Where is your résumé?

Do you know where your résumé is? Nobody's trying to be pessimistic here,just prepared.

Do you know where your résumé is? Nobody8217;s trying to be pessimistic here,just prepared. Given the recent economic unpleasantness,it8217;s not a bad idea to give the old CV a once-over,just in case it becomes necessary. But updating its content is only half the battle8211;how you wield it determines how effective it can be. Below are some ways to make sure you8217;re well positioned in case the bell tolls for thee.

KEEP YOUR RÉSUMÉ AT THE READY: Ideally,you should keep an electronic version of your CV fully updated and accessible from any computer,ready to be sent out at a moment8217;s notice. E-mailing a version to yourself is a simple way to do this saving it to a dedicated inbox folder ensures you can find it when needed and minimises the risk of missed opportunities that can occur if people are kept waiting while you8217;re stuck finding,revising or piecing together a new version from memory.

DON8217;T WASTE YOUR FORMATTING: Your up-to-date and available résumé should also be saved as a PDF document. This way,your format remains intact regardless of whether someone uses an older version of Microsoft Word,or a different document software altogether. And since PDF documents are read-only,you also eliminate the possibility of accidental changes that can happen when a file is opened and forwarded by multiple people. You also come across as having more technical expertise,which is nice.

MAKE AN INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING: If you8217;re not content to wait for a request,you can make your work experience public via professional networking sites like LinkedIn,Plaxo and Xing. While you can8217;t upload your résumé directly,the benefit to using these sites8217; online formats8211;which require you to create an individual listing for each job8211;is that they find and suggest as contacts other members whose education,work or even club and organisation affiliations overlap your own. Once you8217;re connected to former colleagues or others,you share their address book and they yours,exponentially increasing your exposure in theory,at least.

SHOW YOUR E-MAIL SKILLS: Sending an e-mail message and a CV as an attachment is simple enough,but what do you do when you8217;re sending additional materials,like large image files or other supersize attachments? The old method was to attach the jumbo file,cross your fingers and hope for the best. A small evolution of that method was to break the delivery into chunks the recipient8217;s e-mail system could properly digest. This was often accompanied by an apologetic 8220;Sorry for the seven e-mails. This is the last one!8221; message. There is,however,a more elegant solution. For very large media files that surpass an e-mail system8217;s size limit,simply create links to files hosted on sites like drop.io and filedropper.com,which allow uploads of up to 100 megabytes or much higher.

THINK BEYOND THE RÉSUMÉ: With a little creativity,people in almost any profession can make online applications or a personal website work for them. Anyone who creates marketing materials or corporate presentations can post examples of their work onto online photo-sharing and slideshow resources like Flickr and Picasa. Executives who are interviewed on television or radio or who are expected to make speeches can create a simple introductory video and post to a video-sharing site like Vimeo or YouTube.

If you want to gather these different elements together,then you8217;ll want to build a personal website. That8217;s a lot easier and cheaper than it used to be. Anyone with a Google account,for example,can design a personal Google Site sites.google.com at no cost using a simple,intuitive interface. You can create multiple pages,easily upload image,audio and video files up to 10 megabytes each,and ensure straightforward site navigation via customisable sidebars.

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Tumblr is another free option. Technically a blog platform,the site offers various layouts that allow it to function more like a landing page,with different posts spread across the page rather than stacked vertically on top of one another as in a traditional blog format. Tumblr is also endlessly customisable and lets users upload or embed media files up to 50 megabytes.
Regardless of where you create your site,adding a link in the signature of your outgoing e-mail messages under a header like 8220;professional site8221; is a great way to pique interest and point prospective employers in the right direction.

THINK BEFORE YOU POST: When it comes to putting work you8217;ve done professionally in a public space like the Internet,use caution. Even if you8217;ve created a product8211;be it a video,presentation or packaging copy8211;from beginning to end,it8217;s still the intellectual property of the company for which it was produced. It could be problematic if you share it without permission. Intuition is a good rule of thumb: if you don8217;t think a current or previous employer would want you posting examples of your work for them online,then you probably shouldn8217;t.

YOU MAY BE ONLINE ELSEWHERE: Pointing a company to your LinkedIn profile or professional site doesn8217;t mean that8217;s the only part of your online world they8217;ll see; if a potential boss or human resources assistant finds an unflattering photograph or blog post from you8211;and there8217;s a definite possibility someone will do a search8211;it is fair game for them to consider that material reflective of you as a potential employee,even if,to you,it8217;s part of your 8220;private8221; life. Keep all settings for your social networks as private as possible,and do the same on photo-sharing sites like the ones mentioned above. For better or worse,every public aspect of your online life is now part of your résumé.
_JOSHUA CONDON,NYT