"I'll take Vincent for the win (FTW)!" (image courtesy of Greenery on Flickr)
The most popular post on this blog, “Create a Compelling Resume Online With WordPress ,” was written two years ago. One of the commenters recently asked:
Jon, it’s been nearly two years since you posted this article and the economy and job markets have changed significantly. How do you feel your Resume-as-a-Wordpress-site has performed in comparison to the traditional brochure, or single page, resumes people have been publishing?
I’m really glad somebody asked me this question, as it has given me the prod I needed to provide a much needed update on the results. The bottom line is that the results have been terrific. I’d boil them down to the following three categories:
- Convenience
- Data
- Results
Convenience
I’ve relied heavily on my web site when communicating my background and skills to a variety of people. Sometimes, I’ve used the site to respond to job opportunities by including links to my professional bio, a sampling of my public speaking engagements, or links to all of my social media accounts. While it’s very convenient to have these links at my disposal, the best part is really the flexibility. I can embed presentations, documents, images, and even video. You can’t do that on a paper resume.
Data
Analytics is the fifth pillar of Inbound Marketing and it has been very valuable to have the insight into traffic sources, engagement measures, and keyword analysis. If you’re using WordPress to host your online resume, there are lots of great plugins that make it a snap to integrate Google Analytics. Consider the following:
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This screen shot shows that more than 40% of the traffic to my online resume comes from this blog. That exemplifies how important content is to driving web traffic. Using analytic tools gives you an understanding of how people are finding you online. Also, it gives you an understanding of what interests visitors to your resume:
Click on the image for a full size
Results
OK, what’s the bottom line? Has my online resume produced results? Answer: oh yeah!
Some of the results are hard to quantify. I’ve earned consulting business and speaking engagements and the degree to which my online presence helped can’t really be measured. It’s probably time to start thinking about ways to start collecting some data (even anecdotal) along those lines.
But the best example just occurred several months ago. I received the following email from a project manager of a local software company:
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This is a perfect example of how an online resume can leverage the Long Tail of the Internet to create opportunities. In my how-to article, one of the features I cover is using blog categories to group together your experience and qualifications. This email came about because I categorized some of my work with the web content management system “DotNetNuke,” which is how and why I was found in this particular instance.
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However, the best news here is that after meeting with this company and discussing my Inbound Marketing services, I was able to secure a long term consulting contract instead of a day or two of work to modify some web pages. During an interview with one of the owners of the company, I was evangelizing the benefits of inbound marketing when he asked, “OK, then how did we find you?” When his employee answered, “Inbound marketing,” the job was mine.
Inbound marketing FTW!
I typically check my 
