This post is motivated by It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate that was posted on HN today. You’ll want to read that post first.
Simon Willison is writing about the hiring process for software developers in San Francisco. The advice applies in many more cases.
If you want to get recruited to play college sports, the first thing you need to do is develop a web presence. Coaches generally aren’t going to know anything about you unless your dad plays in the NBA, or you play on the same team as the coach’s kid. You won’t get anywhere without video. Why would a coach spend time on one of thousands of potential recruits that contact them each year if the only thing they have is an email message? Coaches don’t have the time or incentive to do research on a player. The player needs to show them what they can do in a short window of time.
If you’re applying for a faculty position, a blog and a software page let the recruiting department better understand you. It’s not going to get you a job, but it will help you stand out a bit from the crowd.
When I talk to employers, they tell me they want to see what students know how to do, not just the classes they’ve taken or their GPA. Pointing them to a website with examples of the work you’ve done gives 100 times the insight you get from someone’s resume and transcript. If you’re hiring someone for an intro data analyst position, would you be more interested in an applicant that has two econometrics classes on their transcript, or an applicant that shows you how they collected the data, the SQL queries they ran, and the nice graphs they created? If the position has a big R component, would you be more interested in an applicant that has two econometrics classes on their transcript, or an applicant that a few thousand lines of R code they used to do the final project in their class?
It’s no silver bullet. You should be happy if an employer (or coach) wants to learn more about you. You’ve missed an opportunity if you have nothing to show them.