Reasons to have a website

Reason #1: a better CV

A basic function of a website is to hold your CV/Resume [1]. If you have a standard CV in PDF format, you can just upload it: because of this, at worst your website CV will be just as good as a regular static document. However, because a website is not a static document, you can easily provide:

• Extra detail upon request: in a static CV one typically tries to provide as much detail as possible about each job/degree while trying to keep the length of the CV to at most 2 pages. In contrast, on a website hyperlinks and expandable text boxes allow a page to have a concise appearance but contain a lot of extra text if the reader clicks. This allows a website CV to avoid the length/detail trade-off of a regular CV.

• Multiple custom CVs: different people may want different bits of information from your CV. This is in contrast to a typical job application where you can only provide a single document for everybody at the company (from HR to IT), who may have different preferences. On a website, people can choose what they see.

• Portfolio: whether it is code, art, music, or research papers, a website is an excellent place to display a portfolio of your work. CVs tend to be all text, which is not not a great format for effectively communicating the breadth of one's past work.

• Career Goals and Motivations: one typically does not write about these on a standard CV (presumably due to length). It is easy to put this on a website (many people seem to have this on their home page). This probably provides a lot of useful information to potential employers.

• Showcase Personality/Interests: whether via travel photos or hobby pages, there is a lot of leeway to show what you are like as a person in a way that a CV typically never does.

Of course, a website may never function as a full CV replacement (especially since most applications require you to upload a PDF). However, a PDF CV can always link to a website. If you expect people to come across your website primarily via job applications, your website can serve as a powerful complement to a standard PDF CV.

Reason #2: control your online brand

At some point in your life, people will most Google you. This could be because you submitted a job application and HR is doing a cursory background check, or because somebody liked a paper/program/song that you wrote. In any case, if you have a website with your name in the title or metadata, your website should hopefully appear in the top few search results, leading visitors to a page whose message and contents you can control. This gives you the power to set your own brand. For example, most professional websites I see have a basic bio on their home page which describes their job and interests in a positive way.

In contrast, if you don't have a website then searching your name will likely reveal some mixture of social media accounts and mentions of your name on random webpages. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly does not present a clear message. For example, when Googling my own name I found references to a scholarship I had won, some academic papers on arXiv, and my profile page from my PhD group at Cambridge. You can probably infer a lot from this, but it does not tell you much about what I am doing now.

However, mixed into these results might be references to other people with the same name (if such people exist). To me, this is almost always bad. At best this will just be confusing. At worst you could lose opportunities: for example, if somebody with the same name has a criminal history then people might infer that you have a criminal history (which many companies discriminate against). As a concrete example, when Googling my name I also found results for an American guitarist, a manager on LinkedIn, and a random high school student who won an award. Without my website it would hopefully be clear that none of these people are me, but the website definitely removes ambiguity.

Reason #3: hosting a blog

A blog is a way to showcase your knowledge about (and interest in) niche topics, and demonstrates your communication skills. Unless a blog is exceptionally poorly written or is filled with hate speech, having a blog should not lower anybody's opinion of you [2]. However, a well-written article on the right topic can be a strong positive signal of deep expertise on a topic and the motivation to share that topic with others.

Reason #4: demonstration of ability

Having a website demonstrates, at a minimum, the ability to create a website and manage its hosting. The more complex the hosting, the more compelling the demonstration is.

For example, my website which (at present) uses Nikola and GitHub pages shows that I must be able to use the command line, git, and have knowledge of python. Because of my educational background, I doubt many people would be surprised that I have these skills, but if you are more junior or have a degree in a non-computational field then this demonstration might be compelling for prospective employers/employees. This reason is probably most important if you want to work in web-design, since your website can easily double as your personal portfolio.

Responses to reasons not to have a website

Conclusion

Hopefully you are persuaded that it is worthwhile to make a professional website. If this page inspires you, please do let me know!

Footnotes