Career Advice

Creating a personal resume website could make you more hirable

How to make your experience shine, and help employers know the real you.

May 1, 2023 5 minute read

There’s a lot that can be out of your control when you’re applying for a job—companies use a hodgepodge of services to collect your application.

And, despite your best efforts to sell your experience via your resume, it’s just a document, sent to a hiring manager’s inbox with little ceremony.

What’s missing is what makes you the perfect candidate, which is you—and your story.

Key takeaways

Your website doesn’t have to be fancy to be impactful
Work from existing templates to make the effort easier
You can tell your story without getting overly personal
Try pacing yourself with a checklist

Why make a portfolio/resume website?

When you create your own website, you have total control over your work story—how you got your experience, plus all of the other things that make you a well-rounded candidate, like your interests and the topics that really excite you.

There’s also the added benefit of having an online home associated with your name, making you findable via Google even if someone misplaces your resume. And, although it may sound intimidating to launch your own site, it doesn’t need to be complex. Simpler is often better for a portfolio site—easier to put it out there, and easier to update.

Although it may sound intimidating to launch your own site, it doesn’t need to be complex.

Set some goals for your site

Put yourself in the shoes of the person on the receiving end of your job application. What do they need to know about you? Sure, they want your work experience, but what about samples of your work, or how you approach certain types of challenges?

They’ll also want to know more about you—not necessarily your life’s story, but some biographical details that add a personal dimension to your resume, helping you stand out from other candidates. A talent manager at Fidelity Investments agrees: “Candidate websites have more to offer than a one-dimensional resume can provide.”

Craft simple pages to provide what your readers want

Say you’re interested in a customer service job. You’ve decided that hiring managers should easily find your resume, but what makes you hirable is that you’re passionate about improving customer experience—you’ve even read several books about it! You also want them to contact you directly about job opportunities.

So, plan to have a page for your resume, a page for your customer experience-themed bio, and a page with a contact form and link to your LinkedIn profile. And that’s it— as tempting as it is to fill your new online space with all sorts of information, start small so you can launch more quickly, and to keep things manageable.

Pick a place to build your site

There are several free or low-cost options with built-in tools to help you put your pages together—for example, WordPress.com and Sites on Google Drive have pre-set templates to give you a starting point.

Look for templates that are labeled as “portfolio” or “personal site”— that helps narrow down your options and gives you some choices that make it easy for you to build your pages, and for your audience to get what they need via a familiar format.

WordPress

Sites on Google Drive

Gather your information

It’s tempting to just open a template and start creating, but things will go more smoothly if you’ve got your content ready before you begin. Hopefully you’ve already got your most up-to-date resume handy. Save a PDF version, too, which you can make available for download from your resume page (some companies still prefer it).

For your bio, draft a paragraph or two that helps hiring managers get to know you and why you’re passionate about this type of work. You don’t need to get very personal, but perhaps mention a few hobbies—it’s nice to show what interests you in your life outside of work. Here’s where you can list out those customer experience books that have inspired you, too.

You don’t need to get very personal, but perhaps mention a few hobbies—it’s nice to show what interests you in your life outside of work

Not a web designer? No problem.

According to the Fidelity talent manager, simple is often better for readability and for maintenance. “It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it should be kept up to date,” they say.

The beauty of working from existing themes and templates means that a lot of the design effort has been done for you. Most of these platforms have editing tools that resemble something you’ve seen before in email or writing applications, making it easy to format your content.

Try out different text formatting to make your copy stand out. For instance, subheadings (often called “H2 headings”) make your information easy to scan for your site visitors—and search engines like them, too.

Before you launch, ask a friend

Once you’ve got your pages written and built, your site is probably starting to look pretty good! But a second (or third) set of eyes is always helpful to make sure everything is linked up and that you’re coming off as the capable professional that you are.

Ask a detail-oriented friend or two to take a look, sharing with them the goals that you set out to meet. And of course, ask them to proofread—we all make mistakes from time to time.

Publish, test, promote!

It’s so satisfying to put your site out for the world to see. After you hit “publish,” make sure everything appears as you intended—maybe test it out on someone else’s computer, or on your phone, too, just to be sure.

And don’t forget to add the URL to your resume, LinkedIn profile, and email signature so it’s easy for hiring managers to find your site and reference it again (and again, hopefully).

One more piece of advice: pace yourself

A new website can feel like a blank canvas, and it can be daunting to get it all put together—especially while you’re also hard at work searching for a new job. Take these steps one at a time, and remember that you can start small.

Try making a checklist so you can knock out one key decision or task per week. Before long, the pieces will come together, and you’ll have a sweet new online home to impress hiring managers.

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