Do's, don'ts of posting your resume online D.J. Burrough Special for The Arizonia Republic Oct. 26, 2003 12:00 AM For job seekers, this is the season to give a treat to a "monster." Posting your resume on one of the big Internet job boards - Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com or hotjobs.com - is one way to go about finding a new job, career experts say. The aim is to get many more people to review your resume. Before you post online, career experts say, create a resume that will display well in an electronic format. Include key words to catch the attention of scanning programs, and be sure to take several steps to protect against identity theft. First, use a plain text version of your resume so that it can be read by the most users. This also allows the resume to retain as much of its standard formatting as possible. Next, carefully consider what information to post. Take care when putting personal information online. Nefarious people are looking to steal user identities. The information in most resumes, such as names, addresses, places of employment, often assists in this criminal enterprise. Consider posting a resume without your name, address or any personal information, other than an e-mail address, said Wendy Carr, a market resources consultant in the Phoenix office of Right Management Consultants. "It's a trade-off," she said. "It makes it a little more difficult for the recruiters to contact you, but you are better protected." Set up an e-mail account that doesn't have your name in the address, she suggested. Have interested companies contact that e-mail address if they want more information or want to set up an interview. Check the privacy policy of the job board site, said Tory Soli, head of the Phoenix office of I.T. Staffing Services and author of The Search Is On - A Job Hunter's Guide. "Some job sites seem to exist only to collect your contact information to sell the information to companies that bombard you with advertising," she said. Look for sites that promise not to disclose information to anyone other than companies interested in job candidates. Avoid any sites that want to charge you a fee, Soli said. Plenty of sites are free and will get your resume out as well. "You should not have to pay a fee to use a job board," she said. The only exception may be paying a fee to join a professional association, where you can post your resume. Create a short paragraph at the start of your resume that has key words about your talents, experience and skills, Carr said. Those 20 to 30 items will attract the attention of programs that scan for specific words and will place your resume in the "pile" to be examined more closely. Refresh your resume about once a week, making minor changes so that when recruiters go looking for new resumes, yours will pop up again.
The final step in posting your resume is to unpost it. "When you land your dream job, you need to remove the resume from the Internet," Carr said. "The danger in leaving it is that your new employer may recognize it and assume that you're still looking. You don't want to jeopardize a new relationship."