The HTML Resume Posting Technique

So youve developed your HTML resume and you're ready post it to the Web? First of all, make sure your resume is correctly formatted. Just because your word processor has a Save as HTML… or Save as Web page… does not necessarily mean that the end result will be pretty. Open the saved file with your Web browser to see how it formats. Then make changes to it for proper formatting before posting it online.

The key to posting your Web resume online is to make certain that it will be found. It is not enough to create your resume and simply post it at your university's Web server, then wait for visitors. You will not be found.

I have a friend who made his HTML resume available through his local Internet Service Provider and added a counter on the page to tell him how many times it had been viewed. He was quite excited to learn that it had been viewed over 20 times, until he realized that those 20 times all came from the same address--his own. Lesson learned--to be found, you must be findable.

The key to being found is being linked to by another site or search engine. When a search engine robot (such as those used by Google, Alta Vista and Webcrawler) visits a site, it indexes all linked pages at the site. It is not enough to be located at the site; you must be linked to from somewhere else within the site. Then the search engine will automatically index all the words found on your page, which will come up in keyword searches at their site. If your university allows links to student resumes (check with your Career Center), this is your best connection. Otherwise, check with the developers of other externally accessible pages to request a link.

Then take it one step further. Publicize your page. Just as a company would publicize its home page, you should do the same for your resume home page.

There are literally scores of companies out there which specialize in automated search engine submission. Search for "search engine submission" at Yahoo or Google and you'll get plenty of responses. Note that most want to charge you for the privledge. Surf past them to those which offer the basic service for free. The only hitch is with some of these submission engines is that your e-mail address may end up on a spam list, so you may want to use a temporary Hotmail or Yahoo address for submission. In less than ten minutes, you can have your HTML resume (or entire site, if you have one) submitted to the majors for indexing. It does take time for the spiders to make their crawl, but within a few days your pages will begin showing up in the major search engines.

Caution: if your personal home page is filled with mindless trivia about rock bands, inebriation, and/or stupid HTML links, with your resume included as a side note, do not submit it to Postmaster. Keep a clean resume URL without the associated trivia. And do not link to your personal page from your resume unless you really, truly want a potential employer to see that side of you. Probably not.

You are welcome to browse this material as a visitor of our site, but please do not violate the copyright by making copies of this material, either electronic, paper or any other type, with the exception of one paper copy of each page permitted for your own personal use and reference.