Do Job Seekers in Our Discipline Need to Have Home Pages?

Fred Jandt
@ California State University, San Bernardino

In preparing our new book Cyberspace Resume Kit (link: http://www.jist.com) my co-author and I in April, 1998 identified over 3 million resumes available online in some 80 electronic resume banks. As depositories for job seekers' resumes, electronic resume banks date back to as early as 1984 when the search firm Lee Johnson International was receiving resumes online via FidoNet. In 1989, Gonyea & Associates created the first career guidance agency to operate 100% online. In 1992, Online Career Center (OCC) owned by TMP Worldwide (the largest yellow page advertising agency and largest recruitment advertising agency) started accepting resume online. Each year since then has seen the establishment of more online resume banks.

The ten largest resume banks and the number of resumes each held in April, 1998 are shown below:

Some resume banks accept resumes by e-mail. Most use an online form with standard questions and space to cut and paste a resume. Some use spiders to search the Internet for resumes which they add to their bank.

At present only a few of the resume banks accept resume home pages. The Entry Level Job Seeker Assistant lists links to the home pages of people who have never held a full-time permanent job in their field or who have less than a year of nonacademic experience. The Australian Resume Server (http://www.herenow.com.au/) provides a free HTML resume home page; others provide resume home page design, hosting, or promotion for a fee.

WHY HAVE A RESUME HOME PAGE?

There are several reasons for having a resume home page. A resume home page gives the job seeker more control of the content and form of the resume than is possible in the resume banks. The benefit is the flexibility of presentation: Text can be bold, italic, and of various font sizes. Shading, color, tables, graphics, sound, and video can be used.

With a resume home page the job seeker has a unique Internet address or URL which can be included in correspondence and on business cards. This demonstrates to potential employers the job seeker's awareness and comfort with technology.

Finally, a resume home page can potentially increase the job seeker's exposure. If a job seeker's resume is in only one resume data bank, potential employers have to be in that site to find and view it. With a resume home page that is indexed in the major Internet search engines, anyone can find the resume by searching on key words.(1) A note on word usage: Remember the Internet is international. In many countries what is known in the U.S.A. as a "resume" is referred to as a "curriculum vitae" (CV or vita). A Frankfurt banker may have a curriculum vitae online, an Atlanta banker may have a resume online, and a Georgia State University faculty member may have a curriculum vitae online.(2) A search string with the words "curriculum vitae" may yield then U.S. faculty and international business professionals.

PRESENTATION CONSIDERATIONS

When converting a print resume to a resume home page, some job seekers want to use all the presentation options that HTML makes possible. In our interviews with human resources professionals some cautions have been raised:

1. Because it is possible to do, some job seekers include a photograph on their resume home page. On paper resumes, traditional advice was that except for people in the arts never to include a photograph to avoid prejudicing the employer in any way. Craig Bussey, formerly head of Human Resources for Huls [.. over u] America, Inc. stated: "Putting your picture on a resume is stupid. It will tend to disqualify you because it sends the wrong message. I'm not looking for a 'pretty face'; I'm looking for a skill. What you look like is not a skill."

2. Graphics should be simple, tasteful, and appropriate to the content of the resume. Many employers have Internet access only through modems. Excessive graphics can be slow to load.

3. Links should be carefully considered. Linking a university placement office, for example, can lead an employer to the resumes of other candidates. Links to personal home pages with photographs of parties and vacations and links to favorite sites don't present the professional image employers expect.

A review of resume home pages on the Internet suggests the following effective uses of links:

1. E-mail links provide a convenient way for the employer to contact the job seeker and the job seeker's references.

2. Carefully selected links to publications and organizations which would serve to support the resume and not lead the employer away from the resume.

3. If the job seeker is seeking international employment, links to the resume home page in other languages or to an Internet translator.

4. Navigation links within the resume home page. Remember to use redundant text links and image links for people who have images turned off.

5. Links to a shorter printable version of the resume home page and to a scannable version. The printable version should provide an attractive hard copy. The scannable version should be in ASCII text for use in the employer's automated applicant-tracking system.(3)

MULTIPLE RESUMES

There was a time when job seekers were advised to prepare a new resume for each different job application emphasizing the skills required for each job. Today's recommendation is to have resumes available in different formats or media:

APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEMS

At one time job seekers were coached to use certain forms of words in resumes. Some job counselors, for example, emphasized the use of action verbs. Today's growing use of automated applicant tracking systems suggest a new set of recommendations.

Resume management systems use extraction engines to pull information from scannable resumes. The knowledge base of resume extraction engines can contain over ten million career-related terms. Extraction engines can recognize the context in which those words. Thus extraction engines can distinguish between someone with the first name of Ada, someone living in Ada, Michigan, a dentist with membership in the ADA (American Dental Association), a programmer having experience with the language ADA, and a human resource professional with experience with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). Extraction engines can also deal with synonyms and similarities. For examples, University of California at Berkeley, UC Berkeley, UCB, Berkeley, and even Cal are recognized.

Extraction engines can interpret concepts as well as words. In concept-based searching, the extraction engine assigns skills based on related terms it encounters. For example, a resume listing "graded papers and tests for professor" would yield a skill assignment of "Teacher Assistance."

To maximize matching in resume management systems, follow these guidelines for scannable resumes:

1. Use standard fonts, such as Arial, Futura, Optime, Universe, Times, Palatino, or Courier.

2. Use a structured resume format with commonly used headings such as Objectives, Experience, Education, Publications, Summary of Qualifications, etc.

3. Use terms, jargon, and acronyms specific to your industry.

4. List specific skills and increase the use of keywords by including specifics. For example, list the names of software such as Microsoft Word and Lotus 1-2-3.

5. Avoid vague or excessive descriptions of experience. Use concrete words.

6. Use as many pages as necessary. Scannable resumes provide more information than would be provided for a human reader.

SAMPLES

After a job seeker has prepared a resume home page, the next step is to make it available for viewing on a server. Many job seekers are using commercial Internet sites that provide free home pages. One example is Tripod (link: http://www.tripod.com/), a wholly owned subsidiary of Lycos. Tripod has been described as "the hip, homegrown Web community for individuals who embrace the innovative and pioneering spirit of the Web." Tripod also provides a free resume builder (link: http://www.tripod.com/jobs_career/resume/). Other such services are GeoCities (link: http://www.geocities.com) and FreeYellow (link: http://www.freeyellow.com).

The resume home pages at Tripod can be key word searched. Searching using "resume and communication" will yield resumes with the phrase "excellent communication skills." To see resumes from recent communication graduates, use "resume and speech communication" or "resume and public relations."

Universities may also provide home page hosting. Jennifer Thackaberry, a communication doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado, put her curriculum vitae online as a webpage. She explains how she went from a personal homepage to a curriculum vitae webpage:

When I learned how to make and post web pages (Fall 1996) I created a few personal pages with my own favorite links, mostly about Boulder, my volunteer work, communication studies resources, and Macintosh advocacy-all places I visited regularly on the web. I also posted all of my course materials on line the following Summer (1997) just to see how that would work.

The same summer I became the web developer for our department site, and I began to help faculty not only with their department pages but also with their personal sites, where some of them chose to post their CVs and other professional materials.... In the meantime I had met a graduate student from another school at a conference who had posted her conference paper on her website. I visited her site and found the paper I was looking for, but I also noticed her CV on there too, and I thought that was a good idea.....

As a result of all of these factors, in summer 1998 I decided to change my web site into a series of pages that would showcase my professional identity.... The site is partly a result of my changing identity as a graduate student in anticipation of the job search and partly a result of my own curiosity about web technology. [Personal e-mail, December 28, 1998]

The University of Colorado Communication Department website [link:http://www.colorado.edu/Communication/] has a link to the current list of graduate students and their personal home pages. Ms. Thackaberry posted her curriculum vitae on her personal home page. Ms. Thackaberry has a strategy for using her online CV in the job search process:

I don't really expect that search committees will go out on the web looking for candidates. Rather, I think the online CV can be useful in the other direction: when I go on the job market..., I can direct people I am already in contact with to look at the CV and other materials on line. The site is always accessible, and I can change any of the pages at any time to include supplemental information that I think a search committee might find useful. [Personal e-mail, December 28, 1998].

Do job seekers in our discipline need to have home pages? Yes.

A carefully designed resume home page can be the extension of the traditional job search process that gives the job seeker a competetive edge.

NOTES

(1) A resume home page can be registered with individual search engines such as Lycos or Webcrawler. A second way to register a resume home page at no cost with search engines is with The PostMaster submission service (link: http://www.netcreations.com/postmaster) which submits the site to two dozen top search engines or with Register-It! (link: http://register-it.com) which submits the site to eight search engines. Another way is to link the resume to other sites. When a search engine robot visits a site it automatically indexes all linked pages at that site.

(2) The Harvard School of Public Health (link: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu) provides useful instructions for preparing a curriculum vitae. Enter "curriculum vitae" at its search engine.

(3) Employers are increasingly turning to automated applicant-tracking systems such as Resumix (link: http://www.resumix,com) and Restrac (link: http://www.restrac.com) to manage the staffing process. Resumes are scanned and entered into the system and matched to vacancies through key word searches.

(4) Most resume banks are free to job seekers and charge the employer a fee either to search their resumes, post vacancy announcements, or both. America's Talent Bank (link: http://www.ajb.dni.us), a joint effort of the Department of Labor and the state-operated public Employment Service offices is free to both the job seeker and the employer. America's Talent Bank held over 70,000 resumes in April, 1998.