Chapter 7. Your website is your parachute

Part 9 of 15 in How to Find a Job: Stop queuing on portals. Show an employer the value you can add.← Part 8Part 10 →

This chapter explains how creating a personal website can differentiate you in the job market. It guides job seekers on presenting their skills and achievements effectively online.

This is the chapter the rest of the book is built to serve. A resume is a document you hand over, which is then trapped inside a portal or an inbox, looking like every other document. A website is a place you own. It stays when the portal account goes quiet. It can be forwarded by someone who has not met you, and it still speaks in your voice. It lets an employer see the work, not only your description of the work. In a market where thousands of graduates share a degree and a template, the page is how you stop being a row in a spreadsheet.

Bolles told readers to carry a calling card of skills into informational interviews. The Indian version of that card is a public link. You put it in the email, in the LinkedIn featured section, in the message a cousin forwards, and on the top of the PDF resume for the people who still want a PDF. The link is the parachute. It is what you have when the advertised job is a trap and the hidden job has no form to fill.

What the page is for

It is not a diary. It is not a dump of certificates. It is not a copy of your resume in a nicer font. It is a short argument: here is the kind of problem I take on, here is proof, here is how to reach me. A busy partner in a CA firm, a plant head, or a founder should understand the argument in under two minutes, on a phone, in a car between meetings.

The smallest version that works

One page is enough to begin. Five blocks, in this order.

• A name, a city, and one sentence. “Neha Sharma, Indore. I find the GST and stock mismatches that become notices, for shops and small firms.”
• Who you help, and the problem in their words. Not “seeking opportunities in the finance domain.”
• Three proofs. Each proof has a context, what you did, and what changed. A number if you have one. A picture, a redacted sheet, or a before-and-after paragraph.
• How you work. Tools, languages, the cities you can be in, the kind of team. Two or three lines.
• A way to write to you. An email address you check. A phone number if you are willing to receive calls. A line that says you reply within two days.

That is the whole site. You can build it in an evening on Carrd, Google Sites, Notion made public, GitHub Pages, or a one-page WordPress. A own domain, yourname.in, is worth the small annual fee once the page is true, because it looks like you intend to keep it. Do not wait for the domain to publish the first version. A true page on a free host beats a beautiful domain with no proof.

What to leave off

• A stock photograph of a handshake, a skyline, or a graduate throwing a cap.
• A paragraph about your childhood dream, unless the dream is the work and you can show it.
• Every certificate you have ever received. Three relevant ones, linked, are plenty.
• Percentage scores as the headline. Put the degree at the bottom. The work is the headline.
• “Passionate, dynamic, go-getter.” These words now signal that the page was written by a template, or by a tired friend.
• Private data. No Aadhaar, no full address, no family financial details, no client names you were not allowed to use. Redact.

Neha’s page, and what it did

Neha’s first site was one screen. The sentence was the GST sentence. The first proof was the hardware shop: a redacted mismatch list, the three error types she found, and a line from her uncle that she could show the working. The second proof was a sample reconciliation she built from a public GST return format, clearly marked as a practice file, so she was not pretending it was a client. The third was a one-page checklist a counter clerk could follow on a Saturday. She sent the link to eleven CA firms in Indore and Pune, each note naming something on the firm’s own site, a sector they served or a notice they had written about. Two firms replied. One partner in Pune asked her to walk him through the checklist on a call. He hired her as an accounts associate. The role had not been on Naukri that week.

The website did not “create” the job. The firm already had more client work than the articles could finish. The website made Neha the easiest person to try. That is the whole offer of a digital brand. You are easy to understand, easy to forward, and hard to confuse with the pile.

Design, only as far as trust

Use one typeface, generous margins, and black text on a light background. Make the phone version first, because that is how your link will be opened. Load fast. Title the browser tab with your name and the work, so the tab is intelligible in a row of tabs. Write the way you would speak to a respected senior, not the way a brochure speaks. If you cannot build the page, trade the build with a batchmate who can, and do a piece of their proof in return. Do not pay a large fee to a “personal branding agency” before you have the three proofs. Branding without proof is a poster.

Keep it alive

A dead page is a mild warning. Once a month, add a note: a book you used on a task, a small improvement to a proof, a question you are working on. Date it. Employers trust a page that shows a person still in motion. They distrust a page that was clearly assembled the night before the application and never touched again.