Online Portfolios: Wix or Weebly?

Now that you understand the advantages of an online portfolio, it is time to start creating one. There are several companies that offer “free domain” Web sites.  “Free domain” means that you don’t have to pay, but your design and html capabilities will be limited. You can buy your domain when you start your portfolio or later, when you want to, or never. The two most commonly used are www.wix.com and www.weebly.com.

Personally I have only used Wix and Weebly. However, most professional blogs I have seen are one of these two sites. I have had good and bad experiences with both sites.

Advantages of Wix

• Without purchasing the domain you can still change and design a lot
• You can do so many cool things with Wix, like add music, photo albums, imbed documents
• The tutorial is very helpful, says Alex in  his blog.
• “Source files are in a programmer friendly format–XML” says Vagmi in his blog.

Disadvantages of Wix

• Fairly hard to learn

Advantages of Weebly

• Easy to learn, very basic

Disadvantages of Weebly

• Very glitchy, tends to freeze up
• Without buying your domain,  you can’t do many things on your portfolio
• It is tricky to unpublish your Web site

If you do want to dabble in web design and HTML, see the tutorials on www.usabilitydesk.blogspot.com

Weebly tutorial: http://www.weeblytutorial.com/

Your organization can either make or break your online portfolio. Think about the many Web sites you have visited, think about why you lingered longer on some Web sites than others, or why you liked some more than other.

Chances are that organization played a large role in determining whether you lingered longer or liked the Web site. When the organization is clear and easy to navigate, the more hits a Web site will get.

One rule to follow that will help you create a well-organized portfolio: Can you get to all the pages and sub-pages of your Web site within 3 clicks or less? If so, you are well on your way to creating a navigable Web site.

Eric Miller from www.about.com suggests in his article “Preparing Content for a Website Portfolio”, that “creating an outline of your content will let you focus on what to include on your site without being distracted by design. You can also start to think about the names for the different sections, though of course they can change later in the process.” Some common sections are:

• Portfolio: This is the showcase of your work.
• About: A bio and/or a personal/company overview.
• Contact: Make certain it is easy for people to find your contact info.
• Case Studies: In a case study section, you can focus on a few clients or projects and discuss the design process. This is effective for showcasing branding jobs or clients for whom you have done several related projects.
• Clients: A list of clients, often divided by industry or job type.
• Press: Show publications you have appeared in and any awards or honors.
• Resume: Depending on the goal of the site, including a standard format resume can be helpful to prospective employers or clients.
• Work Experience: Include your past work history and you may even include past projects or related work that applies to the field you are going into.

Anything that is applicable to the job you want to land. Be it photography, editing examples, published works, etc.

Eric Miller from www.about.com suggests in his article “Preparing Content for a Website Portfolio”, that in order to create content for your site you must identify your goals. Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help you identify them:

• Who is your target audience?
• Are you looking to build a freelance business or land a design job?
• Do you want to get work in a specific field, such as music, or find a specific type of work, such as book cover design?

Once you answer these questions you will be able to determine the work you want to present, and what “voice” your portfolio will take on.

Once you have mastered the art of résumé and cover letter writing, take it to the next level by creating a professional online portfolio.

Not only does an online portfolio show that you, the job applicant, are up-to-date with technology and social media, but is also a great way to show potential employers writing samples and work experience in a readily accessible way. Many employers are now “googling” applicants, so having an online portfolio will impress them and guide them to see what you want to see.

Eresumeiq.com explains other benefits of an online portfolio:

• The World Wide Web provides a perfect environment to build an online portfolio with links to creative samples, letters of recommendation, graphs, charts, photos, and so on.
• When used correctly, these design features dramatically improve resume appearance and project an image that reinforces your candidacy.
• Unlike the paper resume, HTML resumes “reside” online and they work full-time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

People often ask, “Do you really need a cover letter?” Well Peter Newfield, President of the Résumé Writing Service Company (Career Resumes)  says, “You bet! Just as you would never just show up unannounced at a prospective employer’s door, your résumé should Never just appear solo on a decision-maker’s desk. Your cover letter is your first opportunity to introduce yourself, present your qualifications, and show the search committee you are a potential candidate for the advertised position.”

Not only do you need to always send a résumé accompanied by a good cover letter, but it should also be a well-written cover letter.

Here are some steps to do so: 

1. Explain your purpose and introduce yourself. This lets the employer know what you are looking for and how you heard of the position. Here you can and should mention any connections you may have, if they will be advantageous for you.

Not only is it important to have a solid résumé content-wise, but it is equally  and perhaps more important to have a visually appealing letterhead. The letterhead, as the largest and most prominent feature on a résumé, needs to stand out.  Employers may take an extra glance at an attractive résumé. However, don’t get too carried away with design, color, and fonts—keep it clean and professional.

You need to also remember that even your letterhead must apply to your audience. If you applying to be a teacher, maybe a more calm and traditional letterhead would work best. However if you are applying to a public relations firm, go for something more modern and creative. The Southworth company, a  company that specializes in letterhead branding, provides examples of some type styles and the images and tone they present.

Before you start formatting and laying out the organization of you résumé, you must first decide whether you are going to use a functional or a chronological résumé.

Functional: It focuses on your skills, experience, and strengths rather than your past work history.

What is the advantage? It shows off your skills, strengths, and experiences.

What is the disadvantage? Employers may assume that you choose this method because of your lack of paid experience.

When and who would want to use this format? (List provided by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D. from www.quintcareers.com)

• Those with very diverse experiences that don’t add up to a clear-cut career path.
• College students with minimal experience and/or experience unrelated to their chosen career field.
• Career-changers who wish to enter a field very different from what all their previous experience points to.
• Those with gaps in their work history, such as homemakers who took time to raise and family and now wish to return to the workplace. For them, a chronological format can draw undue attention to those gaps, while a functional resume enables them to portray transferable skills attained through such activities as domestic management and volunteer work.
• Job-seekers whose predominate or most relevant experience has been unpaid, such as volunteer work or college activities (coursework, class projects, extracurricular organizations, and sports).

Click here to see my functional résumé: EIECResume-No GPA

Chronological: Work experience is listed in reverse chronological order, from most to least recent.

Once you have acquired good content, it is only a matter of how you communicate your content. This is what makes or breaks a good résumé. Even if someone has stellar content, if they don’t communicate it clearly with the right tone, they may not receive an interview, while someone with less stellar content, but who has communicated it well, may obtain an interview 

Tailor your resume

Peter Weddle, from careercast.com, explains that “in today’s job market a resume is useless unless it’s written expressly for a specific employment opportunity.” The days of writing a generic résumé and sending it out by the masses, are over. To land a job now, you need to tailor each and every résumé according the job description.

If you are applying for a job as a technical writer, you will not highlight your creative writing major, but you’re your concise writing skills. Essentially take the skills and experience that you do have and show the employer how they fit the job description.

First of all, as a college student it can be hard acquiring good content for résumés. However, more and more universities are implementing real-life projects into the classroom. For example, in my Advanced Technical Writing class we wrote a recommendation report for a novel written by a local amateur novelist—this gave us the experience and the novelist free content editing. We also designed and created a tour book for a university study abroad trip using Adobe InDesign. Though we were not paid for these projects, we can definitely define these projects as “work experience”.

Tom Johnson, in his blog idratherbewriting.com, says to “acquire some real world experience by actually doing technical writing. At many companies, employers want someone with experience because the employer plans to point you in the right direction and then let you work independently, rather than providing training. They want to be sure you can manage any situation, and if you don’t have experience in a corporate environment or know what you’re doing, employers may not trust your ability to get the job done.”

 

Introduction to Effective Résumé Writing

I decided to write  a post about résumé writing for several reasons.

• Because I am an English major, and particularly as an English major with an emphasis in technical writing, my professors have drilled and drilled résumé writing into my head, until sometimes I have thought I could not possibly do one more. But after writing and updating 15 résumés over the past 2 years, I have learned the value of good résumé writing, and it is something I would like to share with others.

 

• Since I and others reading this blog are going into the technical writing field, résumé writing is vital to landing a good job. Often those of us going into technical writing don’t necessarily major in technical writing, so knowing how to adapt the projects and skills that you do have to the specific job description can be tricky. Resumes Planet, a professional résumé help business says: ”A poorly constructed resume or one that doesn’t place the proper focus on your abilities can very easily disqualify you from the hiring process. It can be difficult to put a good resume together.”