since I started working there.
I could add an image that shows a little bit of the company (explaining what it does, what my responsibilities were, and what I learned from it) and the images of projects that I had worked on too. The possibilities for creating a user experience are limitless.
With Notion, I can update my resume at any time and make sure recruiters have the most recent version, which is not possible using a simple pdf file.
You can have your Notion resume too!
I have made this resume template available for anyone who is interested in having a resume in Notion. The link for the resume template can be found here, so feel free to check it out and duplicate it.
If you have never done this before, just click on the “duplicate” button in the top right corner of the page.
What if I need the pdf version?
I know sometimes the PDF version is necessary. Therefore, I also added the possibility of attaching a PDF file for download. This way, if the recruiter really wants it, it is right there! Just don’t forget to also keep the pdf up to date as you make changes to your Notion version.
If you support the idea, please click the like button!
It will help the algorithm and readers like you will learn more about the idea.
I’d love to know if you liked the idea or even used the template, so feel free to leave me a message in the comment section!
Let’s make a world with fewer pdf resumes and more Notion pages!
About me:
I’m Harsh Makwana, a brand and web designer from India.
To contact me, email: theharshmak@gmail.com
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