Offering an Online Resume and Portfolio Creation Service

Employers are increasingly turning to the internet to research the background and professional works of their prospective employees and contractors. There are even online platforms that specifically allow their subscribers to post an online resume and a limited sample of their works. You can offer online portfolio creation and maintenance to your clients too…

WHAT IS A RESUME?

Before we can even begin to talk about portfolios we have to discuss first resumes. The usual resumes contain at least the following:

INTRODUCTION: This is where the job applicant expresses their greetings to the prospective employer followed by a summary of their resume which usually pertains to a summary of their work experience and what they could contribute to the company of the employer on a job basis.

WORK EXPERIENCE: This contains the current (if any) and the past work experiences of the job applicant. It usually enumerates the job applicant’s previous job title, a description of their job and what they have contributed to the employer’s company in terms of their job. It could contain metrics such as “I have increased sales by 95%” or “I have doubled productivity” and so on.

It also contains the date and duration of their employment. This is usually the “meat” or the one which prospective employers look for in experienced candidates. In terms of an online portfolio what the prospective job applicant can do is to provide a link to the companies they have worked for. This has the advantage of making your resume work experience data more credible.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: As the title suggests it contains the current (if any) and the past educational background of the job applicant. It usually contains the educational institution’s name, the duration of their education, their degree and what they have learned from such institution and their degree. It could also contain the academic achievements of the job applicant.

This is the meat and bones of a resume when the job applicant has very little or no work experience yet. They can again link provide a link to the institution’s website especially if the institution is a specialist education provider and not well known or published.

For example if a person is a computer software graduate but has taken extra education in financial analysis they can add this to their portfolio of education skills and elaborate or show financial analysis projects they have done. This financial analysis project portfolio may not only turn to a job but could also be a product unto itself that they can sell.

SKILLS: This contains a list of the skills of the job applicant which are related to performing the job they are applying for. Rather than a simple list of a job applicant’s skills it could contain significant projects that the job applicant has used the skills for.

For example merely listing that you are good with spreadsheet softwares like Excel is quite common as most workers have basic to intermediate knowledge of spreadsheets. But if you also elaborated that for example “I have programmed an Excel spreadsheet that automatically creates an amortisation table for insurance payments” this puts you ahead over the others.

By elaborating that your skills are indeed above others you demonstrate that your job capabilities are beyond work experience and education. This is especially helpful for job applicants who may lack the necessary credentials in terms of work experience and educational background. This may just be what gets you hired.

CONTACTS: This is commonly a list of the persons the prospective employer can contact to verify your resume details or to check the job applicant’s background. They usually contain the name, position, company and contact details of the person provided in the contact list. Again this could enhance your job application process if you added a few more details.

Most often unless the prospective employer is really serious about checking if your details and background work out for them they would not even take a look at the contacts list. However if your contact list and its information is outstanding this may interest them enough.

If you listed that your contact person has significant achievement in their field of expertise your prospective employer might look at your application in a new light. For example if you are applying for a research job and your contact happens to be a known expert in the field you are applying for then your prospective employer might think that you have been well trained by your contact person.

This is especially true if in your contact list you also listed the achievements of your contact person. For example if you also listed that your contact person have won an award for their work this fame could also transfer to you in terms of a better outlook of your credentials by your prospective employer.

AN EXPANDABLE RESUME IS MORE EFFECTIVE

As can be seen a real attractive resume is not really effective if it is compressed only into a (two) 2 page outline which most resumes are. By creating an expandable resume which can be done by an online page which links to credible online information and references as well by linking to expandable pages which creates immediate detailed answers for the prospective employers you stay ahead of the competition.

Imagine the conventional process of submitting resumes even online. The prospective employer is busy and has to check hundreds and even thousands of job application. They have limited time and just checks each resume in a minute or less. If a resume interests them they get transferred to file usually named “for consideration”. This file gets rescanned and if they are interested they check your details.

If they have difficulty checking your details your resume would most likely be eliminated from the file. If however you are able to give them a link to your online expandable resume they would find almost all the answers they want from you without having to contact you in the first place. This saves the time of the prospective employer and the job applicant.

The expandable resume can be further expanded to a link to your portfolio. This could include text explanations, illustrations and videos of your work. It could also include information not related to your resume or body of work. For example it could contain information on what you do when you are not working or studying.

This is especially helpful if your prospective employer is considering you for a long term work engagement even a full-time employment as this information would help them considerably in assessing your fit in the company culture and how you get along with the company and your coworkers.

IS THIS A VIABLE SERVICE TO OFFER?

In truth there are many people who can do their own resume and even online ones. However one can easily find online individuals and even companies offering professional resume writing services. If for example you Google the search keywords “resume writing services” you would see a lot of companies and information offering such services.

This is the resume creation business. Not let us go the online portfolio business. If you Google for example “online portfolio services” you again would see a list of a lot of information and online platforms offering such services. You could for example check out Carbonmade which is a site for digital media content portfolios.

You could also check out format.com which is a portfolio site for photographers. This site for example offers monthly and annual billing fees for creating a portfolio website for you and maintaining it.

YOU CAN BE A SPECIALIST AND NICHE DOWN

As you can see the resume creation business and portfolio creation services have not been integrated yet but as I have previously mentioned once a person needs an online resume it would most probably need an expanded site complete with a portfolio. This service is still untapped and can be offered by anyone who have internet skills especially in website building.

For example the basic thing you can offer is to assist your customers in getting their resume and portfolio online using the free and paid services online. For example you can create a free GitHub profile page for your client and make free blogs about them in free blog sites such as Blogger and Wordpress.

You can then offer to maintain these free online profile page and blogs. If you think the pay is small just think that if you can persuade your clients to pay you a small amount of money for a few minutes work monthly updating their blogs and profile page then you could make decent money. This includes resume and portfolio updates in social media.

For example if you have graduating or recently graduated students you can work with them to create online profiles and blogs which continuously updates their online info of the skills and education they have recently mastered.

This is especially helpful if they want to broadcast online that they are getting ready or are ready to be hired for a job without them having to worry if they have updated online skill profiles. They can focus on finishing studies or looking for a job.

Since web hosting is very cheap these days you can offer the all around service of creating a website and maintaining it as well. This is very good especially if you can create a website template that is easily customisable for various clients and all you have to do is change the information for each of your client.

WHAT IS YOUR ADVANTAGE?

Simply put your main advantage is your flexibility. You can create online resumes with portfolios that your client can adjust to their liking. Your services are also expandable. You can create online resumes only or include a portfolio as well. You can also include information that other resume or portfolio softwares and platforms would not allow.

For example online portfolio platforms would have certain limits on how many of your works you can feature and as the number increases you pay more like an increased monthly fee. You can offer the same service as a one off creation with a set price. Then if the client wants to add more they can pay on an as need basis and not a monthly fee which saves them money.

Another of your advantage is that most of these online portfolio platforms cater mainly to media content businesses. You have the advantage of flexibility to offer your services to businesses that are not in the media content business.

For example if you have a client who specialises in repairing car engines you can show a resume with portfolio of the cars they worked on as well as their owners. This might be standard for most resume and portfolios but you can include the details on how they work on the cars which might be a skill unique to them.

For example if the person repairing car engines also have the skill to recreate a damaged part without the need for the owner to buy an original hard to find or nearly impossible to find part then car owners who have very rare cars would especially be interested in their services. You can place special emphasis of this on the car repairer’s site.

CONCLUSION

The job and business market is getting more and more competitive. One of the best ways any job seeker or business can do is to make themselves stand out from the competition by creating not only a one or two (2) page online job seeker or business resume and portfolio but by creating an expandable resume which would answer most if not all of the questions a potential client/employer has.

This saves time for both the client/employer and the applicant themselves. With an online presence an applicant/business also can broadcast themselves 24/7 on a worldwide basis which maximises their reach.

You can assist your clients achieve this by offering simple services like assisting them create and maintain their profiles on free online platforms up to creating their own site where you can help them fully inform their clients about them thru your very flexible services. This is very similar to online marketing but instead of marketing product and services your main focus is marketing the individual/business as themselves.