Winning Résumé
Your chances of landing a job are enhanced if you follow some key guidelines in creating a hypertext résumé.
by Scott Grusky
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Sandra L. Daine - Web designer, author and editor. |
"I started by studying other people's Web pages that I liked," Ken explained. "I'd look at their code and tested what each command did by simple trial and error."
After much sweat and perseverance, along with a few mild cases of information overload, he resolved to reverse the flow of data. He found out how to register his own Web domain name, constructed an elaborate résumé, and embedded a series of clever graphics and hypertext links. Then he took the plunge and uploaded his résumé to his Web site.
Within one week, Ken got a call from the Telis Foundation, a non-profit partnership formed by MCI and GTE to provide educational online services. Someone there had stumbled across his résumé page--it still remains a mystery who this person was--and passed it over to the personnel department for consideration. Ken was immediately flown to Telis headquarters for an interview and, in a matter of minutes, he was hired.
"They were having trouble with one of their computers," said Ken, "and somehow I managed to solve the problem right there in the office. The woman interviewing me immediately called up her superior to tell him what I'd done and he said to her, 'Hire this guy, now!'" Ken's starting salary greatly exceeded the average wage being paid to his fellow workers in Amish country.
This may sound like a lucky break to skeptics, but most career planning experts believe such stories are far from unusual. Every day, hundreds of job seekers are finding employment through the vast network of job resources available in cyberspace. JobTrak, the nation's leading online job listing service, claims to have already been used by more than a million students and alumni, with more than 150,000 employers and 300 college career centers posting new jobs daily.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Even the most casual search of the Web reveals a virtual plethora of job resources. Some of these providers specialize in maintaining searchable databases, others offer career planning and job-search strategies, and still others focus on résumé posting and advertising.
"We're just at the very beginning stages," says Pamela Nagel of Internet Executive Professionals, a job placement service for high-level and mid-level executives. "I've been involved with the Internet for two years now and I've already seen phenomenal growth in what's available for job seekers. But the real changes are still to come. People are going to be amazed."
To those in the know, the question is no longer whether you should use the Internet to conduct a job search, but rather how you should use it. There are two fundamentally distinct approaches: You can play the fox or the hare. That is to say, you can chase after the employer or you can entice the employer to chase after you.
The former strategy can work well if you are persistent. However, be warned that it involves wading through thousands and thousands of entries in numerous different databanks. Most of the job opportunities you come across probably will be irrelevant to your search. Either you will be underqualified, overqualified, or simply uninterested. In the rare case that you are intrigued by a listing, you will have to contend with the fact that another 40 million Internet users already know about it. For a description of employment sources and their respective addresses, see "Employment Resources" below.
For this reason, the second strategy is worth considering. Anyone who has ever been in sales knows it is always better to have a buyer approach you than vice versa, and this is precisely how Ken Morrill landed his dream job. No doubt, the Telis Foundation had been advertising its openings prior to seeing Ken's résumé on the Web, but the other applicants hadn't showcased themselves the way Ken had. They had nothing to set them apart and make them special in the eyes of the personnel manager.
Of course, the mere act of posting a résumé on the Web--even a stellar one--doesn't guarantee you will be besieged with job offers. Many individuals, such as Sarah LeVine, have rushed to offer themselves online only to find a lukewarm response. "My boyfriend put my résumé on the Web because we'd heard so many good stories about it," said Sarah, "but it's been almost two months now and I still haven't had a single inquiry."
The truth is, when it comes to getting attention, cyberspace is just as cold and cruel a world as the physical domain. Any number of random factors might contribute to why an employer zeroes in on a particular résumé. Nonetheless, the three most important factors over which you have control are why you post, where you post, and how you post.
Your Goals
You must first determine what you hope to accomplish with your page. Some people just want to impress their friends by showing off a photo of their cat balancing a volleyball on its nose. Others seek to prove they are supercool Web page designers by posting résumés with complex features such as pop-up menus, sound files, and all the other latest bells and whistles. Then there are those individuals who really want to find jobs.
If you're in this last category, one crucial reality should be confronted immediately: The vast majority of employers looking at résumés on the Web are in the computer industry or in a related high-tech industry. This means that if you're a carpenter or a cook, you probably aren't going to be generating fantastic responses. On the other hand, new employers are entering cyberspace daily and success is by no means limited to computer nerds.
"Sales and marketing companies are really started to get involved in recruiting on the Internet now," says Pamela Nagel. "We've also been seeing a lot of smaller up-and-coming companies looking to the Internet for job applicants."
Besides programmers, engineers, salespeople, and marketing reps, the other occupations that seem to be garnering significant Internet interest are the traditional secretarial and administrative assistant positions. But even if you don't fall into these categories, there is a case to be made for posting your résumé, particularly since the number of Internet users is expected to quadruple by the end of the decade. After all, in terms of efficiency, there's just as much reason for restaurant owners to want to look for cooks online as for software companies to look for programmers. The key is to be realistic and to make sure you do your homework before you launch your home page.
Résumé Services
Assuming you're still unsure whether to post a résumé or not, you may be comforted to know that you don't have to do it all by yourself. There are hundreds of résumé-writing companies that will gladly put your résumé online, and new ones are popping up every day. For a partial list of these services, see "Résumé Services" above.
What are the advantages of going with a résumé service? To begin with, you don't need to learn HTML or have your own Web site. You don't even need to have Internet access. In fact, most of these services will write your résumé for you before converting it to HTML and publishing it on their Web sites.
Of course, if you use a service you will be sacrificing some control over how your résumé looks on the Web. Many of the services can't (or don't want to) accommodate complex graphics and other fancy multimedia effects. So if you're in the computer industry and you're trying to wow an employer with your design skills, it makes sense to set up your own résumé page. For the rest of us, this consideration is not as crucial. Keep in mind that complex pages take much longer to load, and recruiters aren't going to want to twiddle their thumbs to see a picture of your pet boa munching on a rodent.
"Cleanliness and simplicity are the most important elements of the résumé," says Robert Lorincz of One-Way Résumés. "The first thing most employers do is look at your experience. If it's not what they want, they'll just move on, no matter how fancy the résumé looks. And as far as graphics and sound go, that's not even going to matter because if they do like your résumé, they're simply going to print it out."
This isn't to say that looks don't matter. You should certainly visit the Web site of any résumé service you are considering. If it has very few résumés already posted, or if the résumés are particularly dry and bare-boned, you probably want to pass on it. You'll also want to make sure the site is user-friendly for prospective employers, so it is easy for them to view the résumés.
The bottom line is price. Some companies, particularly in the entertainment fields, are charging as much as $50 to $100 a month for their posting services, in addition to various set-up and sign-on fees. By targeting individuals who are both unfamiliar with the realities of the Internet and awed by its hype, they're hoping to reap huge profits. Meanwhile, they're giving a bad name to the legitimate services.
"In my opinion, the résumé services that post on the Internet really ought to be doing it for free or close to free," says Lorincz. "There are already many sites that do it at no charge, so it's crazy to pay very much for this."
Lorincz, who is registered with the Professional Association of Résumé Writers, charges $35 to write a résumé and nothing to post it on the Web. He also gives customers a list of places where they can post it themselves for free, such as Intellimatch and the Internet Employment Network. Other résumé services charge anywhere from $25 to $175 for writing, and most charge a nominal fee for posting, such as $25 for six months. Additional fees are incurred for various other services, as needed.
The Essential Résumé
Whether or not you choose to use a service, there are five key elements you should incorporate in your hypertext résumé. Any service that doesn't offer them probably should be scratched off your list of contenders.
The most fundamental feature is that it be properly formatted as an ASCII text file. Proper formatting ensures that your résumé will scroll correctly and be universally readable in any application. In this manner, it can be safely e-mailed to any Internet destination in the world without fear of appearing as gobbledygook.
The second basic feature is an e-mail hyperlink. The hyperlink enables prospective employers to simply click on your e-mail address to contact you. Anything that makes it easier for recruiters ultimately makes it easier for you as well, so if you don't have an e-mail address, see if your résumé service allows you to use theirs.
Third, at the top of the page just below your name, your résumé should provide a series of "jumps" for each of the important categories it contains, such as "experience" and "education." Jumps are like hyperlinks, except they connect to the same page and allow viewers to quickly scroll down to the part of the résumé they want to see. Some résumés use icons or graphical buttons for their jumps, but all that is really required is a highlighted word or phrase to identify the appropriate category. Remember, in the world of hypertext résumés, graceful functionality beats stupid pet tricks every time.
The fourth key element is a counter to keep track of the number of times your page has been visited. A counter is particularly important if you are paying a service to post your résumé because you can monitor how successful its efforts have been.
The final feature to address, and perhaps the most subtle, is how to make sure your résumé gets picked up by the different search engines operating on the Internet. This is primarily an issue of proper formatting and selection of keywords. For instance, the WebCrawler search engine scores a document by the number of hits it picks up on particular keyword. A common strategy for being noticed by WebCrawler is to input a keyword repeatedly--even hundreds of times--as hidden text in your résumé to produce a high score for the search.
Other search engines, such as Yahoo, have different selection criteria that depend on titles, URLs, and comment lines. Here the winning strategy involves positioning your keywords in these locations, as well as knowing which keywords are hot. Examining current job postings for your occupation and industry can offer clues about which keywords employers are most likely to use in their searches, but too much manipulation will produce a boring, clone-like résumé.
The crucial point to realize is that employers generally select nouns as keywords in their searches. Traditional résumés replete with action verbs perform surprisingly poorly on the Internet. Instead, the effective online résumé demands a more choppy, text-intensive style with multiple nouns covering the bases. For example, the action phrase, "administered aerospace engineering projects" would fail miserably compared with the clunkier "MBA, aerospace engineer, manager."
All this goes to show that, contrary to popular opinion, success in cyberspace does not necessarily hinge on your Web page being prettier and sexier. Granted, you probably won't impress your friends by following the above guidelines, but you may impress a few employers. And while your friends are busy uploading photos of their ferrets dancing to salsa music, you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Employment Resources
American Employment Weekly Employment tabloid with ads from the Sunday edition of 50 leading U.S. newspapers.
America's Job Bank More than 100,000 job opportunities, primarily in the military and federal government.
CareerWeb Searchable database for high-tech and financial professionals.
FedWorld Bulletin board of job postings from the federal government.
Helpwanted.com Searchable index of openings compiled from companies that have paid to be listed.
Intellimatch Allows applicants to fill out a structured résumé or search an online job center.
Internet Employment Network Large databank of all occupational categories and a free resume referral service.
Job Center Employment service for professionals with database searching.
JobHunt Extensive job search database and résumés throughout the United States.
JobLinks Job listing for business, government, law, science, technology, health and more.
JobTrak Largest online job listing service in the United States.
JobWeb Employment information, job listing, tips and more.
NationJob Network Databank of job opportunities primarily in the Midwest.
Online Career Center Career center and employment databank.
Recruiter Online Network More than 1,000 executive recruiters, search firms and employment professionals around the world.
Skill Search An online employment service that creates an applicant profile.
The Monster Board Searchable index of high-tech companies, mostly in the computer industry.
Workplace Staff and administrative positions in colleges and universities, government and the arts.
Resume Services
123 Résumé Distribution Service A free service that submits résumé information to employers.
A+ On-Line Résumés Résumé posting and marketing service for job seekers.
AAA Résumés Résumés plus tips and articles from syndicated columnists.
Acorn Career Counseling Features a resume "Doctor" who fixes your résumé and posts it for free.
Actors Pavilion Area where actors can post résumés and head shots for free.
Job Tailor Employment Online Service Résumés may be posted free here, but they must conform to a super-imposed résumé structure.
Hyper-Media Résumés Professional Internet résumé management, specializing in services for high-level executives.
HyperResume Résumé writing and posting services; provides your own URL.
One-Way Resume Résumé services and posting for all professions.
Resume'Net Résumé posting for all professions, advice on creating résumés.
Résumés On-Line Résumé services and posting for all professions, links to other career services.
World Wide Résumé Résumé posting for all professions.
Scott Grusky is a freelance writer residing in Pacific Palisades, Calif. His first novel, Silicon Sunset, will be published this summer.
Reprinted from Internet World magazine Vol. 7 No. 2, (c) 1996 Mecklermedia Corporation. All rights reserved.