Publishing resume examples on your website, LinkedIn profile, and through other online channels is a great way for giving potential buyers a sampling of what you’ve done/can do as a writer.
What Resume Examples Can Do Positively
It’s important to show samples of your work because many professionals have never worked with a resume writer.
They too often don’t know what to expect and giving them a few resumes to peruse helps with that.
Plus, resume examples can showcase how you’ve handled difficult career challenges (e.g., employment gaps), in-depth careers (e.g., CEOs, business owners), and various career industries (e.g., engineering, medical, and research).
If you’re a resume writer who works with job seekers at various stages of their careers, consider providing a mix of resumes that cover those career challenges.
The Negatives of Publishing Resume Examples
There are downsides to publicly publishing your resumes too.
The most notable being works published online are vulnerable to plagiarists.
There are some steps you can take to deter plagiarists.
First, include a text box in your resumes that includes a copyright tagline, which would look something like this:
© Copyrighted 2021. Content is owned by X and cannot be used, gifted, transferred, and/or published without written permission of its Owner.
Second, save your resumes as PNG or GIF files. This helps deter lazy plagiarists who want content they can quickly copy and paste, yet does little for those who are willing to view and manually transfer your content into their resume projects.
Third, publish resume examples only from clients that are in unique career fields. This way, you provide works for prospects to view, yet eliminate some temptation for folks to “borrow” your content. The example won’t appeal to most career fields thereby eliminating the likelihood that it will get lifted and used.
The above strategies won’t 100% protect you from content thieves, though should help some.
Your Works Only
You should display YOUR written resumes, not someone else’s.
This is important if you’re the only resume writer for your business.
You’re right if you’re thinking this becomes tricky for those who manage resume writing firms and have several resume writers on staff.
In this scenario, writing firms may showcase resume examples from one or more of their resume writers that fairly represent the writing quality and visual design that clients will receive after purchase, regardless of the resume writer assigned to their project.
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Have Permission Before You Publish
It’s important that you have each client’s permission before publishing their resumes online. Ideally, permission is best when it’s in writing. However, you could make giving “use permission” part of your terms and conditions. For example, here’s an example quote we recommend you include in your service terms:
Publication of written works. The Client authorizes the Company to publish and use the written works, in full or in part. The Company is given permission by the Client to use the finished works for marketing, publication, and award consideration, once the Client’s personal information has been removed.
Fictionalize to Near Unrecognizable
In addition to having permission, you’ll want to fictionalize each resume. YOU MUST NOT SKIP THIS STEP.
You must EXCLUDE client identifying details, such as name, contact info, employer names, and so on, to ensure COMPLETE client privacy. You need only put yourself in the client’s shoes to fully understand why this is important.
Sure, fictionalize your resumes at the “top level.”
However, take your fictionalization efforts several steps further by making deeper changes to a high percentage of the content. For example, change employment dates, names of colleges, and achievement numbers/percentages.
Add new content and delete other content when feasible.
The goal is for you to customize each resume so it’s near unidentifiable, even to the original client!
Jane Job Seeker
We often think of resume examples coming from ACTUAL client projects, though we can just as easily create resume examples from “make-believe” clients too. Our writing examples can represent paid or unpaid work.
This strategy works well for new resume writers who have yet to build a portfolio of resume projects.
Online Examples Can Help & Hurt Your Sales, Here’s How
You might have considered only how resume examples can help sales, yet not given much thought as to how it could hurt them too.
Prospects are hesitant to buy at times. By providing resume examples on your website, for example, you’re giving potential buyers a stopping point before they do what you want them to; e.g., complete an online form or call you.
Plus, people are fickle. You might have individuals view your examples and click away from your site, never to be seen again because they didn’t like the font or header colors you used in your example works.
Both these scenarios can you conversions and sales.
Does this mean you shouldn’t showcase your resume examples online?
Absolutely not.
Though, you might be careful at how accessible you make your examples, showing them to folks who are further in the buying cycle; e.g., they requested a quote.
Tools to Create & Publish Resumes / On Your Website or Elsewhere
For creating resume examples, Canva is a great tool for writing content, adding design, and saving resumes into various image file formats.
Google Docs also enables users to save documents as PDFs, which can then be displayed on a website using a plug-in. For those using WordPress, PDF Embedder is a great plug-in that allows users to embed resumes into websites. There are also free online resources, such as ConvertDocx and CloudConvert that convert docx files to JPG, which can then be displayed easily using native functionality with many modern website themes.
Your website is the best place for showcasing your writing.
If your website isn’t an option. there are SaaS solutions too. For example, here are just some of the many available to you:
- Dribbble
- Strikingly
