JOBS MUST: 🗺 47 Awesome Resume Mind Map Ideas to Copy

Let these personal CV mind map examples guide your own job search.

Photo by delfi de la Rua

I was never big on mind maps.

I preferred making prioritized checklists and to do lists with sub-lists when needed. Back in 2002, I organized all of our wedding plans using a lists app on my Palm Treo and it was a thing of beauty, if I say so myself.

When I first tried mind mapping, my mind maps were always the same- one center node that branched off to a list of nodes, and each one had its own sub-list of nodes.

Sound familiar?

Since I wasn't doing it properly, I wasn't getting the benefits, so it's no surprise that I didn't find them very useful.

But I came back to them a few years ago, and the freedom of branching out in all directions was really liberating. I don't mind map every day, but when I'm in a strategic mood, they're now my go-to tool.

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How can mind mapping help my job search?

You can use mind maps to:

1. Review your career to date, such as for preparing a work portfolio

2. Snapshot your network of contacts, or at least the relevant people for your current job search

3. Brainstorm, plan and track your job search, right down to companies to target

4. Prepare for an upcoming job interview, including questions to ask

5. Sell yourself in a job interview

And of course, you can use a mind map about yourself as a creative resume.

Working on my CV as a mindmap…

— Robert Strauch (@straurob) January 28, 2017

Not necessarily to send to recruiters, but definitely as a story-telling aid when pitching your accomplishments to anyone who might find a more formal resume boring.

Here's a large group of people who've done just that.

This is how to write a mind map of a CV

You could say these are mind maps people created about “me, I and myself.”

Jane Brotchie

Stuart Emmett

Achraf Souk

Alberto Martinez

Jennifer Goddard

Dominique Dejonghe

Edgar

Emmanuel Lebrun

Jacqueline Bowman

Jean Pascal

Jon

J. Wynia

Lars Dahlin

Marco Bertolini

Niketan Pansare

Ricclo

Richard Harbridge

Skanda Kumarasingam

Steve Rothwell

Vincent Birlouez

Zehra Oguz Lebrun

Carl Giosa

Eric Giosa

Kevin Nast

Maneesh Dutt

Nathalie Dhalmann

Marina De Roover

Mark Pohlmann

Sab Will

Christopher Byrne

Andre Fiuza

Chris Delepierre

Syed Ahmad Mursil

Ton Meeuwissen

Pete Moore

Marina Massengo

Keith

Daniel Tay

Kara Aharon

Anton Gurov

Rhett Butler

Hannah Gant

Veselin Kirev

Pierre Aumont

Didier Lahely

Lars Henrik Dahl

Mohamed Moustafa

Mohamed is a Tony Buzan Licensed Instructor, so he knows mind mapping.

Bonus 1: Mind mapping tools

If you'd like to mind map your own resume, here are some free tools:

Freemind – arguably the best known free, downloadable mind maping software.
iMindmap – the only tool recommended by Tony Buzan, inventor of Mind Mapping.
Freeplane – a better Freemind than Freemind, I switched to using this a few years ago.
Xmind – nice user inteface and available in 7 languages.
bubbl.us – cute tool, lets you make the mind maps in your browser window.
Biggerplate – thousands of free mind map templates and examples

MindMeister is another online mind mapping site with very handy features. Their basic/free plan is very limited (you're only allowed to save 3 mind maps) but they provide a free resume mind map template so you can get started quickly: