How Can I Use My School Work to Launch and Support My

Career After Graduation?

By Daniel J. LeBlanc MCS, Webmaster (originally syndicated online at:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-can-i-use-my-school-work-launch-support-career-after-leblanc )

Whether you have a formal degree from an accredited college or learned your job
skills on your own, you had some training and practice at some point. If you are a
student completing a degree path then you may have no actual work experience
at all. Often the class or schoolwork we do when preparing for a career is the only
actual experience we have in our chosen field of study when we begin to test the
job market with our new resume/CV.
This article is not age-specific. I launched a new career myself when I was in my
40’s so age has nothing to do with it when you are trying to transition into a new
career where you have zero actual work experience to include. Regardless of your
age, an online portfolio will go a long way when hunting for that first job. When I
use the word ‘student’ in this article I am speaking of anybody learning a new
career or improving their job skills in an existing career, regardless of age.
What should an online portfolio of achievements look like?
The look and feel of your online portfolio is just as important as the content itself.
If you are a software or web developer then your portfolio should be more than
documents; potential employers will be impressed with a portfolio that allows a
user to run your software or website applications in addition to viewing the code.
Most recruiters or hiring managers are not highly skilled in reading computer
code. In these instances it is better that they could see a live demonstration of the
code.
Students of accounting or business majors should consider examples of papers
about theory or any truly ground-breaking ideas you might come up with.
Anything that gets formally published should get called out and appear at the top
of your online portfolio. Likewise, any work that receives a particularly high grade
or written accolades from the grading professor could go a long way to impress
recruiters and hiring managers.
What if I’m learning on my own away from a school?
This is the most common example in modern times and probably I will move this
section of my article to the top in a few years since that is the most popular way
people are learning today. And why not? Why pay for formal education when
employers are considering direct experience a greater asset than a formal
education? I completely understand.
People who learn on their own generally learn better than those following a
formal educational institution. But you have to be much more resourceful in this
instance. There are many benefits to a formal education such as career and
course guidance as well as work placement that you don’t get when you study on
your own.
In addition to studying your chosen profession you have to keep close watch on
the job market for your vocation. The demand for a particular job skill changes
daily. Disruptive technologies eliminate the need for human laborers and that
next great career you have been preparing for might be eliminated or at least less
in demand.
In the example of the subject of this article, you will have to find your own online
resources for publishing your content. And be sure to choose a content hosting
platform that has a reputation for longevity, security and good search engine
optimization.
Where can I publish an online portfolio of my work for free or for low cost?
If you are truly Internet-savvy then you know that the word “free” means
anything but no-cost. There are many content publishers that will provide a
limited free account and for some, this may suffice.
The best resource of course, is if you can afford to build your own website. This
does not need to be as daunting as it seems. There are many easy website
building tools that allow students to quickly design, build and launch a website
without any prior knowledge of web development (see list of resources below).
Here on LinkedIn you can actually create and publish articles for free but there
are limitations. URL’s get disguised and image file names are also renamed. Your
content is first ranked by LinkedIn before it gets ranked by the search engines so
even if you have great technical SEO when building your article on LinkedIn it will
be edited for publication. A better way to use this feature on LinkedIn is to first
publish your content elsewhere and then syndicate it here on LinkedIn.
Many of the other social networking platforms
include tools for publishing longtail content but
each has its limitations when compared to
running your own website.
(Search engines penalize publishers for
duplicate content. To get around this, be sure
to include the original syndicated location
where you published your work initially. This
tells the search engine crawlers that this is
duplicate content so they don’t penalize.)
Which study or schoolwork should I include in
my online portfolio?
This really depends on your particular vocation
and what might be important to a potential
hiring manager. If you are going into business
administration then that controversial college paper you wrote might not be good
to include in your online portfolio, even if your classmates or teacher thought it
was good. If in doubt, don’t include it or at least ask a recruiter or other hiring
manager what they think.
Asking the people who interview you for feedback in regards to your interview
skills, resume or online portfolio is a good idea. You won’t always get it, even
though most will promise it, but asking shows that you are learning and growing
from the interview process.
Needless to say, remove anything that is in doubt and elevate the placement of
any work in your portfolio that might be particularly pertinent to a job you are
applying for. Most website building tools and social media publishing sites offer
metrics that tell you which of your articles/papers are more popular. These are
the ones you want to promote the most on social media and on your website.
When applying for positions online there are resources for adding your online
links. Be sure to promote any of your schoolwork here that is particularly
pertinent to the job. The benefit to building papers/articles on your own website
is that each article has a unique URL making it easier to direct a reader to the
exact content you intend.

Easy Resources for Building a Website Without Web Development Skills

Most of these sites offer a ‘free’ option but they are limited to the number and
types of web pages you can create. Things get much more expensive if you are
going to try to sell something so best to have a completely separate online
portfolio for your resume and study work, away from any e-commerce you might
be doing.
While WordPress is open source, you will pay to host a website in WordPress and
it the costs will climb depending on how many pages, the length of pages and the
type of content you want to publish.
www.wix.com
www.duda.com
www.hostgator.com
www.godaddy.com
www.squarespace.com
www.weebly.com
www.wordpress.com
www.strikingly.com
www.simvoly.com
www.ucoz.com

Where can I publish an online resume or CV for free or low cost?

The number one resource for this is going to be LinkedIn, for sure. You don’t have
to be a Premium member either. Every working person should have a LinkedIn
profile and they should be continuously keeping it updated with new skills,
certifications, achievements, awards, promotions, volunteer work and anything
else that you might want a recruiter or hiring manager to know about.
Even if you build an amazing web presence that brings thousands of visitors
weekly you should still maintain a profile on social media and especially LinkedIn.
These are the single best places to promote your career and should be kept up-to-
date before your own website.
If you publish new work or other publications on your website then you should
use social media to promote it.
Other resources for online resumes or CV
Some of these are simply resume creators which may be of use. Others allow you
to create, link and promote your online profile on social media and to provide
links to recruiters. I make no claim as to the cost or longevity of these online
providers but wanted to provide some resources for those studying on their own.
I tried to list them in the order in which I feel they might be most useful.
CareerBuilder.com

Monster.com

ResumeRabbit.com

MyPerfectResume.com
VisualCV.com
FaceBook.com (Facebook rules allow one user account per person)
Twitter.com
makeuseof.com/tag/emurse-online-resume-maker/