Buff up your Resume with a Supporting Blog

 While the resume remains your primary tool for attracting positive attention from your employers of choice and is the key document to display a comprehensive list of all of your past achievements and professional accomplishments, resumes are expected to be concise and as short as possible, leaving little room for elaboration. But, through the clever use of a blog dedicated to your professional experiences, you can fill in the gaps left by the brief nature of a resume and give employers a better understanding of your skill set, work habits, and other human capital while beefing up your application in the process. Better yet, since blogs are typically somewhat casual, the medium also allows for the humanization of your resume and application to make your candidacy less generic and thus more memorable.

Blogs are the perfect medium for application supplementation for several reasons. One of the main reasons is that, because blogs are editable, you can keep your work updated and refined to the finest detail. Potential employers can pore over your portfolio and follow your career as it happens. Other portions of your blog can be used to list top projects and other “best of” information.

It can also be a smart move to add some behind-the-scene pictures to give viewers visual access to what you’ve done and how you did it. And while this approach is not necessarily appropriate for all fields, for others—such as photography, architecture, and other fields focused on physical design—it is a perfect tool for adding even more content and a bit of flair to your blog.

Blogs are an excellent medium for telling great personal narratives and give you the flexibility and space to add everything that went into a project. With the freedom blogs imbue, you have permission to write about all of the little mishaps, small victories, and other personal details that adds a layer of engagement completely missing from the sterile resume.

Your blog also makes room for the explanation of how a project was made, the strategies and creativity that went into solving problems, and the effort and skills necessary for the completion of it. Explaining how you do your work can help potential employers better comprehend the extent of your expertise and how that can translate into benefits for their respective companies.

Finally, while this move may leave room for potential backfire, allowing blog comments can open up a vast resource for recommendations, compliments, and adulations. Recommendation letters are often formal and reserved, but blog comments can truly show the exuberance others feel toward you and the quality of your work.