Seeing this as a potential solution, I was prompted to write about my experience with having a zero-inbox and how it keeps me focused on what’s important and worthwhile.

Having a zero-inbox eliminated that nagging feeling something important could be sitting buried in my inbox.  The key idea is to process your inbox completely before taking on any activity requiring more than 3-minutes to complete.

If it will take less than 3-minutes, like a quick response, do it and archive it.  The remaining items are placed in one of four folders.  Heres how I have mine setup up:

• .Action – Action is needed which is expected to take more than 3-minutes to complete.
• .Read/Listen/View – Subscriptions, blog posts, etc. Many are deleted right way.
• .Someday/Maybe – Someday I may do this but no immediate plans.
• .Waiting – Items I’ve delegated or expecting a response.  This become a ticker list to follow-up with after a few days.

I’ve presceed the folders with a period (.) so they sort to the top.  All other items are archived (the Y key in gmail).  If I need to refer to them again I can easily search for them.

After doing this for a few days, it also became apparent which lists I needed to unsubscribe.  They either sent too much email or I just wasn’t that interested enough to ever read what they were sending.  Some of these I just subscribe to via Google Reader.

One last bit of advice, don’t cherry pick or scan your inbox, process it from the top to bottom in order.  If you start looking for the “really important stuff” it’s too tempting to get sucked into it, missing the other more important stuff.

The page’s URL and Title are both important parts of making your resume “search friendly” to leading search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When deciding on a URL and title consider what search terms you want people to find you with. The more targeted and specific the better.

Online Resume/CV

Remember most people won’t know your name, they’ll be looking for something about you like “ruby on rails developer” or “resume writing consultant”.   These are the terms you’ll use in your page’s URL and page title not “Jim Littlefield’s Resume”.   Only people looking for my name will find me that way!

In my case I am currently in the top results for “software sales resume” on Google, Yahoo and Bing. After doing some keyword research, I’ve decided a better set of keywords would be “software sales executive atlanta”. The next time my site is indexed we’ll see what kind of progress I’ve made.

Being found in search engines is just part of the puzzle job seekers should also be using Linkedin (http://linkedin.com) to promote their visibility on the web. LinkedIn lets you add weblinks, one of them should be to your resume. Be sure to change the default “My Website” to one of your keywords (e.g. “Software Sales Executive Resume“) You can see an example in my LinkedIn profile.

One last point, if you want to search for other people’s resumes you’ll likely need to use some advance search techniques. Here’s a search tip; search for “resume software sales executive -jobs -sample”. The “-job” and “-sample” will remove most of the resume sample sites and job listings sites from the search results.

I’m giving some thought to writing a paper/article about using the web be found for jobs.   Right now the web is very lopsided on the side of job requisition posting vs. job candidate posting. I’d like see more people post their resumes online.  What do you think about that idea?

Let me know by leaving a comment or a voice message!