Create Your Winning
Web Resume

Discover the Possibilities
of the Internet

Welcome to the Business of Marketing. . .Yourself

If you were selling filet mignon, would you intentionally limit your marketing strategies? Most folks would say, "No, I want to sell that steak to everyone anyway I can and make a million bucks." The Internet is a global market; it is increasingly a market for job seekers to enhance employment opportunities, and employers interested in locating the most qualified employees.

Some people think a web resume is only useful for people in high-tech career fields. This a myth because more people, including employers in all career fields, are using the Internet and becoming increasingly adept at locating Internet information. Growth in Internet use is exponential, and use by employers and job seekers in all career fields has skyrocketed over the past few years. Expert predictions concerning Internet use in the future foretell little change in growth rate.

The benefits of developing and posting a well-designed web resume are numerous and include the following:

Other networking and job search situations may arise in which the ability to direct someone conveniently to your web site would be beneficial. A web resume is a good career-building asset.

Online Web Resume Strategies

Two Internet strategies for getting your resume into cyberspace can be used, and you may want to use both—the more coverage, the better.

Post on a job bank: The first and easiest strategy is to visit as many job bank Internet sites (like http://monster.com) as possible and post your web resume on the site. Usually this is just a matter of keying or copying and pasting your primary resume information from your paper resume into an online form.

Create your own web resume: The second strategy is to create your own resume homepage and post it on your Internet service provider's servers. Online services such as America Online (AOL) and other service providers often offer free web-page hosting—a perfect location for a continually updated web resume.

Even though you may be presently employed, a continually updated web resume may result in career progression and lucrative job offers from other employers. People who have had their web resumes posted on the Internet for a long time may receive two or more job offers a month, particularly those people in high-tech careers.

Beware of free web hosting services that place "banners" on your web page. You have no control over this banner advertising, and some employers may find the ads offensive. The second strategy requires you to use a computer program to write the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) necessary to create a web page.

Creating HTML

Word processors: Many newer word processors, such as Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, and Lotus WordPro, offer the capability to publish the document to HTML. This is by far, the simplest way to create your online resume. You would simply open your regular paper resume into one of these programs and save it as an HTML document or web page from the File drop-down menu. The only problem with this method is that some fancy formatting may not convert correctly, and your resume will not appear on the web page the way you intended. The HTML coding created with this method is often difficult to edit if you need to correct any problems.

HTML editors: A second way to publish your resume in HTML is to use an HTML or web-page editing program. If you know HTML coding, you could even write it in a text editor like Notepad. Fortunately, programs are available that don't require you to know HTML coding, so you can breathe a sigh of relief about having to learn all those HTML tags.

Many commercial web-page authoring programs are available, such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver; freeware programs are also available that can be downloaded from the Internet (http://www.simtel.net has a number of them). What you're looking for is a program that writes the HTML coding for you. These programs have a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG—pronounced wizzy-wig) interface that operates much like a word processor. CutePage is a free "adware" program that offers this capability.

Most schools with information technology departments have computers and web authoring programs available for use. You might find someone to help you with authoring your web resume. Web resume authoring and hosting services are also available for a fee.

Your Career Action 1 Put Your Resume Online in a Job Bank

Your goal for this activity is to place a listing on one or more of the free job bank or corporate web sites. Your ultimate career strategy could be two Internet resume postings a week. Following this activity, is an optional or alternative activity to create your own web resume. Completing both activities is definitely a bonus in your employment efforts.

For future reference, document the date of posting and the name of each web site on which you placed your resume. Popular online job banks are:

Note: Some large companies offer the capability to post resumes on their corporate web sites. Search for company web sites using your favorite search engines and also check out the company research links on the Your Career: How to Make It Happen web site: http://www.yourcareer.swep.com. (Click on the "Links" button, then scroll to the "Researching Companies" link.)

Your Career Action 2

Create Your Winning Web Page Resume

Designing an online resume takes thought, planning, and time—all of which can give you big paybacks in increased visibility and ability to demonstrate your skills.  You should first have your regular paper resume constructed to use as a rough design template.

Many HTML editors come with web-page design themes.  You can use them, but keep in mind that your web page may now look like someone else's.  Publishing a web-page theme also takes about ten times the server space on the web servers, so it's pretty inefficient. If you want a unique, personalized online resume, you should create the entire page without themes. It's really easier than it sounds.

Table It

The key to designing a web page and placing the data precisely is TABLES (very similar to tables created in a word processing program, but used for an entirely different purpose)! Most of the time you will not use borders on your tables, and thus they are not obvious to the viewer. For instance, almost everything on this web page is in multiple tables (including the text you are reading now)—only a few are obvious tables with borders.

When making tables, don't try to put everything in one big table. Place the tables on the page in rows that have the same design as far as number of columns and column widths. Simply start a new table when the number of columns or column widths change. You will have a web page with tables stacked on top of each other.

Sometimes, to position a web page element, you will create a small table within another table cell—a nested table. The link below and the Menu button are both nested tables.

Be Careful Using Graphics

Use graphics sparingly. You may set a background graphic as long as it complements your resume and does not detract from readability. You may also use good quality certification logos for any certifications you have achieved. Remember, it is not appropriate to use certification logos unless you have earned the certification.

A photo of yourself included on your online resume is not recommended by many resume experts, and some potential employers may exclude your resume from consideration if a photo is included.

Add a Little Color

Choose your web-page colors carefully. Pages should be easy to read—in other words, pay attention to contrast between background and foreground text colors. Most of the time, dark colored text on a light background works best. Avoid excessive use of extremely bright or vivid colors because they make the text harder to read—limited use of bright colors can be used to highlight key information.

Navigate Easily

If your resume is very lengthy, you may consider a side or top menu to allow readers to jump quickly to key locations in the resume without scrolling through it to find something. This is done by using bookmark tags at all your key sections. By placing a bookmark at the menu and including links to return to the menu at main sections, readers can randomly navigate the document. The coding for this page is an example of a quick little navigation menu.

Search Engine Friendly

Another important consideration is making it easy for search engines like Altavista, Excite, and Google (to name a few) to catalog your resume for the moment when a potential employer types in those magical keywords, looking for you. Each search engine catalogs differently. Some look at metatags for "description" and "keywords." Others catalog on Title, or simply on repeating words in the page text. Some search engines use combinations.

Once you post your web resume online, visit all the search engines, and add your web resume URL to be cataloged. Usually your resume will appear on the search engines 6-8 weeks after posting your URL. It takes a lot longer if you wait for the search engines to find your resume.

For an example of Title and metatag verbiage, click your right mouse button in a blank area of this page, and select View Source. The HTML coding will pop up in Notepad, and you can copy the metatag format for "description" and "keywords."

Plan everything in your resume with keyword searches in mind. Also don't forget to post links to your resume on all the major job search web sites, particularly focusing on those serving employers for your career field. Click on the link below for additional information concerning this critical aspect of your web resume.

Relative Links

When saving your resume, make sure everything is saved in the same location (floppy disk or hard drive directory) and that all your links to graphics or other web pages in your resume are relative (not absolute). Scan through the HTML code of your web resume to ensure absolute links such as those shown below are not present.

By using the relative linking technique, your web site will operate properly regardless of where you place it. Normally, graphic and page links will only contain the filename, so everything must be stored in the same location. Double check everything before you publish your pages to the web server.

Include Links to Paper, Scannable, and Electronic Resumes

You may want to include links at the bottom of your online resume to your resume in both word processing and plain ASCII text format. The employer can simply click on the links and print the appropriate paper version.

You can also use the ASCII text to paste into an e-mail message to an employer. Due to the incease in computer viruses contained in e-mail attachments, many people will not open an attachment, so place your ASCII text in the body of the e-mail message. 

Notepad ASCII Text Tip When formatting ASCII text using Notepad, only use the Enter key at the end of a paragraph or line. When the text is placed in an e-mail or word processor, the lines will automatically wrap to fit the width of the document in which the text is placed.

Use standard fonts, such as Arial or Times New Roman, for your word processing resume—fonts that will most likely be available on the downloader's computer—so your resume will print correctly. Remember to upload all the documents to the web server.

Helps and Hints

We recommend acquiring a basic web-page design guidebook from a bookstore or your local library to help you through the design of your online resume. You can usually find someone who knows a little about web-page design and editing and ask for advice.

Remember resume wording too! Use ACTION verbs (list of verbs) and include facts and numbers to prove the point. Use open space around key areas to "frame" your points so they "jump out" at the reader. The first thing the reader should see is a major "sales" point that will make the reader want to read the rest.

Focus on the employer and why you will be an asset to the organization (in factual terms of course). The wording should be objective and not subjective. Don't say that you're the greatest thing since sliced bread; prove it with facts, and lead the reader to the conclusion that you're the greatest.

Publish It

Once you have that artistic, well-worded web page completed, you can publish it (upload) to an Internet Service Provider or Resume Service that offers web hosting (preferably free). And remember, the better the resume, the bigger the paycheck!

Web Resume Samples

One-page resume: The first sample resume, shown in the design tips to this point, is a simple one-page web document. If you use the single-page web resume with the navigation menu, the reader has to use the browser's Back button to return to the menu unless you scatter a few menu buttons around your resume as done in our sample web resume. You can view the entire resume by clicking on the following link.

The second sample resume is an example of a continually updated resume kept on the Internet for more than two years after graduation. The graduate consistently receives employer inquiries and interview offers as a result of maintaining a web resume.

Frame resume: A more complex method for web-page design is use of frames. Frames have the advantage of keeping the top banner and left side menu in one place. It's much more aesthetically pleasing in operation. The disadvantage is that it now takes up to four web pages instead of the single web page when frames are not used. The four web pages are:

• The frameset page which controls the frame setup and operation. This is the initial invisible page that loads; it subsequently loads the visible frame pages. The frameset page is the one you would save as index.htm.
• The banner page in the top frame.
• The menu page in the left frame.
• The main resume page in the lower right frame.

The following two examples use frames—the first uses three frames and the second uses two frames. The first example is the same resume we've been working with throughout this activity, but modified for frames. It's the actual online resume format created by the student.

The second example uses the top frame for both header and menu information. The bottom frame contains the resume body. The student who created this web resume revised and polished it for several weeks.

You Can Do It Too!

All it takes to create your winning web resume is time, patience, and persistence—a worthwhile investment for your future.

© Copyright 2002,  South-Western Educational Publishing, a division of Thomson Learning. All rights reserved.