Post Your Own Job-Hunting Website

Should You Post Your Own
Job-Hunting Website?

Tips for Students of T. E. Roberts, Instructor of English

University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee • Posted 3 July 2007, updated 20 Feb 2010

GENERAL TIP: For insights into how Generation Y and Generation X differ from Baby Boomers and others who do the hiring of many young people, do your research. You might learn how to bring joy, peace, and productivity to a rapidly changing workplace instead of conflict, arrogance, irritation, and resentment. This will take time, effort, and an open mind, but it will help you and your employer and peers work together instead of against one another.

Some students will benefit from posting their career-related information on a personal website and then announcing this to prospective employers. In addition to the resume, consider including:

• Papers, speeches, projects, and workshop or seminar presentations prepared for college classes. These may be in Word, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, or other formats -- whatever your web visitor finds easy to view and print. Choose material that showcases your ability to perform analytical, creative, or management tasks that are relevant to the work you are seeking.

• Statements, photos, and supporting information about your hobbies, community activities, and personal interests. These should, of course, be tasteful and informative. (Leave behind those wild parties you enjoyed as an undergraduate!)

• Links to websites that you regularly visit for news, information, inspiration, or advice. Unless you are willing to risk immediate rejection by a conventional employer, avoid links that reveal your interest in extreme politics, religion, movies, music, literature, and other subjects. Do NOT include MySpace or similar pages that show you in a compromised position at a drunken orgy or similar occasion. Prospective employers tend to put such people into the “DO NOT CALL -- EVER” category.

For tips on creating a simple website, search for “web design basics” in Google (without the quote marks).

For advice on how to use such a website, see:

http://www.career.vt.edu/JOBSEARC/Resumes/website.htm

For examples of such websites, search Google for “personal resume website” and similar terms. Many such websites come and go quickly, so I recommend you save anything of value to your computer when you see it. For help with how to save a web file, see this link.

Keep in mind this important advice to Bluto from Dean Wormer of ANIMAL HOUSE:
“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”