6 Tips to Create an Online Resume to Win Over Freelancing Clients
The Internet has changed the way that companies do business. Like other entrepreneurs, freelancers have also had to adapt and begin to follow new online business practices that became popular in recent years.
As a freelancer, one of the things that you need to do is create a resume. Your resume is going to play a role in helping you land new clients. Although not all potential customers are going to ask for a resume, a number of them likely will.
A growing number of freelancers are creating an online resume to help them attract potential clients. This can be a very effective marketing strategy, but it has to be done correctly.
You should follow the tips listed below if you are trying to create an online resume. These guidelines will help you create a resume that will be irresistible to your target customers.
Start by looking for the right template for your resume website
There are a lot of similarities between creating a traditional resume and a resume that will be published online. One of the biggest differences is the medium that you will be using.
Traditional resumes are obviously printed on a piece of paper. You don’t have to give any thought to the background or visuals, because every blank piece of paper is the same. The content of your resume would be everything that matters.
This isn’t the case when you are publishing a resume online. You can’t restrict your concerns to the copy of your resume. You also have to think about the general layout and the aesthetics of your website as well.
You probably don’t want to create your webpage entirely from scratch. A better option is to use a website template and tweak it to match the theme of your resume.
Follow standard resume writing practices
There are going to be some important nuances that differentiate online and traditional resumes. However, most of the differences in writing a resume are going to be relatively subtle, even if they are still important.
One thing that is not going to change very much is the general formatting and type of content. You are going to need to follow the same resume writing practices that you would when writing a resume on a sheet of paper. You don’t want to be too detailed and use extraneous wording when more concise content would suffice.
Create separate, non-indexed resume pages that are tailored to different clients
One of the traditional rules of creating a resume is that it needs to be tailored to the specific job goal that you have in mind. As a freelancer, this means that you are going to need to tweak your different resumes for each respective client.
You will be able to do this with online resumes. However, you need to be savvy about it. One problem that you might run into is that customers might find all of the different online resumes that you have published on your website for various customers. They will question your sincerity when you show them a resume tailored to their company.
The best way to handle this is to create separate webpages for each respective resume and use the “noindex” tag to make sure that they don’t get indexed in the search engines. This ensures you’re your resumes are only seen by the clients that you want to show them to, so you don’t have to worry about confusing them about your primary objectives.
Share links to your respective web properties
You want to give potential customers the opportunity to learn more about you. Don’t be afraid to include links to your website, LinkedIn profile, Instagram or other social media properties. The link should be clickable, rather than raw links that customers will need to copy and paste into their browser address bar.
Make sure that your page is optimized for mobile users
You might assume that everybody looking at your online resume is going to be using their desktop computer. Unfortunately, this is not a great assumption to make, because 55% of Internet traffic is now generated from mobile devices.
You can’t afford to have an online resume that is not optimized for mobile visitors. There are a lot of responsive website templates and themes that you can use. You need to make sure to utilize them, so that your page is engaging to people viewing it on mobile devices.
Include a reasonably sized professional picture of yourself
Your online resume should have a personal touch. One of the best ways to do this is by adding a personal picture of yourself. However, it is important to make sure that the picture is not too large. People aren’t going to want to scroll through the entire webpage because you have a huge picture. You want to find a modest size picture and use the wrap text feature to make more of the content visible.