Leveraging Your Site to Land That Dream Job

November 7th, 2007 Work

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It seems that every blogger in the “make money online” niche is dead set on preaching how important is to quit his or her day job and focus on self-earning 100%. While that may be what many (or even most) people want, it’s not the answer for everyone. Many people may actually enjoy working a 9 to 5 and would like to learn how to better compete in today’s web job market.

I am only 22 years old and have not really been in this industry for very long. When I started I couldn’t afford to go to the seminars, certification courses, etc. I learned everything I know on my own with little to no help from anybody. And although that might give me a great sense of pride, it doesn’t really look good on a resume. So when I decided I was going to start looking for a web design / marketing position within a company, I had to overcome 1) my age and 2) my resume. How did I do that?

I scrapped the resume and wrote a letter instead. In the letter I leveraged the success of my most recent site, Net Business Blog, to demonstrate my knowledge of the web industry. It worked. I got the job I wanted (as well as a ton of interviews with other companies).

If you are a professional or even hobby webmaster working from home but aspiring to get that dream job, maybe you should consider scrapping the resume too. Instead use one (or a few) of your sites as a case study showing your knowledge and ability as it relates to the position you’re applying for. You could also always just attach the resume at the end. Give it a shot. See what happens. It worked for me.

Below is the letter (very slightly edited) I used when I applied for position after position earlier this year. As you can see it’s nothing fancy. It’s just a candid assertion of my skills and experience.

Dear Sir or Madam,

My name is Matt Coddington, and I am a graduating senior at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. I am 22 years old but have been doing website design and creative advertising design for the last 7 years. I have also been doing SEO and various forms of internet marketing for the last 4 years.

I am very familiar with Website Design (full web pages, banner creatives, HTML templates - all using Adobe suite), Search Engine Optimization (White Hat, although I have working knowledge of Black Hat and what *NOT* to do in SEO as well), PPC marketing, Social Media Optimization, Affiliate Marketing, Viral Marketing, E-mail Marketing, Blogging, Domaining, Community-powered Websites (Web 2.0), and much more. All of my work has been for myself or for contract client work. I have never held a permanent position, but that is not due to my lack of knowledge or ability.

Because of my age and lack of formal experience in the industry, I would like to present you with a case study of my work rather than a conventional resume. This case study will be of my most recent website. It is a blog in the online business niche that is only 4 months old yet has already become an authority in the field and gained widespread recognition.

Net Business Blog
http://www.netbusinessblog.com

This blog was started on January 7, 2007 with myself as the webmaster, designer, web tech, marketer, and sole blogger - ie. I didn’t have any help. Since it launched 4 months ago it has acquired a Google PageRank 5, risen to become one of the top 20,000 websites on the net according to Alexa rankings, created a loyal readerbase of over 2,000 readers per day generating over 80,000 page views per month. Of that traffic 38.62% (as of 5/6/2007) is generated by organic search engine results. Much of the the initial traffic came through my unique use of Social Media Marketing. This website was built adhering to W3C standards using the WordPress engine.

On this blog I exercise my knowledge of online business. All of these articles demonstrate my knowledge and experience in the field, many of which apply to the skills required by this position. Here are some of my more popular articles on the subject:

Increasing Your Other
Analyzing Page Views per Visitor by Source
Building a Niche Minisite
How Cost-Effective is SEO?
Optimizing Images for SE Traffic - Is it Worth it?
Link Building Through Design & Link Building Through Theme Distribution
Fight Against Click Fraud Moving Forward

These are just a few examples of my work. I selected these because I think they are most relevant to this position and do a good job of illustrating my basic experience in the industry.

If you would like to see more examples of my work or learn more about me please let me know.

Regards,
Matt Coddington

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