The Importance of a Simple Online Resume

In this day and age, it’s not just graphic designers and programmers who really benefit from having a simple online resume, it is anyone on a serious job-hunt, including 2D and 3D animators. I teach at an Arts and Technology college here in Nova Scotia and I'm always stressing the importance of creating a web presence. What's great with today's online technology you don't have to know any HTML code or programming skills or anything (it helps to know a tiny bit) to develop your own simple-easy-to-navigate online portfolio/resume.

I can't stress enough the importance of creating a simple, fast and effecient self-promoting website. Here’s why:

1. It shows you go the extra mile

Potential Employers are definitely looking at all angles of you when you apply for a job. Having a personal website, however simple, is a sign that you take some pride in yourself and that you take things the extra mile. Anyone can type up a resume or fill out a form, but less have the skill and confidence to say “want to know more? You can check out my personal website.”

2. It helps you keep yourself organized

Just having a Microsoft Word file of your resume sitting in your Documents folder doesn’t provide a lot of motivation to keep that thing up to date. But if your resume is up on the web for the world to see, you are much more likely to keep things fresh and up-to-date. Plus, having your resume online can serve as a great personal reference for yourself. Any time you need to cough up that data, you are nothing but a copy and paste away at any computer.

3. It makes you more findable on the web

Maybe not if your name is James Smith, but if your name is in the least bit unique you should be able to make yourself pretty “googleable” pretty quickly. Just buying yourname.com and linking to it from a couple social networking sites and you should be #1 for your name in no time. This is extremely valuable. If someone takes the time to seek you out, it is important that they be able to find you.

4. You can put it on your business card

If you have a personal business card, the URL to your resume is a great thing to put on it. This gives the person you are giving it to an opportunity to do something passive to learn more about you. When they pull your card out of their wallet/purse, they might not be in the place or mood to give you a call, but they might be willing to check out your website. Right there you have won some of their mindshare and that is a valuable thing.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Even if your website is a flashy light-on-dark swirly web 2.0 grunge masterpiece, when it comes down to your actual resume page, you should keep it simple. The information on this page should be as absolutely readable and accessible as possible and that means dark-on-white and normal sized web text. This doesn’t mean it has to be lame. You can design a beautiful resume within these parameters, just keep the flash, images, and heavy-design off this page. One of the major reasons for this is for printing. Sure, you can create a specific print stylesheet, but people will feel a lot more comfortable print a page that looks like it will print well. Plus, you can put a “Print Page” button right at the top.

Once you have your resume formatted, your images and other content organized, it can literally take one day for you to publish your own simple little portfolio, using WordPress.org and Blogger.com just to name a few. For more info on online portfolio creation and how to sign up for connecting yourself to potential freelance work download this package.