Jobseeker Hack: Use Your Website To See If Companies Read Your Resume
It can be extremely hard to be a jobseeker, and the actual process of job searching is awful.
Applying to jobs is awful — it really is. To do it correctly takes a lot of time. That doesn’t even include the time spent looking for a job you are interested in. But then you find one, and it’s time to apply. You upload your resume, maybe the application will auto-fill some fields for you. Or worse, you have to enter all the info from your resume again in an online application. It is arduous and repetitive.
There are countless recommendations about how to write a resume, how to write a cover letter, how to curate your resume to the job — that is not what this post is about.
This is about one specific thing, how to use your resume to find out if your resume is being read.
There’s one catch, you’re going to need a website.
The Idea
You can give some standout visual tweaks to it. There’s a lot of creative flexibility to presentation.
- Your contact information
- Your work history
- Your educational history
They can be supplemented with options like:
- Professional and personal accomplishments
- Skills
- Software proficiency
You can give some standout visual tweaks to it. There’s a lot of creative flexibility to presentation.
But, how do you know your resume ever gets read? Some job application sites and some hiring managers may notify you if your application has been read, but so much of the time after applying is waiting and wondering.
A few years ago, I tried a something as a test — and it worked.
I added a custom landing page to my website for a job I applied for and I put that URL on my resume right under my contact info.
It looked something like this:
The idea was simple enough, my resume header is one of the first things seen by a hiring manager and I’m already using my website as a supplemental piece to demonstrate my experience and skill.
So, I added the name of the company after the forward slash, just as it would look after creating a page on my website. I also used this exact same header on my cover letter.
Then, on my website, I created that page. I put my cover letter first and foremost at the top of the page, then I created a section to highlight which projects, skills and relevant work related to that job. [Click here to see the page below as a simplified example.]
Why bother with this? Other than giving a hiring manager an interactive and more detailed digital version of my resume, it also served its ultimate purpose. Tracking that URL.
Since I didn’t share that particular webpage on social, in my website menu or anywhere else on my website, it’s essentially a hidden page made only for those with the URL. In this case, those viewing my resume.
By viewing the web stats and analytics on my website, if I saw that URL show up, then it told me that someone actually read my resume and was interested enough to seek it out.
The Results
I used this technique a handful of times while looking for jobs a few years ago. I applied to four different jobs and created four different landing pages.
I had hits on all four landing pages.
On the days after I applied, I logged into my website to view traffic stats. When I saw those URLs show up, I knew my resume had been viewed. Not only that, I saw additional clicks and was able to see the extent to which the hiring manger pursued my website.
What this told me was that the process worked. I was able to determine that my resume had made it through the door and was viewed.
It can’t guarantee you a job, but it can provide you a bit of affirmation that your efforts are accomplishing something.
If you don’t get the job, you can also use this information to follow-up with the hiring manager to ask if there’s something they saw that they liked, or something they wish they knew more about. You’ll have data to support your approach and it can give you information about how to evolve the process to better fit your goals.
If you’re stuck in a job searching rut, or just want to give this idea a try, good luck, I wish you well and if you want to get direct help, you know where to find me.
