| Here's a news flash - the economy is a little rough | | | | networking sites in the sidebar. |
| these days. With the unemployment rate creeping up, | | | | - WordPress Database Backup: Ounce of prevention, |
| it's a time when you need to be clear about what you | | | | and all that... |
| can bring to a prospective employer or client and, | | | | - WP-Mail-SMTP: Reconfigures the wp_mail() function |
| above all, to stand out from the competition. | | | | to use SMTP instead of mail(). |
| Fortunately, it's cheaper and easier than ever to make | | | | Turn the Page |
| yourself "present with authority." | | | | Now it's time to set up the pages. I decided on the |
| One of my new year's resolutions was to get my | | | | following site map: |
| online identity sorted out, which means making the | | | | - Home |
| most of the available tools and delivering a consistent | | | | - About Me |
| message. After taking inventory of the various | | | | - Work History |
| professional sites to which I belong (e.g. LinkedIn, | | | | - Skills |
| VisualCV), I decided that I needed an aggregator to | | | | - Volunteerism |
| take charge and deliver my message, my way, in my | | | | Experience |
| style. I had registered my own name as a domain | | | | Companies |
| many years ago but not done anything with it, and so I | | | | Social Networks |
| decided to use WordPress to tell my professional | | | | Contact Me |
| story. | | | | The tricky thing about this is that, by default, |
| What Are the Benefits? | | | | WordPress publishes blog articles to the front page of |
| If you think about your career as a product that you're | | | | the site. In order to implement my strategy, it's |
| selling, wouldn't it make perfect sense to have a web | | | | important to change that. You can do this on the |
| site? Of course it does, and you want your personal | | | | Reading Settings page by selecting "Home" for your |
| brand to have the same benefits: | | | | front page and "Experience" as the posts page. |
| - More and more, clients and employers are | | | | Next, you'll need to populate the Home, About Me, |
| performing online searches to learn more about the | | | | Work Experience, and Skills pages. The Home page |
| people with which they are considering to engage. | | | | functions as a sort of generic cover letter, while the |
| Having a search engine friendly web site makes it | | | | other pages represent the customary sections of a |
| more likely they will find you. | | | | resume. However, you have the freedom to be a little |
| - Indexing your experience through the use of | | | | more creative and verbose in this environment than on |
| keywords makes it easy for people to zero in on the | | | | a paper resume. |
| skills and/or expertise in which they're interested (more | | | | What you don't see in the site map (or in the menu) is |
| about that later). | | | | my social networking landing page. Another benefit of |
| - Multimedia capabilities (i.e. images, video, presentations, | | | | having your own web site is the ability to create |
| links) make it easier for you to tell your story in a vivid | | | | landing pages from other sites that allow you to |
| and interesting way. | | | | customize messages and, again, tell your story. For |
| - You can use specialized links to direct people to | | | | example, Twitter provides very little space to |
| specific content areas of your profile. | | | | customize your profile but they do allow you to enter a |
| - While this practice may soon be common place, for | | | | web site URL that you can point to a customized |
| the moment at least it will help you to stand out from | | | | landing page. This is where the "Exclude Pages from |
| the crowd. | | | | Navigation Menu" plugin comes in handy. |
| Laying the Groundwork | | | | Rubber Meets Road |
| The first decision is your domain name. One option is | | | | The power of this approach now takes shape as you |
| to use Blogger or WordPress (e.g. | | | | create blog posts to describe specific projects, |
| jondipietro.wordpress.com), which is free. However, for | | | | publications, and experiences. The key is carefully |
| the few dollars a year it costs you are far better off | | | | selected categories and liberal use of tags for the |
| registering your own domain name; preferably your | | | | posts. This will allow employers and/or clients to quickly |
| first and last names if available. This article will discuss | | | | zero in on the topics in which they are interested. And |
| building your online resume using WordPress on your | | | | since you're making it easy to find the information |
| own hosted site. Once the basic WordPress installation | | | | they're looking for, you can feel free to include lots of |
| is in place, the first thing you'll want to do is to find a | | | | details, making them as interactive as possible. You'll |
| clean, professional theme and install it. There are a | | | | want to include the Simple Tags tag could widget in |
| number of plugins that I install on every WordPress site | | | | the sidebar. |
| right out of the gate: | | | | The categories are also important and you can use |
| - Add to Any Sharing and Subscribing buttons: Makes | | | | them to organize your pages and posts at a higher |
| it easy for visitors to share, save, bookmark, and/or | | | | level than the tags. How and where the categories are |
| subscribe to your site. | | | | displayed is somewhat dependent upon your theme. |
| - All in One SEO Pack: Provides a bunch of handy | | | | Some themes display them as menu items while |
| tools to make your site more search engine friendly. | | | | others are displayed in the sidebar and is a matter of |
| - Contact Form 7: Create customized forms for | | | | your personal preference. |
| visitors to send you messages. | | | | Shout It Out Loud |
| - Exclude Pages from Navigation: Allows you to easily | | | | Once your online resume is good to go, you can send |
| build landing pages. | | | | out customized links to direct people straight to a |
| - FeedBurner FeedSmith: Synchs your blog with | | | | particular area of interest. For example, if I'm looking to |
| FeedBurner. | | | | secure a consulting contract for VB.NET development, |
| - Google Analytics for WordPress: Installs the Google | | | | I could send the following in an email: |
| Analytics script on your site so you can track traffic. | | | | "Please see the VB.NET projects listed on my online |
| - Google XML Sitemaps: Creates the XML site map | | | | resume." |
| files that makes it easier for Google to discover pages | | | | The "VB.NET" link is yourblogURL.com/tag/vbnet, |
| on your site. | | | | which will automatically display a list of all pages or |
| - Simple Tags: Makes it really easy to manage the | | | | posts that were tagged with the VB.NET keyword. |
| tags that you'll use to mark your areas of expertise. | | | | You can begin to see how easy it is to send |
| - SlideShare: Allows you to embed SlideShare | | | | customized links to employers and clients that zoom |
| presentations. | | | | right in to the areas on which you want them focused. |
| - Social Links: Display buttons with links to your social | | | | |