Why You Shouldn’t Link To Your Web Portfolio In Your Job Application

Creating a web portfolio of your work history is an easy way to make sure your resume is always up to date, but it might not be that helpful for actually finding a job. A Wall Street Journal post points out that most hiring managers don’t want to take the time to look at them.

Web portfolios are easier to maintain, and they’re good for students who don’t have a lot of job experience. Unfortunately, they’re also a whole extra step for a hiring manager to go and look at your site instead of just opening a resume attachment:

Polls suggest employers might be interested in the sites — 83% of respondents to a recent Association of American Colleges and Universities survey said an e-portfolio would be “very” or “fairly” useful in ensuring that job applicants have requisite knowledge and skills. But basic human-resources software don’t allow such links in the first round of application submissions, and many hiring managers are simply unwilling to carve out time to dig into the digital showcases, they say.

Of course, the easy workaround here is to just supplement that boring old resume with a link to your portfolio without relying on a hiring manager to click on it. Hopefully, you can make your standard resume appealing enough that they will want to see what else you’ve done.

Giant Resumes Fail to Impress Employers [Wall Street Journal]