Job Search Myth #5: You Need a Fancy Resume Design

Let’s talk design.

Myth #5: I need a super creative resume design to stand out.

Truth? Most creative resumes get rejected by ATS bots. Fonts, columns, icons—they can confuse the system and hide your qualifications.

You don’t need flash. You need:

• Clean formatting

• Keyword alignment

• Value-focused storytelling

I cover all of this (and more) in the Resume Elevation Workshop. Save your seat: www.amcreativecoach.com/resume-elevation

Check out this related LinkedIn post and my response:

By Jameson Staley

The hiring process for creatives is broken.

I think you all know by now that I don't do a lot of complaining, especially on social media, and never on LinkedIn.

But this needs to be said.

Creatives need air. We have ideas that need space. We have so much to show you that doesn't fit into your Al-powered ATS. In the last 10 weeks, l've heard of creatives who have made:

5-minute animated videos showcasing their skills through an engaging narrative and truly stunning art

Resumes designed to look like album covers, with the pertinent information

laid out like credits

- Fully branded suites of resumes, cover letters, presentations, websites, and letters of recommendation showcasing how a brand narrative can be iterated out over a large variety of formats (Oh hey, that's mine

None of it works. No one ever sees it because the ATS can't read it, so it kicks your application out before a human being ever gets to it.

And we're suffocating. We can't show you what we do, we can't prove our skills through our outreach, we can't differentiate ourselves from the 3,000 other candidates.

Compounding this problem is the fact that our industry doesn't believe in standardized job titles. So, for example, a "Content Producer" might be a junior writer, a mid-level social media content creator, a self-sufficient video editor, or a manager leading a content team.

Everyone is confused, no one knows if they're qualified, we're all out here job searching, so we apply for any role that seems like it'd be a good fit. We accidentally flood applicant tracking systems, we scramble to make an impression on social media-we'd make an entire Broadway musical number if we thought you'd see it but we know you won't.

I don't have a solution because I empathize with hiring teams who are drowning in the ocean of applicants, but while they're swimming for land, the process is burying us alive.

My response:

Jameson, thank you for putting this out there—your frustration is real, and I hear it from creatives all the time.

As someone who now hires creatives, I want to be honest: I used to do all the same things. I once designed a resume that looked like an Apple product insert—complete with rounded corners, embossed logo, and a beautiful visual timeline of my career.

I didn’t get the job.

Ironically, I landed my current role using a plain Word doc, Calibri font, no columns, no headshot, no branding—just clear, results-driven content that showed how I made impact.

Here’s what I tell my clients now:

✨ The resume isn’t a design problem that needs solving.

🎯 Design-forward resumes often sacrifice clarity for aesthetics.

🤝 Most hiring managers aren’t looking to be wowed by form—they’re looking for function, proof of collaboration, and how you solve business problems.

When creatives turn their resume into a branding project, they’re unintentionally showing they design in a vacuum. The irony? That tells me less about their creative leadership and more about their lack of context awareness—a soft skill that matters just as much.

Could the hiring process be better? Absolutely. But I’ve never seen a beautifully designed resume save a candidate. More often, it gets rejected before it even gets seen.

I’ve yet to meet a hiring manager who considers the resume itself a portfolio piece.

Let’s teach creatives how to show value—clearly and confidently—so they can land the interview and let their portfolio shine where it matters most.

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