In today’s troubled economic waters, job seekers need a few more tricks up their sleeves than usual to get hired. While most people in search of work skim online job boards with a cover letter and resume ready to email, a clever few have learned to put their education and experience online in the form of a personal website even before they start their job hunt in earnest. In this post, we’ll look at the top 8 reasons why you should stop writing emails and start posting your resume and your work online.

1) All You Need Is An Afternoon

If you can upload a photo to Facebook or send an attachment in an email, you can build a website. Our drag & drop editor and lovingly-designed templates make it easy to build a professional website showcasing your skills in an afternoon. Choose a template, add your content, and click publish – we take care of the grunt work of coding and formatting. You can use your own domain name, or put your website online using a free sub-domain.

2) Go Beyond a Simple Document

In most cases, a resume and a cover letter suffice as the documents needed to apply for a job. But what if you could show a potential employer not just your hard-earned skills, but your design sense and techno-savvy too? A personal website acts as your resume, but with added benefits. Upload photos, videos, and past projects to your website so that future employers have access to a more complete picture of who you are, and what you do.

3) Turn Chance Meetings Into Opportunities

Imagine running into the boss of the company you’ve been vying for a job at in line at your local coffee shop. You, the intrepid job seeker, take a leap of faith and strike up a conversation. You pitch your idea, exchange business cards, write a follow-up email with your resume attached, and…nothing.

The people who run companies meet a lot of people, and even those who are good with names often struggle to keep up with the email pitches they receive on a day-to-day basis. The next time you find yourself in the thick of a killer business or job opportunity, pull out your phone or tablet, and show the person you’re trying to impress what you’re made of. Keep your website loaded onto your phone, so that you’ll never be caught in a data black hole. Once your future employer has a quick idea of what you do in their head, a quick follow-up email to remind them that you’re interested shows that you’re dedicated to working for them.

4) Let Employers Find You

Most online job boards and freelancing websites now allow you to upload your resume, work samples, and other relevant information about yourself to help employers identify whether you’re suited for the job – even before you know they’re interested. Be sure to connect your profiles on Elance, Freelancer.com, Monster, and other job sites to your website, so that future employers can get a fuller picture of the kinds of clients you’re working with, and the kinds of jobs you’re interested in taking on. Keep in mind, the more complete your profile on job sites, the more likely employers are to contact you directly.

5) Make a Tailor-Made Website For Your Dream Job

One of our favourite IM Creator stories comes from Bethanne Zink, who designed her job application in the likeness of her future employers, KickStarter. Bethanne used IM Creator to make a customized replica of a KickStarter page that showcased her acute knowledge of her future employers, her enthusiasm for the job at stake, and a good dose of humour. Needless to say, she scored the job.

6) Reduce Back and Forth Hiring Correspondence

Between background checks, references, and test assignments, a hiring process often takes weeks to complete. Your website can help to relieve some of this back and forth by anticipating the kind of information a future employer might need, but it can also act as a one-stop-shop online portal for your employer to access. Rather than a long string of emails back and forth, use your website to filter and upload information, keeping all your information in one easy-to-access place.

7) Easy Access to Testimonials and References

Few employers will hire someone without first checking up on their performance in past jobs. Use your personal website to showcase what past employers have said about you with big, bold quotes that link directly to their contact information.

8) You Can Make Your Online Resume As Public Or As Private As You Want

For many people, the main caveat to putting information like resumes online is privacy. While the era of social media has relaxed us to the idea of placing our private and professional lives online, the more vigilant among us still have options when it comes to protecting private information. If you only want to make your website available to a select few, you can password protect a web page or even an entire website by following a few (surprisingly easy) steps. Take a look at CSS-Tricks’ blog post about password protection, or WikiHow’s step-by-step on .htaccess for more information.

Image Credits

Even wachten by Waag Society