As recruitment companies increasingly shift their activities online, the importance of web will further grow manifold. The web will become all-pervasive as a working tool to search for talent as well as conduct employment background searches and checks. We are already seeing that today with most resumes being transmitted electronically, so much that the term ‘E-Resume’ is no longer used as a separate entity from the word ‘Resume’. Along with the change, the old-style traditional resume lost its aura to the extent that today it does not cut ice anymore with companies. Simply put, it does not resonate with today’s times and trends.

A whopping 90 percent of employers are said to place resumes directly into searchable databases and an equal percentage of employers prefer to receive resumes by e-mail. Add to this, nearly 80 percent of the best companies are said to post jobs in a readymade ‘Jobs-format’ on their own Websites and expect job-seekers to respond to the jobs electronically.

No wonder, online resume submission has become a common phenomenon. This has brought about a dramatic transformation in the way resumes are conceived and then posted online. It has ensured that a resume is well-structured, and put together with the relevant details that matter a lot. After all, a well-conceived professional resume is a medium for advertising yourself and presenting yourself as a capable candidate for a job-profile worthy enough to be noticed, quizzed and eventually selected.

The competition for jobs is fierce and to prevail in such a market scenario, it’s imperative that the resume should stand out in the crowd. Social networking sites like LinkedIn, Xing, Plaxo, etc, are being increasingly used and mind it, the resumes in these sites are from all over the world. Add to it, market studies have revealed that a whopping 89% of recruiters are using online networking sites to find candidates for job-positions. 

Changing trends should make you all the more aware as to why your online branding profile is as important as the need to equip yourself with the relevant professional skills that matters a lot in today’s workplace. By ignoring the importance of online resume or treating it as irrelevant, you could end up only handicapping your job prospects.

Building a Resume Online:

Your online resume is your window to the outside world. To make it count, it should be professional to the core; extremely well-arranged and well-designed in a way that it can instantly garner attention. Such a resume should basically have slots for five core areas – Home, About, Working Experience, Skill-sets, Works / Projects & Contact.

• Home: Should contain a brief intro about yourself and your objectives / capabilities for the job-profile.
• About: Should contain a detailed explanation about yourself like your personality, working capabilities, and background.
• Working Experience: Should contain your working experience in depth with brief description of each job-position underneath the job-titles held by you.
• Skill-Sets: Should contain detailed insight about the kind of skills you possess and how they have benefitted the jobs you have done and how they can benefit and be leveraged for the advertised job.
• Works / Projects: Should contain in-depth details about relevant works / projects that you have executed in all of your jobs with if possible, file downloads for big works / projects executed. 
• Contact: Should contain in-depth details on where you’re based, where you stay and how to contact you including your contact address, contact numbers, etc.

Tips on How to Give Your Online Resume a Polished Look:

Choose: 
• The appropriate resume format that fits the job-profile and works best with your work nature and history. For ideas, refer to some functional and chronological resumes. 
• Alignment to the left will ensure the neatness of your resume. Refrain from using Justified Text Blocks for they put strange little spaces between words, thereby giving your resume an ungainly and awkward look.
• A Font style that’s easy on the eyes and to read. Normally. ‘Times New Roman’, ‘Arial’ and ‘Calibri’ are good choices.
• A letter size that is between 10 and 12 points. Anything more or less would only end distorting the look of your resume and make it look ugly and unprofessional.
• A slightly larger font for headings than for the rest of the resume’s text. You could also do well to place them in bold and/or center them. NOTE that if you have centered your Name and Contact Information, then make sure to center the resume headings as well.
• Words that demonstrate your working style. For instance, words like prepared, managed, presented, developed, monitored, etc, will make your resume a standout from others.
• Bullet-points with brief sentences in the body of your resume, in a simple style with functionality that is impressive. Avoid usage of fancy bullet-points for they are a put-off.
• To highlight your transferable skills that will benefit the company. This should be done especially where you’re looking for a career change or have little work experience or are new to a working career.
• To list activities in sports, culture, etc, that sound positive and would create a good impression, without going overboard over them.
• Positive language while avoiding too much of negativity, exaggeration and irrelevant information. 

Avoid:
• Using flowery or fictional-style prose. Keep it simple and pleasant without going overboard.
• Crowding the resume page. Always leave some white space in between to enhance your resume’s readability.
• Getting too much in-depth about your working experience and work accomplishments.
• Downplaying your achievements. Spell them out where required using action words and to the point. In case, statistics are available to back them up, then use them.
• Including your salary history as well as reasons for leaving the previous jobs.
• Including mentioning lawsuits, claims or other such like negative incidents.
• Using unprofessional sounding email address. In case, you don’t have a proper email address, create one that is pleasant sounding.
• Emphasizing job-activities and skills that you did not do or possess or want to do in the future. 
• Including excess of information on your hobbies and interests.
• Including a photograph of yourself, unless they are asked for.
• Including personal references. In case, it’s required to do so, then state only those references that are available upon request.

Once you’re through with building your resume, make sure to proofread the same carefully. This way you may find some typos and misspellings that are undesirable in a resume and rectify or eliminate them altogether.

Tip For Own Resume Website:
Many job-seekers these days have their own websites showcasing their professional as well as personal profile. If you’re looking to have one, then you could do well to go by the following guidelines:

• Your own Website should have your own name as the domain name. For instance, yourfullname.com (should include your full name) in the form of say, sriharianand.com would be appropriate for your name – Srihari Anand.
• Get your domain name from a respectable provider like say, GoDaddy.com (With it, you can use promo code FAN3).
•Optimize your own website for an effective online presence. This way, it could be found by search engines easily and quickly, and propelled onto the search engine’s first page search rankings.
• Ensure that your online profile in your Website also contains vanity URL’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Conclusion:
Know that Resumes are read in 10 to 40 seconds at the most. So make the best use of what you have and ensure that your resume is clear, concise and keyword-laden (usage of keywords relevant to your job-profile), with strong, relevant information highlighting your strong points and details that will appeal to the potential employer in question. You need to put it in a way that will inform the potential employer as to what kind of job you want and how you can do justice to it. This way, you can greatly increase your chances of landing an interview call and if you’re lucky, the job itself in the end.