Question:
I got some great feedback on my resume earlier when I asked for it.
Reading the critique of Sweth Chandramouli's resume has provided even
more food for thought. One of the big weaknesses in my present resume
is that it basically mimics the printed version. I added a couple links
to help navigate, but otherwise, it is exactly the same info in the same
format.
So... I have an idea of how I want to redo it. Unfortunately I don't
have the HTML skills to accomplish it yet (I'm just starting to work on
that issue now), and it will take a bit of work to put it together.
Therefore, I'd like to discuss it here as a theory before actually
coding it up. If you throw too many spitwads at it, I'll know I am
going in the wrong direction and can save the effort of actually doing
it. otoh, if someone likes the idea and knows HTML well enough to code
it, they may put one up in this style first, and then I can look at
their code and learn how to do mine.
I envision the screen laid out with 3 frames:
----------------------------------
| (1) Header |
|---------------------------------|
| (2) | |
| C | |
| h | (3) Details |
| a | |
| p | |
| t | |
| e | |
| r | |
|---------------------------------|
The Header section (1) would be fixed. It would include my name and
contact info. The bottom line of it would be a series of links. The
words I envision are "Clients", "Projects", "Skills", "Languages", and
"Other." I'd prefer them to be rollover activated, but a click link
would probably suffice.
Whenever a Header link is selected, the Chapter section (2) would change
contents to reflect that link title. For example, in my case, if the
user has pressed "Clients" in the header (which would be the default,
btw), then the Chapters would include "Apple", "Adobe", "GartnerGroup",
"Applied Biosystems", etc.
If he pressed the "Projects" link, the chapters would show up as
"PhoneMan", "Type-On-Call", "Reader Rabbit", etc. Similarly appropriate
chapters would show up for the other Header links.
The Chapter words would also preferably be rollovers, though a click
link might suffice. Whenever a user selected one from the Client or
Project chapters, he would get the proper paragraph from my current
resume. This would allow enough space to elaborate a bit more on some of
the projects that I currently only give 2 lines to (to keep my paper
resume from running to a dozen pages).
The same basic wording would show up if the user chose Client->Adobe, or
if he chose Projects->Type-On-Call.
Since several clients had multiple projects, there would need to be a
way to show that. I haven't decided if that means put "Adobe 1" and
"Adobe 2" in the Client chapter list, or if there should be a
Next/Previous button in the Details frame to move to the next project
from the same client.
Some people are concerned about recency of experience. As such, there
would probably be the ability for the user to sort the Chapters
chronologically or alphabetically (default).
There would also be a button at the bottom to launch their email with a
message addressed to me for easy correspondence. Another button would
allow them to download the paper version of the resume in PDF format.
OK, that is as far as my thinking has gone so far. I've put up the
straw man. Anyone got a box of matches?
Answer:
Well, I've got two matches and they're both a little wet.
Frames are not search engine friendly, or at least that used to be the case.
When you create a framed page you also have to create the equivalent page
w/o frames so that the search engines can read the page. With all the meta
tags and whatnot to deal with . . . I suppose that most people either don't
know how to deal with this issue and/or don't want to do the double work.
The second match is coding HTML. I've got some _very_ basic familiarity with
HTML. I use frontpage98 to generate HTML. The 13 year-old kid across the
street has the latest version of frontpage. He does entire websites for
under $200.00. I wouldn't let that kid do my page, but OTOH, I don't think
learning HTML is worth your time unless you're going to learn CGI, flash and
all that other crap that goes with it. There's not much of a demand for
consultants who do web pages in general and even less of a demand for very
basic HTML-only website development.
So I recommend that you reconsider the frames or at least look into the
search engine issue, and use an HTML generator such as frontpage or
macromedia dreamweaver to do what you need.
Setting format aside there is the matter of content. I did look at your
resume when you first posted it. You've got a hell of a lot of experience so
I chose to keep my mouth shut. Confucius say: It is better to remain silent
and let people think you're a fool than to speak remove all doubt. The
things I said to Sweth are more-or-less the same things I would have told
you: its a nice resume but its not much of a marketing piece. If your client
base consists only of those who understand what you're talking about, or if
you're looking for a job, then its fine. If you are trying to accomplish
anything else then you should polish things up with a some marketing 101
jive.
My home page is coming along. I've been planning to write a Where's Your
Home Page kind of post and ask everyone for the location of their page, and
try to open everything up for feedback through the group such that we can
all look at each other's home pages and provide our critique. Obviously my
page, miketurco.com, is not done yet so I've been holding off. Based on all
the resume talk, I suppose "where's your home page" is a post who's time has
come. I bet at that several people are contemplating putting something up
like this right now. Unfortunately I'm a day late and a dollar short.
