With that said, there are a number of great places to get your resume information out there so that if recruiters are looking. They can find out more about you without you having to attach a resume in an email. If you’re thinking of increasing the number of places that recruiters can find professional information about you, here are a few places to consider.

Visual CV

Visual CV is a site that is gaining a lot of recognition because it allows users to place not just their resume, but also their portfolio of professional marketing documents in one location. Your portfolio can include various samples of your work, graphs, and more–pretty much anything you can think of.

It’s easy to sign up for a new account, and it only takes a moment. Afterward, you get to piece your portfolio together into a comprehensive package. Through the site, you are able to share your new VisualCV with recruiters via email, as well as through your social networking sites. It’s also a secure website, as you have total control over who can see your profile.

Google Profile

Another way to get your professional information out to the public is through a Google profile. While the site is not exactly meant to have you create a professional-only profile, it works great for this purpose.

The way Google Profile works is that it allows you to determine just how you are viewed in the Google search engine. Your profile controls what recruiters see when they search for more info, and most recruiters use Google as a first resort when looking for info on a particular candidate.

Once you create a Google Profile account, you set up your profile. Use the “about me” section to list information about yourself, your title (or titles), your location, and even resume info. This makes it much easier for recruiters to find out what they need to know about you.

LinkedIn

Most professionals are already aware of LinkedIn and the benefits that it offers; however, it wouldn’t be right to not mention it as a great place to place your professional information. Here, you can build a resume and make valuable connections with professionals and even obtain references. It is the powerhouse of sites to help you build your online professional identity and is one you shouldn’t overlook.

Obtaining an executive position nowadays is often heavily reliant on your online activity. In other words, the more you do to increase you professional online presence, the more you increase your chances of being found by recruiters. If you have yet to get started, now’s the time to see what these three sites, as well as others out there, have to offer.

People have definitely embraced Twitter as a major form of communication; however, because it only allows you to type 140 characters at a time, the communication can be a bit limited. People find ways to cope with the limitations, though, even when promoting their resumes. If this is something you’ve considered, here are a few tips to get your resume noticed by others right on Twitter.

Linking to Your Resume

Of course, the first challenge to presenting a resume in Twitter is keeping it short. Intelligent character allotment is absolutely critical to this end, and a lot of applications have become available to help you handle this. You know right away that you can’t post your entire resume on your profile, which means you’ll need to post yours somewhere else online (a great place to do so is via TweetMyJobs.com). After you’ve done this, you need to somehow link to your resume from your Twitter account. If you’re adding a message along with the link, though, the size of the link may stop you from saying what you want.

One application that provides a solution for this problem are link-shortening applications, such as Bit.ly or TinyURL. These applications allow you to link your online resume to your Twitter message by creating a new link that uses significantly fewer characters. This way, you don’t have to use up your character count to post your resume, making the “tweeting” experience that much easier.

Making the Message Short and Clear

After you’ve created your resume URL, you want to type your message for your Twitter followers – or anyone else who happens to see. Remembering that you need to keep your characters at 140 or below, many job seekers use what are called hashtags along with Internet/texting shorthand to make themselves findable by recruiters.

Hashtags on Twitter basically provide an opportunity for others to find you through site searches. By including the pound sign (#) before your word, you’ve created a hashtag. Some that you might consider include #jobseeker or #lookingforwork (a good source for hashtags is HashTags.org).

Also, it’s good to include RT at the beginning of your message because it tells others they’re allowed to retweet your message.

An example of a job seeker’s Twitter resume might look like this (the link below is not real):

RT #Jane Doe seeks a PR DIR JOB http://bit.ly/resisgreat @TweetMyResume #resume #prjobs

The message is basically telling you that Jane Doe is looking for a Public Relations Director position and that you can find her resume with TweetMyResume.com at her link. The hashtags allow for those who search for #resume or #prjobs to find her message. At the start of the message, she’s allowed others to repeat (sometimes called re-tweeting) the message in part or in its entirety. That is absolutely a ton of info for 87 characters.

By learning how to create a Twitter resume, you have the opportunity to gain access to more recruiters than ever before. Try it out. You just might get the job you’ve been looking for.

So now that you know that you will very likely continue to be required to submit your resume online, it’s a good idea to learn how to do so the right way. Here are a few tips to consider:

Attachments

There is a little bit of a debate going on about whether you should add the resume as an attachment when submitting it or placing it in the body of the e-mail. Some believe that adding the resume as an attachment can often take up too much space in an inbox while bringing with it the possibility of security threats like viruses. It’s also worthwhile to consider that a company’s email security might block the message, or the hiring manager might avoid the message altogether if he doesn’t want to take the time to open it.

On the other hand, depending on what e-mail program you’re using (and the employer is using) cutting and pasting your resume into the body of an email could look ill-formatted. Spacing could be weird – and worse, the fonts you worked so hard to choose could change. It is for this reason that many pros suggest doing both. This way, you can please those who don’t like looking at attachments, as well as those who can’t stand strange formatting. Another good idea is to use a PDF format when sending the resume, as it always looks clear and clean and it doesn’t allow anyone to change your resume (other than you).

If You Are Cutting and Pasting …

If you’ve decided that you want go ahead and paste your resume into the body of an e-mail, it’s good to consider a few rules of cutting and pasting. First, remember to add a brief introduction of yourself, something that would do the job of a cover letter. Secondly, you should watch your introduction length quite carefully; keep it to 3 lines or less per paragraph and no more than two paragraphs.

Third, use text for the e-mail instead of HTML. As mentioned previously, formatting can cause a lot of problems when copying and pasting into e-mails – especially from word processing programs like Microsoft Word. If you don’t know how to change an email to plain text in your email client, an easy alternative is to use a text only program (Notepad is free and comes pre-installed on Windows), then copying and pasting your resume into email. Unfortunately, you won’t have the ability to use bold or italics in your resume with plain text, so you’ll have to use a bit of creativity to set different sections apart from one another–try using special characters around words, or using your capitalization (“RESUME INTRODUCTION”, etc).

Avoiding Spam Folders

As mentioned previously, your resume can sometimes get lost in a company’s security efforts. So to help you avoid spam folders and other issues, you could consider keeping punctuation (especially exclamation marks) out of the subject line and avoiding any other words that might be misinterpreted as something inappropriate by spam folders.

The last thing that you want is to create the perfect resume only to not have it reach its destination appropriately. Taking the time to submit a resume via email correctly is certainly worth the extra time, especially when you’ve spent so much time to create that perfect document in the first place.

Depending on who you ask, you may receive different pointers on how and where to post your resume. In other words, there’s no sure-fire way to be discovered by recruiters online. It’s important not to disregard any tips, however, when you set out to get your resume out there. Before hitting the web to post your resume, think things through and consider some of these ideas.

Saturating Your Resume

There’s nothing like being seen by as many recruiters and hiring managers as possible. You can accomplish this feat by finding as many job hunting websites as you can, and posting your resume on all of them. There are argument both for and against taking this action. Let’s look at a few reasons to consider taking this route.

First, there are a number of job sites that are tailored to your field, allowing you to saturate your resume while remaining focused on a specialty. Also, you don’t always know what position you’re looking for, just as recruiters don’t always know what applicants they’re looking for. Sometimes, job positions are created specifically for promising applicants who seem valuable. This could be you, which is why it’s not a bad thing to consider saturating your resume for many eyes to see.

Posting in Moderation

On the other hand, some experts make a case for using moderation when posting your resume on the Internet. When you adopt a scattershot approach, you miss out on the ability to customize your resume for different fields and industries, as a resume posted to dozens of job websites have to be general. If a resume’s very general, it doesn’t tend to be as effective in getting a job in a specialized field.

So while saturation is a good way to have your resume seen by a large number of recruiters, without it being specific to any one field, many recruiters will overlook it anyway. This makes a good case for using the resume in moderation instead, focusing on one job board, or a handful of companies, where you tailor your resume to appeal to only a few employers.

Private Postings

As you know, when you post on job boards, your information can often be thrown out there too far into Cyberspace, leaving it vulnerable to the simplest of engine searches. You might avoid public postings altogether, especially if you’re a private person or you can’t afford to publicize your job search. Instead, you can privately submit your resume via email or submission forms, or simply network privately with people you know. This way, you won’t risk the wrong people finding out what you’re up to.

Which route you choose to take for online resume distribution is up to you. You might try moderation first and if that doesn’t work, consider saturation. Remember, you only need to impress one hiring manager to get the position you want. You’ll get the job offers and interviews eventually if you simply write a great resume and get it out there where it can be seen.

You Don’t Have to List Your Legal Name

Most people think that they have to list their legal name when creating their resume and cover letter, or sending in a job application. This is not true. You can actually use the name that you would like to be known by professionally. For examples, say you’ve got a name that’s difficult to pronounce; you might shorten it, or spell it more phonetically to make pronunciation easy.

For example, if your name is Theophilus, there’s nothing wrong with using the nickname Theo for your first name. And if you have a unique last name that may be challenging for some to pronounce, like Nguyen, you might add the phonetic spelling (nuhWEN) so that the person contacting you won’t be more concerned with how to pronounce your name than offering you an interview.

Be Consistent with Your Name Choice

Whatever name you decide to go with, it’s important that you use it consistently throughout your career (unless you get married or choose the legally change your entire name). As your name becomes a more and more important part of your profession, you’ll want it to develop and become more and more important and linked to your reputation.

This means if you choose to go with a nickname that sounds nothing like your legal name (i.e. if you go by your middle name), it’s good to stick with it so people will always know they’re talking about the same person. The same rules apply for email address, voicemail messages, file names and social media profiles.

Feel Comfortable with Your Decision

The name that you choose to use during your job search and beyond should be one that you feel comfortable with. If you use a name you don’t answer to, you might inadvertently create an embarrassing situation when your employer or someone else calls you by it and you forget to answer. If your name is Elizabeth but since birth you’ve been called Lizzy, by all means you can use it. Use a form like Elizabeth (Lizzy) Brown to include both names. The only thing that experts suggest is that you don’t completely change your name for your job search. You need to be traceable for background checks, so if you’ve suddenly changed your entire name (legally), it’s good to note your previous name as you make the transition.

It’s good to know that you can use more than your legal name while in pursuit of job, as well as in your career. As long as you’re consistent with the name you list, you won’t have any issues.