Manage Your Online Profile
Your online profile — everything public about you online — is just as important as your résumé. Recruiters use online profiles to find desirable candidates. Screeners use them to weed out undesirable applicants. Interviewers use them to prepare in-depth interview questions when résumés lack details.
An online profile consists of any or all these things:
- LinkedIn profile — LinkedIn is a social network for tracking professional connections. It’s free to join, and you can create a detailed profile about yourself, including your jobs and your education — essentially an online résumé. Colleagues and customers can publicly endorse you or your work, which can be quite valuable.
- Other social network profiles — Other social networks such as Facebook or Google+, depending on your privacy settings.
- Personal website — This is a potential source of more in-depth information about you.
- Articles and blog posts — If you write about programming-related topics, this is a good way for recruiters to assess your experience.
- Comments and forum posts — These provide another way to gain some insight into your programming skills and your general attitude toward technology and technology companies.
The impression employers get from your online profile can affect your chances of being hired. If your résumé lists extensive experience with C# but they find a forum posting you made only 6 months ago asking how to open a file in C#, they’ll probably conclude that you’re exaggerating ...
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