The basics of looking for a job: Be seen
By: Sooraj Chandran
Tags: Diversity, Resume, Career Advice, Job Hunting, Diversity In Tech

Over the past few days, we have been vetting candidates who have applied to herjobs.co.

If you are a candidate with years of experience, you might not even have to look for a job. Good companies will find you.

But often that is not the case, the first one or two jobs, the first few years — you have to make some efforts to be seen.

A surprisingly large percentage of candidates don’t have enough information on their Linkedin or socials to help the companies make an educated guess.

Following is a quick write-up on how to improve your web presence, and do it optimally. These are the absolute basics.

Linkedin

Love it or hate it — most companies still use Linkedin as a place to understand who you are. The goal of skimming through Linkedin is to identify what you have been doing in your past job.

Give them enough information to make that judgment.

Title

A lot of people have just one word or sentence about what they do. Most of the time, this is not helpful for the company to make an educated guess.

Take some time to write a good intro about yourself in the title section.

Use the Pyramid principle to write this effectively.

Start with what you do and who you are. Follow it up with your story.

Explain stuff like your background, what you are passionate about, what you like about your career.

Share everything interesting about you. Use the storytelling technique to make yourself sound more interesting.

Work experience

A large percentage of the Linkedin profile has an incomplete work experience section. Not everyone would have heard of the companies that you have previously worked. Take time to explain your role in the company.

Explain what you did daily there. If you are a developer, share links to some exciting features you helped ship. You can do this if you are a designer or product manager too.

Again, keep in mind — the goal here is to give companies enough data about yourself to make an educated guess so that you get an interview call.

Personal website

In 2020, creating a personal website is easier than ever. You don’t need to code. You can create beautiful personal websites or portfolios using tools like Webflow, WordPress, or even Notion.

While it is not a must-have, a personal website gives you a chance to express yourself. Again, another point to give a lot of data about yourself.

If you are a designer or product manager, you can include case studies of some work you did in the past.

If you are a web developer, you can include the products you have built — extra points for hosting it somewhere and providing a link to it.

If you are a marketer, share some exciting campaigns you have run in the past. How did it go? What did you learn?

Blogs

Optional, but nice to have our blogs. You do not have to write about advanced topics. Trying to write about what you learned in simple terms itself is a huge plus.

There are two advantages to writing.

You have a better understanding of what you learned You let others know what you learned

While this is not a necessity, well-written blogs can help you get an interview call.

Writing too is easier than ever. You can use Medium for your blogs.

Resume

You can get creative with resumes. But one thing you do not want to do with resumes is to include unnecessary information — this might contradict the idea of giving enough information to help the companies make that guess.

But keep in mind that there is a difference between useful information and a lot of information.

For example, knowing your blood group from your resume would not help me in any way. I love a one or two-page resume. Anything more than that is oftentimes a turn-off.

You can also get creative with your resumes — For example, you can create a resume using Notion.

Other sources

For developers — Github is an absolute must-have. Showcase your projects, show some code that you have written in the past.

If you are a designer, you can show off your skills with a Dribbble or Behance profile.

Even Twitter helps to reflect your personality to an extend.