You should not try to copy a resume from online or use a template from your word processing program. Design your resume with the same attention that you put into designing your portfolio. Make it clear where you have worked, for how long and what you did. list the schools you've attended and any awards you have won. Spell check and have someone read over it.

Instead of sending your entire portfolio to an employer, you could send one or two design sheets that show the breadth of your work.

Be prepared to show a full portfolio on your interview.

Perhaps i was unclear: the purpose of looking at examples was not find a template which i could then duplicate. Rather, i am interested quite generally in the graphics employed by people for such documents. All of the resumés i have so far encountered have been incredibly ugly (searching for 'architecture portfolio' through google, etc.), and i was hoping people here might know of some good examples. I cringe at the thought of using a word processing programme!

I hear that many people now compile A3 printed portfolios. Given that at portfolio is a large thing to fly around with, how reasonable is this, and how many sheets would one be expected to have included (yes, as many as are necessary, I know -- but how many usually?)?

i referenced the web site job-e-job when i was putting together my resume.

the portfolio isnt important, it is the work in it that is. An extremely well respected architect once told me that the portfolio is masturbation. Keep it simple and clean

Noted. Although it would be foolish to deny the importance of presentation - the difference it can make.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being cynical.

I should have expressed my thoughts in a different manner. The presentation of the work is extremley important. However, many people 'over-design' their portfolios to the point that they upstage the work in them. Overlaying graphics, text, extra 'design elements'. In the end, this muddies up the entire presentation to the point that the viewer does not know what he or she is looking at.

As to the PDF / electronic portfolio: I feel that it is crucial to send a hard copy of your portfolio (or at least a few pages that show your work) to the employer. Although digital portfolios / websites are nice, it forces the employer to have to go to their computer, insert a disc, etc. If they do not have Acrobat Reader or dont know how to use a computer (it happens), your portfolio wont be looked at. A paper portfolio can be passed around the office, viewed at times other than when sitting in front of a computer, etc.

Finally, if you know what kinds of firms you want to work for, cater your portfolio to these firms. Look at their websites and any publications about them. If you want to work at a firm that does mostly digital work, include flashy computer renderings. If you want to work at a firm that is known for their techtonics and construction methods, show images of anything that you may have built. You want to show the firm how well you will fit in their office.

Hope this helps

Thanks. It does, especially in terms of viewing the material in the office. I suppose I had hoped that they would print the sheets out if they recieved it via email. (That's what they did in the last office I worked for, but that may have had something to do with the fact that the director didn't really like computers as much as anything else.) I am based in the UK, and was thinking of applying to some US and Australian firms, so in terms of costs the PDF seemed to make sense. But, yes, maybe hardcopy for those I am desperate to work for.

I think we're in agreement about the risk of over designing something. There was in fact a portfolio 'review' on Archinect a month or so ago, where the guy's text and bordering had began to encroach on his work. It's good to be reminded of these things.

Not sure how much I underlined the fact, but I am about to graduate, and hence have little experience (2 months last summer, and a few weeks way back in '98 when in school). The only work I have is that done at university. Am rather unsure as to how much I should be bringing to prospective employers' tables, as it were.

Thanks once again, mdler.

-- Alan

I will discourage you to show all of your projects just for the sake of showing all of your projects - less is more. Pick your strongest projects (4 or so, if possible) and pick the best model images and drawings from those and showcase that. Personally, I like devoting two pages to each project, so when you have the portfolio open, you can see all of the work for each project on the two pages in front of you.

Also, I am not a huge fan of a lot of text and jargon on the page. The employer wants to see you drawing, modeling, computer, design skills, not your writing skills (save that for the cover letter)

Another thing to remember is that if they are printing out a PDF portfolio, you don't know what they're printing it on. Chances are they won't do it in color, and they certainly won't do it on presentation quality paper at a high DPI so some of the fine details especially in photos could easily be lost. That is fine if they see it on screen, but if you're banking on them printing it then you should design it and test print copies on the crappiest, oldest printer you can find to see if all the information comes through.

If you want to demonstrate design skills in your resume, then do it by being really careful with your information design - size and line weights of the fonts you use, and the order you arrange things. You should be able to fax it and still be able to read everything. Don't go crazy with the type; remember we read from left to right, top to bottom, and if you are doing weird round things and putting type at awkward angles then it's hard to decipher. Also, things will look different on screen than they do in print. So typography that looks fine on your computer might look really awkward on the page, and if you are using a small but perfectly readable font for your print resume it might be hard to see on screen. A large firm that gets many applicants, or a small busy firm, or anyone that isn't desperate, may not bother with decoding your info. If you have a personal logo for yourself then use that somewhere, but it really should be almost 100% text.

Good advice, thanks. Especially your points about printing/copying, Susan; I think we're on the same wavelength.

A well-known firm I worked for had a policy (stated on its website) of not accepting any emailed applicaitons at all. The email address listed on the website was set up to automatically trash anything that came with an attachment - there was nobody actually looking at the stuff and making exceptions. They also threw away any CDs that came in the mail. This is a respected firm, attracts lots of intern applicants, and isn't technology-backward - so it probably would surprise a lot of applicants to know these were the policies.
In EVERY situation phone and ask what format the firm prefers. Also ask to whom to address your materials. Websites, even if they're reasonably up to date and list contacts, can't keep up with turnover of personnel and responsibilities day to day.

In my current firm we get lots of unsolicited resumes and images by email. If these people phoned first I'd especially discourage the latter because we receive very large file attachments that take forever to download. I've had to delete attachments from the server sight unseen just because they're too big. If you insist on sending images without checking first: make them small!
When we print resumes they sometimes lose whatever formatting they had - though this doesn't happen if they are in .pdf format. (I had a guy come in to interview who was horrified to see his resume was printed out in front of me as basically one long string of text with no spaces, indentations, or variation of font sizes. We use a semi-obscure word processing application and that's what happened when we opened the file.)
One more point about emaiing: my partner doesn't check email. Ever. If you send something on paper both of us see it. He and I don't always see eye to eye - not just about whom to hire but about whether we should be hiring anyone at all at that moment. The more people who see your materials the better. If they're on paper they'll hang around longer and catch the eye of more people.

The sad reality about content: if you're going after your first job then what the potential employer is looking at most are skills. For a new grad in my firm these are (in order) model building precision, 2D CAD and 3D model/rendering skill, and manual drawing hand. The images you used if you had to hand in some final portfolio in your architecture school probably aren't the same ones a potential employer is going to want to see at this point in your career.

Ok...having hired in the past, here is some of my advice.

Do not "overdesign" your resume and portfolio. Keep it simple and let the content determine your assets. Graphical layout is for ease of information relay. It's ok to use 10 point Arial, so long as your info reads clearly and quickly. An interviewer may have to sort through 150 resumes and portfolio submissions, so legibilty is key.

If you are straight out of school you may not know your place in architecture yet, but be prepared to answer why you want to work at the firms you're applying to. If you are inclined to design laboratories hit places like Anshen & Allen first. Your objectives will be to your advantage.

As for emailing PDF's, you can do so with a limited sample of your work, but you should always send hardcopies instead. Sometimes, however, you are asked to submit on line.

Good luck.

In reviewing resumes my advice would be;

-Never send your work by e-mail or on a disk.
-Send a hard copy nothing bigger than A4.
-Maximum 3 sides A4 to get your enthusiasm, message, bribery etc across.
-Odd formats (such as square, hand made recycled paper) will get you noticed, sometimes for the right reasons.

At interview bring a good selection of best work in A3 format – best 20 images (plans, perspectives, details, photography, models etc).

Do your research on your prospective employer so you can tailor your interview technique / portfolio accordingly.

There is nothing worse than interviewing somebody who does not know;

a) What you do
b) Who you are

Common sense really!

I just graduated and spent a lot of time putting together my resume, and would be happy to pass along a copy to you Alan if you'd like to see it. I spent an evening working on the layout and stuff, and some very well respected firms have complimented me on it even though they weren't looking to hire anyone at the time.

I also made a teaser sheet of some images of my work that I would send with the resume, just to give whomever was looking at it an idea of the kind of work I can produce. It may be something that you'd like to think about doing. I don't know how many people are doing it in the industry, but it seemed like a damn good idea to me.

Pixelwhore: it's pretty typical to include a sheet of images with a resume - or even to have a few images in the margins or at the top of the resume itself. I see this a lot with new grads especially - I think partly because if you take up part of the resume with images then the text part has less space to fill and looks plumper! It also has the advantage of not letting the images get separated from the resume.
I'd reiterate what someone mentioned about making sure your images can stand up to being printed but add to that to make sure they can stand up to repeated xeroxing too.
In a lot of firms if you make it past an initial interview you may be asked to another meeting at which a larger portion (sometimes all) of the firm will be present. Sometimes this will be an office lunch or breakfast interview. Every staff member invited to the interview will get a copy of your resume and whatever you sent with it. This may happen by an office manager xeroxing the original for the principals, another assistant copying that for the managers, then them xeroxing the copy to distribute to their team, etc. etc, When I was in a large firm I often saw resumes and attachments with "images" that had deteriorated to nothing but black rectangles by the time they made it down the chain to me.

Pixelwhore: it's pretty typical to include a sheet of images with a resume - or even to have a few images in the margins or at the top of the resume itself. I see this a lot with new grads especially - I think partly because if you take up part of the resume with images then the text part has less space to fill and looks plumper! It also has the advantage of not letting the images get separated from the resume.
I'd reiterate what someone mentioned about making sure your images can stand up to being printed but add to that to make sure they can stand up to repeated xeroxing too.
In a lot of firms if you make it past an initial interview you may be asked to another meeting at which a larger portion (sometimes all) of the firm will be present. Sometimes this will be an office lunch or breakfast interview. Every staff member invited to the interview will get a copy of your resume and whatever you sent with it. This may happen by an office manager xeroxing the original for the principals, another assistant copying that for the managers, then them xeroxing the copy to distribute to their team, etc. etc, When I was in a large firm I often saw resumes and attachments with "images" that had deteriorated to nothing but black rectangles by the time they made it down the chain to me.

I have reviewed resumes over the years and I would reiterate some of the things said here.

1. Make information, textual or graphic, very clear and consise.
2. Don't show your entire portfolio, save something for the interview.
3. Know that the person reviewing your resume doesn't have much time to do so.
4. Hopefully you are applying to firms that do work similar to your own. If so, your resume (and graphic material) should convey that in both the information that is contained and the manner in which it is presented. One of the better resume's I have seen was from someone who presented some images of models made out of banal, recycled materials and his resume was manually typed on yellow lined paper. But obviously this sort of thing will only work with certain firms.
5. I would actually discourage putting images on the resume itself. I don't think that it is professional - looks like a student work. That being said, I think that you should put your contact information on any graphic "portfolio" pages so that if they find their way to someones desk sans-resume they know its yours.
6. My biggest problem with most resume's from recent graduates is typo's and poor grammer (as illustrated in this sentence). Check your cover letter and resume carefully (not just spell check). When I hire someone I want to be sure that when they send information to clients, contractors, consultants, etc. the information they send is clear, accurate and professional.

Good luck.

one thing to add,
make sure you illustrate your ability to draw.
not on the computer
sketching, so many resumes with computer images are coming into my firm.
That is fine but so many recent grads can use computers.
Free hand drawing is the number one complaint of princ. in firms today.
show something good, but if you can't draw don't show something bad.

Thanks - many great points.

Hmmm... having a month of 'free' rent in my university town I am now very tempted to re-represent most of the things I have used for my final presentation. This was yesterday, and went okay. Was a bit frustrating not feeling in control over the interview, but at the end of the day I made it through and they seem to have recieved all the salient points. Nerves, eh... I think this was mostly because, if I'm honest, I've felt rather frustrated by my project this year, and just wasnt having fun. It's hard to be enthusiastic about something when you aren't happy with it (regardless of your attempts to save yourself by selling your wares as best you can). This had a lot to do with representation, I think. It's important, after all, that you work in a way that you find comfortable and enjoyable. And, now I'm looking for employment, it's important to choreograph my work carefully to ensure that I have the best possible chance of working at a firm I like.

BOTS: you mentioned 20 images in your post. Is this a respectable number? How many pages would seem reasonable at A3? Thanks.

At the end of the day, it's the portfolio that counts (right?).

Thanks again!

-- Alan

Alan

20 pages of A3 is a respectable number of images to flick through with your interviewee – elaborating on each as you go. In order to get a feel for specific projects a max of 5 images per project should do.

I always took way more images than that in my portfolios that after the key 20 we could talk in greater depth if necessary. Or I could rely on reserve images to fulfil random question such as – do you paint, have you any pictures of models you have constructed, can you sketch on the back of a fag packet.

NB. Don’t stick your sketches on fag packets into your portfolio.

hope this helps

woO.. interesting and helpful post and feeback..
thanks =)
help me a lot since i m goin to look for intern.. big kiss for everyone

Bots,

What is a "fag packet?" Cigarette box?

For the actual interview, have three "stories" to tell, with a second tier of two stories to back it up for a second interview.

Each story should center on a major experience or project in your experience. Cull the nice images for your interview around these. This will limit the size of your portfolio and keep the interviewers eyes on your BEST stuff. NEVER show marginal work.

You will find that you are more relaxed presenting limited material that you know very well and that you are presumably excited about. Your interviewee will be more relaxed and happy at not seeing your life's story. They are usually pretty busy and don't always have the time to interview. Your time with them is a privilege. Don't make them sorry.

The first three stories should get you through a 30-60 minute interview no problem.

so, long story short...think about the interview when doing your portfolio. that's what it's ultimately about...communicating your strengths to others

Pixelwhore. I also made a "teaser sheet" that went along with my portfolio. It always included four images: sketch, 3D rendering, plan/elevation/section, and model. I chose the ones I thought were the best, and put brieft descriptions of each project. It has always worked for me, but I was only using this method for summer jobs, firms might be more rigorous for fulltime employees.

All the firms I have worked for and architects and professors I have talked to like clean simple portfolios. This also applies for admissions too. Even though the portfolio is a design item itself, it shouldn't override the actual projects.

I BELIEVE LESS IS MORE..
QUALITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN QUANITY

Great thread... Interesting and useful info here for future reference...

Okay - a portfolio question, since this has been in the thread too....

I appreciate the advice here, its changing the way I'm thinking about designing my portfolio (mine is for grad. school actually). I definetely think I will minimize the number of images now to only my best. however, how do you feel about representing process? I was originally planning on showing early sketches and models and studies along with the sexy final images. however of course the early studies don't LOOK too spectacular. however, if i show only final images, I will have 15 pages of sexy computer renderings... and a few plans or elevations maybe.

what do you think. just minimal with a great picture and some clever text, or process based with not the greatest study material but showing the process? to be honest, alot of the 'winning' portfolios I've seen seem to take the first approach.

and how text-heavy do you usually make your portfoios?

If you know anything about typography at all, use just type. It can be beautiful and graphic, and you don't need to worry about cluttering things upw with weird images and whatnot. If you'd like to see my resume drop me an email and I will pass it on to you.

definetly, less is more, is always boring to see more than 5 projects in a portfolio, actually there's a lot of "kind of good" books on "how to" make a portfolio, but definetly, avoid getting ur interviewer bored with 100 pages portfolio, just choose the best 3 to 5 projects u like/have, and try to be very clear in ur graphic description of them, is actually different the way to show a project in a portfolio than in a school review.... yeah just keep it simple

follow up this topic.. i wonder.. usually boss perfer large format (A3 or 11x17) portfolio or tiny handy one (may be 6x6 or so)?!
should i put many information on one page?!

for text, look at a monograph. you will find that the font chosen is quite light and and plain [a fairly traditional monograph, not with Bruce mau style graphics]. It doesn't get in the way. This is probably the safest way to make a nice portfolio. you can't go wrong with two or three images per layout (hierarchically sized and placed) with a simple blurb (max 150 words) in small light type.

Depending on your graphic skill, step it up from there and get more energetic.