Want a job? Build yourself a Web site
I sent my resume to four different organizations, and I received requests for interviews from all four. Sure, I’ve gained quite a bit of good experience over the past few years, but I attribute my success in landing interviews to one thing: this Web site. My Web site certainly has helped me stand out of the crowd, and it gave me one more shot at selling myself to all prospective employers. We all need that extra edge to avoid being mercilessly fed into the paper shredder.
If you’ve done anything dealing with Web development, your skills cannot be demonstrated well on a sheet of paper. You need some moderately interactive way of illustrating what it is you’ve done over the past few years. If you’ve been writing back-end scripts, you can at least show some images of the programs/web sites you’ve powered, so potential employers can at least put a face with the name, so to speak.
A blog that demonstrates that you know what the hell you’re talking about doesn’t hurt either. Plus it’s a good way to motivate you to learn new things.
I’m hoping that those who don’t have any design skills knows at least one person who can build a respectable-looking Web site for you. You need someone to tell your best Matrix jokes to anyway, so there’s gotta be one person you know. It doesn’t necessarily need to be all that fancy-looking; it just needs to do its job. It needs to sell you.
So remember this narcissistic musing about the one time I batted a thousand with employers. And happy job hunting! You were looking for one more statement to put in the first paragraph of your cover letter anyway.
And for the love of God, never put a Microsoft logo at the top of your resume, even if you have a certification!