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Online Resumes: A Potentially Useful Tool In Your Job SearchSep 19 '00 (Updated Jan 31 '01) Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line In a slumping job market, any advantage you can find will benefit you in the long run. Posting a résumé on the Internet is not necessarily a novel concept. With Monster, Headhunter and a plethora of similar web sites, not to mention industry and region-specific sites, having information about you available to prospective employers is easily accomplished. However, I would suggest going one step further and consider developing a home page devoted to your résumé. I’m not suggesting for a moment that throwing your résumé into the vast black hole of cyberspace is going to result in job offers in and of itself (though I suppose it is technically possible). The odds of recruiters combing the web and finding your page at the time you’re thinking about looking for a new job are considerably worse than hitting a multi-million dollar lottery jackpot. No, my suggestion is to create an on-line résumé as an added tool in your job-search arsenal, a little something that might impress a prospective employer at the best, and simply be ignored at the worst. My personal experiences in a recent job search included hearing several employers specifically offer positive comments about my “résumé home page” (incidentally, that includes the company that offered me a new position). From checking the traffic on my site, I know that some people were visiting my site. Can I be absolutely certain they were all prospective employers? Of course not. However, given that few people outside of those to whom I specifically sent the address would have known about the page’s existence, it’s not unreasonable to assume most of my visitors were potential employers. I will recount here the steps I went through as an example of how you might consider using a personal résumé page in your own career search. Since everyone’s circumstances will vary somewhat, modify them to suit your own purposes as needed. Starting Out: Picking Where To Build Your Site If you own web page authoring software, or are an HTML guru, and you can afford a domain name of your very own, say www.hirejohndoeplease.com, that’s probably the most impressive way to go. Then again, you might not need to be posting a résumé: your skills are likely such that companies already are dangling lucrative offers in front of you. For the rest of us, we’ll need to find a free hosting service. As I wrote in an Epinion several months ago, I am a fan of Homestead.com. The advantages as they relate to creating a web résumé are important: first, you will have a page name that is much more attractive in your correspondence with employers. Open up a Homestead account, choose a name (presumably something neutral, not cutesy or possibly offensive) and your address will be www.yourname.homestead.com. Yes, there is that one extra “dot” (though technically the “www” is optional; you may also access the page through yourname.homestead.com), but compare that to addresses on AOL and some other sites, which resemble members.aol.com/yourname/index.html. Not nearly as professional looking. The second advantage of Homestead is that (currently) Homestead does not include banner advertising, as some other sites do. Presumably, those other hosting companies aren’t slapping banners for 1-900-GOOD-SEX or something similar onto home pages, but nevertheless having an advertisement at the top of your résumé looks a little tacky. Homestead does include a small “build your own free page” item at the bottom of the page, but in comparison to “Get A Free Visa!” at the top of your résumé, it is not nearly as prominent. As long as I’m on the subject of “tacky,” a corollary note would be to make sure you have an e-mail address for prospective employers that looks “neutral.” I use “chrisjoker” for all personal (i.e. non-professional) purposes, and invested a great deal of effort in building my identity under that name. But when it comes to prospective employers, I felt the name would be less than ideal. Being an AOL customer, I created another screen name/e-mail address using a variation of my initials and last name. If you can’t create an additional e-mail account on your ISP, you can always use Hot Mail and other free e-mail systems, as well as the free services offered by many of the free page hosting sites. Design Your Site On Paper First I’m not suggesting you write every single thing on paper, but think about how you want your site to look. Do you want multiple pages on your site? Just sketch out a simple chart so you can see what should link to what. Have you ever heard the saying “measure twice, cut once?” A similar principle is at work here, too. Advance planning will make the task immeasurably simpler. A web site with interconnected pages can be complex, and trying to remember each of those pages in your head and how they interconnect will send you running for the aspirin. Let’s Go—Build Your Site In my case, I made my “index” page a general welcome/introduction, with some basic information about my area of expertise. Links to my actual résumé were placed both along the left side of the page and at the bottom of the introduction so that visitors could easily move on to the résumé itself without being forced to scroll one direction or the other. Homestead also offered the ability to create a personal voice greeting, which I added to my page. (All that I needed to do was call a toll-free number and record my message.) Think about what you want your page to look like in terms of colors, backgrounds, etc. Some services, including Homestead, offer general templates, including a résumé. Two new templates for résumés have been added to Homestead recently, and both are suitable. I opted for a simple background that included a navy blue stripe down the left side, covering about ¼ of the screen. The remainder of the screen was white. In that blue section I included my e-mail link as well as the category headings on my actual résumé (“Experience,” “Education,” etc.). Choose your colors and font sizes/styles carefully---you don’t want to give a prospective boss eyestrain (looking at printed résumés is hard enough on the eyes). Clearly, some positions leaning more towards the creative side would allow for throwing in more colors, unique backgrounds, font styles, special effects and such. If you’re going for a more traditional “business” look, keep those effects to a minimum---a little goes a long way. In my case, the most elaborate effect I included was for my résumé category headings: I had the text “fade” in and out. The buttons I used for links were basic, frames around some blocks of text were likewise simple and in keeping with the basic blue color scheme, and the e-mail button was a non-animated, stylish oval. A hint: if you plan on creating multiple pages and want to have some of the same data (such as your contact information and e-mail link) on each page, you will save yourself time by placing that data where you would like it and save the page with a name such as “template.” Then, each time you create a new page within your site, you simply open up your “template” page, and re-save it under a new name. Remember that sketch I told you to draw? As you create and name new pages, jot down their names on the chart. That way, if something appears “out of whack,” you know the name of the page you need to check. At this point, you’re largely on your own as to the process of adding the elements to your page. Many of the hosting services work in similar ways, but each may have their own unique “twists.” Please, read the instructions for the service you choose carefully to familiarize yourself with the controls. Take advantage of the help options (if available) and customer support functions. In my experience with Homestead, their customer service was excellent---when I had a problem, they responded promptly to my inquiry, and gave me step by step instructions for correcting the problem I was experiencing (which was on my end, not with the Homestead site, by the way). For my résumé page itself, I closely duplicated my printed résumé. My intent was to supplement what I was already sending to employers, so I wanted to mimic that basic style and the same bullet points to create a single look. The key addition was that next to each bullet point I wanted to explain in greater detail, I added a “More Info.” button. Each of those buttons took the viewer to a page dedicated to explaining the item in greater detail. In creating those explanations, I tried to envision what an interviewer might ask about the items on my résumé and how I would answer. In effect, I was creating something of a “virtual interview.” Résumés are by their nature a snapshot of your qualifications, and sometimes it is pretty darned difficult to pack all the information you would like into one or two pages. The web allows you to get more of your important information in front of an employer, and allows them to decide which specific points intrigue them enough to see more information. If you follow that same approach, adding pages expanding upon the points in your résumé, be sure to include prominent links back to your résumé. Yes, we all know someone need only click the “back” button on the web browser, but good design (and courtesy) dictates including the link. Once again, I would suggest that in most cases, simplicity and consistency is the key. Stick to the same font across the board, and generally the same size, with the possible exception of headings. Choose a basic font color (usually black if your background is white). Stick to that color for the most part. Avoid too many graphics that will slow down page loading. If you’re like me and just love adding all kinds of neat things to pages, keep them on your personal page. Just because you think it’s cool doesn’t mean someone reading your résumé will feel the same way. Take It For A “Test Drive” Of course, proofreading your pages for spelling and grammar is a must. (Using a word processing program to create your text and pasting it onto your page helps in that pursuit.) But don’t forget to make sure all of the links are valid and go to the correct pages. Don’t get caught with a link that is supposed to take a viewer to an explanation of your knowledge of certain computer applications but instead accidentally goes to your accounting experience. Pull out that sketch I mentioned way back when, and cross check every single link and page on your site. Make sure the e-mail link actually sends mail to your address. Is everything clear and easy to read? Do your pages load quickly? Naturally, if anything is amiss, fix it immediately before including your address on any correspondence to employers. You don’t want your site to become a possible stumbling block in your job search instead of the helpful tool it could be. Be prepared to invest some serious time if you want to build an on-line résumé of your own, but it may be worth that investment to have one more tool in your job search process. If done well, a résumé site might just impress a prospective employer, and that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it?  |
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