If you’ve been searching for a job for a while then you’ll know that it’s tough to get noticed out there. There has never been a more competitive playing field and with new graduates being added to the employment market every year, it’s more important than ever to stand out. But how do you go about doing this?

Well, you could go down the more esoteric route of the gimmicky video resume or set about starting a guerilla ‘Employ Me’ Twitter campaign indeed, if you’re going for a role that requires a certain amount of chutzpah and showmanship or mastery of social media this wouldn’t be a bad idea at all but a better option for a more low-key but equally effective approach would be to produce an online resume.

What’s Wrong With My Paper Resume?
Nothing, but there’s nothing wrong with the hundreds of other pdf or .doc format resumes that employers receive in their inbox every day. Traditionally within business there is a culture of visual austerity when it comes to resumes you know the drill: no comic sans or any other ‘wacky’ font, a standard template layout, limited color and styling, but submitting a clickable, web-based resume, the change of format means you can do some arresting but subtle visual work that will stick in the mind of those that read it.

What skills do I need?
Well, if you want to stand out, then it’s important that you eschew the free blogging platforms that might be your first port of call if you’re nervous about coding. But bear in min the whole reason for making an online resume is to avoid looking generic. If you’re using a ubiquitous Blogger or Tumblr template then you’re immediately diminishing your impact, especially if the company you’re trying to woo is especially web design-savvy. You’re only going to make a single, text-based webpage which will require little more than some basic html and css styling skills. If you were so inclined you could pick these up in a few days from a tutorial site like W3Schools or Code Academy. Indeed, the ability to handle yourself when it comes to html will only help you when it comes to navigating the job market.

What will I need to get started?
You’ll need to decide if you want to pay for hosting your web resume. If you do, you’re going to have to research hosting services. You might find that your broadband provider allots you a small amount of webspace with your internet package, you won’t need much for a single page. However, you will want to purchase yourself a domain name so that your presentation has a bit of extra polish. It’s never not a good idea to have your own name as dot com, as you can use it again if you have any other web projects or if you want to create a personal web page.

Other than that, it’s always good to do a mock-up of what you want your page to look like in an image editing application like Photoshop or, if you haven’t got access to it, a free alternative like GIMP, which is easily downloaded from the internet. Once you have a visual reference for your page, you can start coding it into existence. You’ll need a text editor and there are plenty of free ones on the internet - Text Wrangler is a particularly good one, which colors and checks the viability of your code for you. Beyond that, all you’ll need is your imagination. Remember, keep to the principles of good design: consistent color scheme, plenty of white space, legible fonts and you’ll be fine.

Remember to add links to any other examples of online work and that all-important e-mail address. They’ll be clicking to invite you to interview in no time.

Attached Images:

• License: Creative Commons image source.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 14th, 2013 at 8:46 am and is filed under Career, Job Search, Resumes, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.