From the course: Writing a Resume
Manage your online presence
- If a future employer would've type your name into an internet search engine, what would they find? If you don't know the answer to this question, you might want to pause right here and go find out. Though your resume can seem boring, your online profile can be creative while remaining professional. It can be informative and show some personality. Still your online profile shouldn't replace your resume. Keep the standard resume for online applications and getting past those pesky applicant tracking systems, but to stand out the sky or in this case the internet is the limit. If you truly want to take your resume and post it online, there are websites that have been created to help you take your standard resume and turn it into an online masterpiece. All of the design elements I cautioned about can be beautifully utilized with very little effort on your part. About.me and VisualCV are two that I've used in the past but you can also use standard web hosting and design programs like Weebly, Wix and even GoDaddy. Many of them have a resume template option and these online resumes can then be added as a link on your standard resume and in your LinkedIn profile. Speaking of LinkedIn, are you using it to your full potential? Are you using it at all? Every recruiter has their own process for checking LinkedIn, but when you only have a few moments to scan each resume that hits your desk, the odds of taking the extra step to check an online profile is low, at least in the beginning of the job search process. This means your online profile has a higher likelihood of being reviewed the further along in the process you are. But what if you didn't apply to a job yet and a recruiter found you online, they wouldn't have seen your resume as yet. Odds are if you were discovered online, it was probably through LinkedIn, so leave yourself open to accepting connection requests and in mail, put your phone number or email address in the body of your profile so that people who are not first connections can still contact you. The information you include in your LinkedIn profile does not need to be identical to what is in your resume, but it should be substantially similar. You should also not include information you don't want your future employer to know or that would not place you in a positive light. As an example, a candidate had a first interview with an employer and prior to asking her to come in for a second interview, I received the call. Hiring manager wanted to know if I had reviewed the candidate's LinkedIn profile and in this particular case I had not. The candidates LinkedIn profile included information about her work as a personal trainer, it also included information about two other jobs that just didn't align well with the job she was currently interviewing for, she went on the interview, but she didn't get the job. Now did one have anything to do with the other, we'll never know. But the moral of the story here is don't include information about yourself online that you don't want a future or for that matter of current employer to know. What you should want your future employer to know is that you are an expert in your field, so use your online profile to showcase this by putting LinkedIn to work for you. Answer questions related to your industry in groups. Post relevant work that isn't private to your profile using SlideShare, Prezi or even upload a PDF or video. Join industry conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Periscope or wherever else you can find a group of professionals in your field. While building an online presence, you should also monitor it. Google Alerts are an easy way to monitor what is being posted by you or about you online. Every few months conduct an internet search so that you can see what a future employer might see should they decide to look you up. By now, I am sure you've been warned repeatedly about having unflattering photos of yourself on the internet, but don't overlook this step, make sure that tagged photos of you are suitable. If you have photos of you drinking alcohol, scantily clad or doing anything that you wouldn't want a future employer to see, start untagging yourself and set your profile and all photos to private. When your name is typed into an internet search engine at best you want positive reviews of your industry related articles to come up, at the very least you would rather have nothing come up at all than incomplete or inconsistent information. So have a friend you trust or a mentor review your online presence and provide you with some much-needed feedback.
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