Career Talk

Do I Need a Web Page?

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By Mary Morris Heiberger and Julie Miller Vick

Question: I'm going on the job market again next fall. Someone suggested I should have a Web page. Do you think that's worth the trouble? Are there any guidelines to develop an effective Web site for people looking for academic jobs?

Mary: It's an excellent idea -- if you develop a professional site that represents you well. Even if you're not on the market, a Web site will allow you to show your work to scholars throughout the world. We've known people who've included on their sites annotated links to resources in their fields that are so good that other scholars use their sites as research tools. What a way to get your name out there.

A good Web site can not only present you as a strong scholar, it can also show that you integrate technology appropriately into teaching, something many institutions want to see in new faculty members. Finally, if you're actively on the market, a site gives you an easy way to give a search committee access to more information than was initially requested. If the committee requires a cover letter, CV, and three letters of recommendation, you don't want to send a fat package that also includes three reprints and two syllabuses. However, if your CV and cover letter indicate the URL where these items may be found, someone intrigued by your background can easily take a quick look.

Julie: On the other hand, a site that's poorly done, can, in only a few seconds, make potential colleagues decide they want nothing more to do with you. Before you develop a site, consider whether you have the materials you need to showcase and the time available to construct one. Personal Web pages seem to be more established in some fields than in others, so consider how common they are in your field.

Mary: Many schools and departments are starting to require that their faculty members, and even their graduate students, have at least a brief profile posted to the Web, in a standard format. Some individuals also choose to have a more detailed personal site. If you already have a profile on your institution's site, you might use that as the basis for developing an expanded site.

Julie: Say you decide to have a site, what do you do first? Start by looking at other people's Web sites. Check the Web sites of most any college or university; they usually offer a listing of departments and schools. Many departments provide links to the personal Web sites of faculty members and graduate students. Spend some time studying the sites of scholars in your field: How are their sites organized? What kinds of information are provided? What colors, graphics, photographs, and other page elements are used? Keep track of what you like and what looks effective and impressive. You'll soon develop a sense of what works on a Web site, and what doesn't.

Mary: As you compare the Web sites of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members, you will tend to see a progression from goofy humor and glitzy, but often quite pointless, graphics at the undergraduate level to a cleaner, more information-oriented, professional look at the faculty level. You either are, or want to be, a faculty member, so it is their sites that you want to emulate.

Julie: Here are three examples of professional-looking sites that we like, from a newly graduated Ph.D., a visiting professor, and a full professor.

As you can see from these examples, you have considerable leeway in the design of your site.

Mary: One effective design is to offer a main menu that includes your name, contact information, links to your departmental and institutional Web sites, and a brief description of your research interests. Then, in another spot on the page, offer a list of links described in one or two words. You can link to your CV, and from it, offer links to publications listed on it, or provide a separate link to publications. If you are active in your scholarly organization you can link to it. You can have an entry for teaching and link to syllabuses and course materials.

Julie: Make sure that the main menu includes actual information, rather than a glitzy, slow-loading graphic with nothing but your name and a place to enter the site. Potential employers are often in a hurry, and the easier you make it for them to get to the information they want, the more pleased they'll be with your site.

Mary: What if you don't know any Web language and are clueless about how to get started? First, find a home for your site. Your current institution probably has space where you could post a Web page. Check with your friendly systems administrator. If your institution doesn't have space, or you're not currently employed, look to the commercial servers that offer e-mail accounts. Most will offer reasonably-priced space for a Web site. Once you know where you're going to put your site, decide what you want to put on it, type up menus, and find the links you're going to need. Then hire a high-school student or undergraduate to sit by your side and walk you through the process of what you need to do to make postable documents. You should be able to find someone happy to do this at a very reasonable rate of pay. It should take only a few hours for you to come up with a good, simple, serviceable site. We recommend that you pay someone to show you what to do, and watch carefully so that in the future you can modify and develop the site further yourself. Of course you can also read books or take courses on Web design, but we know people who've gotten a good site up in a week using the "hire an undergrad" method, at a price much lower than any commercial Web-design course would charge.

Julie: Once you have a Web site up, it's important to keep it current. That can mean reorganizing it if sections grow and need to be subdivided. It's also frustrating to find dead links, so be sure to check periodically to see that the sites you send readers to are still viable. If you use audio or video Webware, or other non-basic software, make sure it will work on most browsers. Since those programs can load slowly, be sure they are not on the first page of your Web site but can be selected. If the software needed is available free, you can also provide a link by which users can download it.

Mary: Should you include a photo on your site? We find it ironic that after a successful effort to remove photos from résumés and CV's because of the numerous opportunities they offer for illegal employment discrimination, most people seem to choose to put photos of themselves on their Web sites. As common as these photos are, please don't feel you must include one to have an acceptable site. If you do include a photo, choose one taken in a professional, rather than personal, setting. It may be old-fashioned, but we also think it's best if job applicants choose photos in which they are mainly clothed! You can find plenty of counterexamples out there in cyberspace.

Julie: Do you have a personal site you'd like critiqued? We'll do a column critiquing sites in the fall. If you'd like yours featured, please send us the URL. Remember that this column is primarily for people with Ph.D.'s or other terminal degrees that qualify them for faculty positions in higher education, so please send us your URL only if that is your background.