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Kevin’s done a lot right so
far and he’s had a job now for quite some time.
I’ve just lacked the time to blog about it. So let me tell you how he did his web site
and what he did to get on the radar of recruiters and hiring managers once it
was done.
Kevin’s
smart and he didn’t want to take the time to code a site from scratch so he bought
a personal template from All Web Design. He could also have gone to Templatemonster.com
for an even bigger selection but he chose that one because he liked the
graphics and the Ajax scripts were easy to work with. If you don’t know how to code you should use Templatemonster.com
Kevin bought
and downloaded the template and had his site up
and running the same day. Now Kevin is cheap
er frugal so he didn’t want to spend ~$9.99 a year to host his web site or buy
his domain – which I highly suggest you do even if you have to buy a .ca or
.biz or .tv etc. Fortunately he has a
few sites which he’s built so he can host his web page on the back end. Not ideal but Kevin had an evil plan… More on the evil plan in a minute.
You’ll
notice on his site that Kevin Watson has all of his resumes. He’s got a page
that highlights all his technology
prowess. Another for his project experience. Because a lot of recruiters and hiring
managers are anal retentive when they look for specific experience and when you
have a web site you can put up as much information as you want. More – in the case of techies – is better. His employment history.
His accomplishments.
And most importantly his contact
information is just a click away on every page. Me I would have put it on every page but he
got fancy. But he has his full contact
information including a live link to his email and his HOME phone number.
Now, what
did he forget. He forgot to link his
site to his LinkedIn profile and he neglected to cross reference his
recommendations from LinkedIn. He should
also have used his LinkedIn
address to get people to view his LinkedIn profile. But at least his LinkedIn email address is
personalized: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwatson
Now, why does this matter? Because it
drives up his ranking on Google. At least his LinkedIn profile carries all the versions of his resume.
So shy wasn’t
he concerned about the personal web url [besides being frugal]? Because he
developed a new technology for a job board that was released in October [just
in time for the recession]. He developed
a “scrapper” like the ones used by SimplyHired.com
and Indeed.com which also has a posting
capability which he used to push his résumé out to a targeted group of recruiters
which drove views of his web site.
Essentially he
used the RecruiterPix job board to
find his job leads. First RecruiterPix captures all the jobs off
the newsgroups and then RecruiterPix
sends a note to the recruiter who posted the job telling them that their job
posting had been aggregated and reposted to RecruiterPix for free. It also invited the recruiter to post all of their
other jobs free. Second, RecruiterPix reposts a summary of all
the jobs posted to RecruiterPix by category
to the newsgroups thereby creating more traffic. The genius in all of this is that both the
email to the recruiters and the ones that go to the newsgroups carry an
advertisement for the “project manager” or “product
manager” of the week – with a link to his resume. Great idea eh! This tactic delivered 1400+ “views” of his
resume and several dozen interviews.
In the next installment,
how Kevin’s wife Natalie helped created a tsunami that got both of them jobs
faster than either could ever have imagined.
