Recruiters use Google. Whether you’re actively seeking a new job or not, it’s important to use this fact to your advantage. My friend Sandro gave me this advice years ago, when he told me to put my resume online and make it “googleable”. For me, the result was contacts from recruiters and companies I might never have heard of otherwise. In addition to putting your resume online, I would recommend blogging about your job–within reason. Definitely do not write about company secrets or co-workers. Putting such things in your blog doesn’t help you. Instead, write about what you do, problems you’ve solved, even your process of problem-solving. At the very least, when you encounter similar challenges in the future, you’ll have a reference for how you solved them in the past. Your blog post about how you fixed a particular issue might be helpful to someone else as well.
There are many options available for putting a resume and/or blog online. Sandro hosts his, mine, and a few others on a server at his house. But for those of you who don’t have a buddy to host theirs, here are a couple of readily-accessible free options:
There’s a ton of advice out there on what makes a great resume, so I won’t try to repeat it all here. You can simply put a version of your 1 or 2-page Microsoft Word resume on the web, or you can put your entire career up there. Having your own blog or website means you aren’t subject to any restrictions on length that a site like Monster or CareerBuilder might impose. Consider linking your resume to the websites of previous employers, technologies you’ve worked with, schools you’ve attended, and work you’ve done that showcases your skills (especially if it’s web-related). I don’t know if that makes it easier for Google to find you, but it does give recruiters easy access to details about you they might have to dig for otherwise. Doing what you can to make this process easier for them certainly can’t hurt.
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