Posting Resumes on Craigslist
Making Your Resume Stand Out on Craigslist
With over 6,000 resumes posted to just the Bay Area section of Craigslist, how do your resume stand out from the rest?
Style it! When you’re posting your resume on Craigslist you can use HTML and basic inline CSS to control the look of your resume or any other posting. Here is a post that I made to Craigslist about classes http://www.craigslist.com/cls/104856274.html. While I wouldn’t recommend that you add too many images to your resume, you can bold important items, add lists, and layout the contents the way you want with tables. Note that this technique will also work on backpage.com and any other classifieds site that allows HTML in their posts.
For this post I used a combination of HTML tables, images, and inline styles. Here are some tips on how to create your own stylish Craigslist ad:
- Copy your resume into your favorite HTML editor.
- Use tables to layout your data. Tables will allow you to align the text just the way you want it.
- Add images, unordered lists, and other formatting using HTML tags (do not use XHTML) to your resume.
- If you want to include images in your post, you must use an absolute link to the image, i.e., http://pclab.cccoe.k12.ca.us/ruralcomm_dwt/graphics/logo.gif and the image must be uploaded to your web host. You will have to upload your image to a host that supports hotlinking. I have a list of hosts here @ crabbytalk.com or if you have an AOL account you can use your hosting space there.
- Inline styles can be applied to table, td, and other tags to control background colors, list-style-types, fonts, borders and other elements.
- Test your page in IE and Firefox. When you’re done testing, copy the table that you created.
- Do not include the openingand closing HTML, head, title, and body tags. Paste the table code into your Craigslist post.
Here is a sample of code that I used to style the class advertisement. View the source code in your browser.
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October 18th, 2005 at 5:29 pm
One of your talented students – Mani Sheriar – showed me how she put up her home page as an ad on Craig’s List. Her design was styled with CSS and no tables for structure, as far as I recall. Maybe we should have Mani back to explain how … ?
October 18th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
Yes, I shared Mani’s site with class earlier and told them what a genius she is.
Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the external CSS trick isn’t working anymore. I tried the external sheet, as we did back when Mani was in class, but it wouldn’t link. I took a look at the source code for the “styled” ads posted on Craigslist and from what saw they are all using a combination of tables and inline CSS.
October 18th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
Yes. It looks like they strip everything in the <HEAD> as well as the <BODY> and </BODY> elements. That’s what most web email systems like Hotmail and Yahoo do. I did have some success putting the styles inside the <BODY> – I will have to play with this.
Who noticed the “peace sign” favicon? See my Doodles for 13 Feb 2005 for the story behind it.
Cordially, David
October 22nd, 2005 at 11:10 am
You should check out http://www.pagebites.com/. We allow users to upload their Word/PDF document and we convert it to HTML automatically.
We also offer each user 10 MB of space to post their resume and supporting documents (cover letter, portfolio, etc.) online. Posting is made easy through the use of a rich text editor. Using a familiar interface, users have the freedom to design and format their resumes without needing to know any HTML. To sign up for an account go here:
http://www.pagebites.com/user/login
For users who already have online resumes, they can submit
their URL to our index here: http://www.pagebites.com/addResume
We allow all the major search engines to crawl our site. That means your resume will show up in the indexes of Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. We are basically providing users with an easy way to create a home page.
Thanks,
Ralph
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:29 pm
Ralph,
I am wondering why your URLs had .spy extensions? What’s the purpose of these extensions? I removed the .spy extensions from the above URLs since I’m suspicious of them and concerned that they might be some kind of keylogger.
Robin
October 22nd, 2005 at 1:13 pm
I got this message back from Ralph on the .spy file extension:
Hi Robin,
We use spyce, http://spyce.sourceforge.net/index.html, as our web application framework. Unfortunately the extensions on spyce pages happen to be “.spy” which may cause suspicion. I promise you that the extension has nothing to do with keyloggers. The .spy extension is similar to the .php, .asp, .py, and .aspx extensions you see on other web sites. To ease your concerns about our site you can see press coverage for our company here:
http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=17938&repository=0001_article
http://www.emilychang.com/go/ehub/ehub-interviews-pagebites/
http://digability.blogspot.com/2005/10/i-recommend-pagebites.html
Please let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks,
Ralph