Visual resume
This Tableau project was a fun challenge in visual design; through a combination of advanced Tableau techniques and Excel manipulation we can create a visual representation of my professional career.
There are many examples of visual resumes in Tableau, all of which have their own distinct style for showcasing experience, employment history and tool familiarity.
However, there didn’t seem to be any examples of resumes showcasing experience level of tools, charted over time.
Next step: differentiating a resume through tool experience, time trended was my way forward.
Planning the layout
The first step in developing my desired view focused on whiteboarding what the end product could look like. I experimented with the time axis in both vertical and horizontal orientations, eventually settling on a horizontal setup. The reason for this was straightforward - I needed headroom in my Y-axis allow the cumulative experience chart to breathe, or the view would become cluttered.
Next step: Create the data to drive the visual.
Data manipulation
Even though I am passionate about data, I have never tracked my experience gained over time in any meaningful matter. However, I can reliably associate tool experience with employment experiences. For example, I know I had a steep learning curve for Tableau at Atlassian, and I know that my first year of experience there saw significant growth. I can even estimate back to major projects or products I worked on, within a place of employment.
Armed with this approximate knowledge, I baselined my knowledge per tool and technique from today - where I sit. I start with where I know I stand today (e.g. 9/10 for Tableau). And I estimate the year and month where I began learning the tool, and major projects that led to step-changes in familiarity.
Finally, I normalize my monthly experience values to create a monthly “experience gained” value, since 2012.
Next step: Visualizing the data.
Visualization creation
The biggest challenge in creating this visual centered around shading the individual tool lines. I wanted to shade each line, based on the slope of that line, relative to the next data point. In effect, this would highlight in dark blue when a particular skill was a deep focus of mine.
This effect was achieved by using a combination of RUNNING_SUM() and LOOKUP() to determine any data points increase or decrease in slope. Colors were then applied via table calculation, computed across the table, to determine the delta in slope between any data point and the next one.
Next step: Published to Tableau.
