Skyler Call

Unemployed? Looking for new career opportunities? In my opinion, passing out printed resumes is an old idea. Seth Godin put it well in his March 17, 2008 blog post entitled Why bother having a resume?.

What will any HR department find when they research you online? Is there enough positive content about you to prove who you are and what you have to offer? Is there any embarrassing or degrading content about you, perhaps even written by you, that can be easily uncovered? Are you even heard of in the online world?

Create a domain for yourself online. I recently updated my website with this idea in mind. A quick visit to my home page and you will see that in a very simple manner I show you who I am and provide you easy access to the best online content about me. One improvement to my own page I hope to make soon is to replace my photo with a new vocation specific photo. I picture a photo of myself sitting in front of my clean desk and large monitors with some code I have written shown on them behind me.

Free tools at your disposal:
• WordPress – This website is built on WordPress. I use it everywhere and continue to praise that it is the best blogging tool out there.
• FriendFeed – Get online and communicate with others in your field. Share your knowledge and expertise. Participating in an online community will help you stay up to date with the latest and provide opportunities for you to learn from others. FriendFeed is the best but you can use any online community to accomplish this. Subscribe to my feed at FriendFeed.com/skylercall.
• LinkedIn – Get away from that static, boring resume and begin building a rich, dynamic resume with LinkedIn. I believe they are still too new to have a major impact today but I see great potential. Link your account to those you have worked with to begin building your pool of references. If I could make one suggestion here it would be that you not sit around waiting for volunteers to write a reference for you. Write one about them first. Hopefully they will see the effort you put into building up and improving their LinkedIn profile and will return the favor. View my LinkedIn profile at LinkedIn.com/in/skylercall.

Purchasing a domain name and web hosting
I recommend purchasing your domain name and web hosting from 1and1.com. I have used them for years and am very happy with the service they provide. Feel free to contact me if you need help setting up an account with them or installing WordPress on your newly created account.

Personal websites I have helped organize or design (updated 8/17/2009)
Feel free to use these as examples when creating your own website.
• Mark Christiansen – markwc.com