In your Kinzaa profile, the “Description” field at the top right of your “Edit Profile” page is provided for your elevator pitch. We have restricted this to 3000 characters. All the hiring managers we’ve talked to have said they want to see short and direct pitches, so our recommendation is to keep it short.

Here are some examples of elevator pitches that can go into your “Description” field. All are from existing members of Kinzaa:

This is a wonderful one from a teacher:
Helping develop lifelong learners and passionate readers.

From a technical marketing engineer:
I work at the intersection of business and technology, bringing innovative products to market.

Here is a longer one which I like as well:
I am a seasoned sales and marketing professional with management experience. My background has been molded through years of proven success while in the employ of some of the largest and most influential organizations. I also possess a business mentality and prowess which is a product of the Bachelor’s in Business degree that I have earned as well as from my roles in management and sales. My current objective is to utilize my experience and background for a company that offers opportunities for growth by achieving the company’s business goals and expectations.

The key here is to get someone reading your description interested enough to move on to read the rest of your profile. You don’t want to sound desperate. You definitely don’t want to put someone reading your description to sleep by having it be super-long.

Keep it positive, and keep it short.

Good luck!

a. Skills
b. Experience
c. Personality
d. Objectives

We have built Kinzaa around these four factors. I’m going to write about these four items in more detail, starting with skills first.

If you want to get a job, it goes without saying that you need to have the skills to perform. Your potential employer is going to look for recruits or job-seekers with certain skills. You, the job-seeker need to highlight those skills.

When you build your profile on Kinzaa, we  allow a job-seeker or recruit to specify up to four skills that they may be good at. Why not more? Most people don’t have more than three or four major skills. If you are a job-seeker, you want to let people know what you are REALLY good at, and more importantly what will get you the job you want.

Kinzaa has been designed to allow recruits to find their perfect job. When you fill out the skills section of your profile, think very carefully about what you are good at.  If you are a new grad, don’t fret; you still have skills. Think about the skills you gained in class. If you took courses in literature, perhaps critical thinking is your forte. Analysis, writing. These are great skills to have.

If you were a computer science student, then your skills might be in the various computer languages such as C++, Python, etc. Don’t forget about the skills you learned while you doing summer jobs or internships as well. These are very important and employers pay a lot of attention to these. What were you doing the summer of your junior year? What did you learn? If you worked at the local mall, then how about customer service?

Skills are the most important thing a potential employer is looking for, which is why it is highlighted on your Kinzaa infographic resume. Please take the utmost care in filling these out.

Good luck!

Questions or comments? Please let us know.

EDIT: Found another great article here on transferable skills. Please consider this before creating your infographic profile on Kinzaa.

Beta is a term in the software development life cycle. It means the software is feature complete but still needs to undergo usability testing, or bug testing.

Here is what we’ve done as of October 1st 2011:

1. Moved our servers to a real data center.

2. Signed up with a content delivery network, so that large files are served out of the cloud. This means if you are visiting kinzaa.com from New York City, large files will be sent to your browser from a data center on the east coast instead of from California. Its pretty cool stuff!

3. Fixed a WHOLE bunch of bugs!

Here are some bugs we have fixed recently or will be fixing soon:

a. Support for non-English characters was added on October 26th. If you notice something out of the ordinary, please let us know ASAP.

b.  Support for non-US zip and postal codes has been added.

c. Made errors easier and friendlier to catch.

d. Making the PDF printout better. Yes, we’re listening to you, our customers!

Meanwhile, please let us know if something doesn’t work the way it should.

 Thank you.

1. She “gets it” about infographic resumes. Most of us don’t ride horse-drawn buggies any more. Why then do we continue writing (or trying to write) text resumes?

2. Erica was one of the first people to create her profile on Kinzaa (even though we are in beta) and graciously gave us her feedback. Go Erica!

There are quite a few infographic resume Websites springing up these days. There is a reason why. Unemployment is sky-high, and job-seekers want and need ways to stand out in the crowd. A lot of these Websites offer different themes, customizations and so on. Its a lot of fun to try these out.

We’ve taken a different approach. We’ve been thinking about this problem for years, and in fact count a PhD (with a Human Resources specialization) amongst one of our advisers.

Let’s explain our approach with an example. If you looked at my text resume or my online profile, you’d see that I had years of experience in Linux, networking, systems programming and so on. You might think I’d be a perfect candidate to go work for any large technology multinational. In fact nothing could be further from the truth .

You see, my plain old profile, whether its text-based or infographic, doesn’t indicate that I prefer working in small teams at smaller companies. It doesn’t indicate that I like working with interesting new products and that I like a certain amount of risk and challenge.

This is why Kinzaa has taken a data-driven approach.  Yes we want job-seekers to be able to highlight their skills in an easy manner. But we also want employers to get a complete idea of the job-seeker in one glance.

Infographics really is just a tool for us to get there.

Basic Terms
You own the Content you provide Kinzaa under this Agreement, and may request its deletion at any time, unless you have shared information or content with others and they have not deleted it, or it was copied or stored by other users. Additionally, you grant Kinzaa a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to use, to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any Content you provide, directly or indirectly to Kinzaa, including, but not limited to, any user generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques or data to the services, you submit to Kinzaa, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.

You are responsible for your use of the Services, for any Content you post to the Services, and for any consequences thereof. The Content you submit, post, or display will be able to be viewed by other users of the Services and through third party services and websites. You should only provide Content that you are comfortable sharing with others under these Terms.

You may use the Services only if you can form a binding contract with Kinzaa and are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States or other applicable jurisdiction. You may use the Services only in compliance with these Terms and all applicable local, state, national, and international laws, rules and regulations.

The Services that Kinzaa provides are always evolving and the form and nature of the Services that Kinzaa provides may change from time to time without prior notice to you. In addition, Kinzaa may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally and may not be able to provide you with prior notice. We also retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time without prior notice to you.

The Services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the Content or information on the Services, queries made through the Services, or other information. The types and extent of advertising by Kinzaa on the Services are subject to change. In consideration for Kinzaa granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Kinzaa and its third party providers and partners may place such advertising on the Services or in connection with the display of Content or information from the Services whether submitted by you or others.

Content on the Services
All Content, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person who originated such Content. We may not monitor or control the Content posted via the Services and, we cannot take responsibility for such Content. Any use or reliance on any Content or materials posted via the Services or obtained by you through the Services is at your own risk.

We do not endorse, support, represent or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any Content or communications posted via the Services or endorse any opinions expressed via the Services. You understand that by using the Services, you may be exposed to Content that might be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or otherwise inappropriate, or in some cases mislabeled or otherwise deceptive. Under no circumstances will Kinzaa be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any Content, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed, transmitted or otherwise made available via the Services.

1. Which browsers work on kinzaa.com?

We have tested kinzaa.com with the following browsers:
Firefox 5 through 7
Internet Explorer 9
Safari 4
Chrome

We also recently added support for iPad and iPhone.

2. My browser isn’t up there, what do I do?

Things will still work, however we still suggest you upgrade in order to have the best user experience:
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Safari
Chrome

3. What does kinzaa.com do?

Help users create infographic resumes.

4.  What’s an infographic?

It is a way of expressing information in a visual or graphic form.

5. Why infographic resumes?

Short reason: because traditional, text based resumes suck.

Long reason: there has been solid research that what matters for happy employers and happy employees are four things:
a. Skills
b. Experience
c. Personality
d. Objectives

Our ultimate goal is to ensure that employers get the workers they are looking for, and employees end up working where they want.

6. How can your infographic resume generator help me?

Resumes are difficult to write and often do not convey the right kind of information.

Instead, you could send a link to your infographic resume to prospective employers: e.g.:
http://kinzaa.com/mynickname

7. Can I see what an infographic resume looks like?

Clicking on the preview image on the right side of the home page will take you to a sample infographic resume.

If you would like your infographic resume to be included as a sample, please let us know!

8. Why can’t I have multiple themes for my infographic resume?

The team at Kinzaa has done a tremendous amount of research to determine precisely what potential employers want from their recruits.  Our theme is designed to convey to the employer exactly what your strengths are.

9. Why do you need my email address when I register?

For verification. After registering, we’ll send you a link to kinzaa.com.

You will need to click on the link in order to activate your account. You can send prospective employers hyperlinks to your infographic resume (i.e. http://kinzaa.com/mynickname) only after you activate your account.

However you don’t have to wait to activate your account in order to get creating your infographic resume. You can get started right away!

10. I registered using my Facebook account. How is this different from registration at Kinzaa.com?

If you registered using your Facebook account, you will not receive an activation link, because Facebook has already verified you.

You will still need to pick a nickname that will be used as part of the link that you can send prospective employers (i.e. http://kinzaa.com/mynickname)

11. What else will you use my email address for?

We may send you email to inform you of important updates. However this won’t be more than once a week. We will not sell or give away your email address to anyone else.

12. I didn’t get my activation link. What happened?

The email message with your activation link may have been sent to your Spam or Junk Mail folder. If that is the case, please contact us so we can inform your email provider so this doesn’t happen in the future.

13. How do I pick a nickname?

Your nickname must be at least 3 characters and can be up to 20 characters long. It must consist of alphanumeric characters (a through z and 0 through 9) including the underscore “_”. It cannot include other characters such as *,%,-,&,@ etc.

It is very important to choose the right nickname for the following two reasons.

• You will be using your nickname to log into kinzaa.com. So make sure that is a nickname that you can easily remember. One that is related to your name is best: e.g.  johnsmith.
• Your nickname will be part of the link that you will be sending prospective employers. It is in your best interest to pick one that is not frivolous. For example, if  johnsmith is already taken, then picking a nickname such as i_am_a_princess probably won’t give a prospective employer a good impression.

 14. How do I login?

If you have registered at kinzaa.com, you will need your nickname (or your email address) and password to log in.
If you have a Facebook account, then you can login via Facebook.

15. How do I deactivate my account?

After you login, click on “Account Setting” and choose the “Deactivate account” link. Your deactivated account will stay in our system for up to 30 days in case you decide to reactivate . After 30 days your information will be removed permanently from our system.

16. Can I use a custom domain to point to my kinzaa.com profile?

Yes! If you have a personal domain (e.g. myusername.com) you can create a sub-domain (e.g. resume.myusername.com or cv.myusername.com) and have it point to kinzaa.com/yourusername. There are three steps involved:

1. Create an A record for your domain with the name you want (e.g. resume.myusername.com or cv.myusername.com) For example, if your DNS hosting is with GoDaddy, the instructions are here.

2. Ensure that your new A record has an IP address of 64.62.222.20.

3. We need to update our configuration files. So send us an email with the name of your sub-domain

Thanks Ian for the suggestion!

17. Are you still in beta?

Yes.

The Problem: We spoke with dozens of job-seekers and employers. Not one job-seeker said they liked to write a resume. All the employers said reading text based resumes is a slow, inaccurate and tedious process.

The Solution: We believe what is needed is something that provides specific details on skills, experience, work environment, personality and objectives while still being easy to review. An employer has to sort through dozens or hundreds of resumes to select the few they want to contact. They need to be able to make a judgment in less than five minutes about whether this person is worth more time.

Meanwhile job-seekers need a way of describing themselves in a manner that is easy.

Infographics is a way of describing information in a visual or graphical form.

Infographics provides the format that sets you apart from the crowd. Employers get the specific information they crave in a single glance and they can quickly form an accurate picture of you in their mind. Infographics help job-seekers such as you standout. Your skills are clearly described and employers see you in the brightest possible perspective.

Our mission is to help people get the job they want and will thrive in. We want to maximize and utilize talent for optimal functioning of the individual and the organization they work in. We know each person has a unique talent that is waiting to be expressed and we want to build a system that unlocks that talent for the greater good. We do that by quickly assessing the individual and representing their skills, experience, personality and objectives in an easy to review infographical format. Employers create their ideal profiles and Kinzaa will instantly align the best candidates with the ideal employers.

At Kinzaa we are changing the way the world views the job search process. We are using infographics combined with advanced matching tools to dramatically alter the connection between job-seeker and employer. We want every job-seeker to have these powerful tools in their hand.

Still have questions? Check out our FAQ. Otherwise go ahead and register so you can start creating your infographic resume!