Now, this guy REALLY gets it!

Meet Jasen Dickan. Learn from Jasen Dickan.
His Linkedin profile makes me weak in the knees.
His online portfolio has me taking cold showers.
Why? Because he REALLY gets it -- he tells me everything I need to know about him. He is saving in-house and external recruiters probably 2 hours of up-front time that might otherwise be wasted going back and forth with questions about his skills.
Right away, we know EXACTLY what he does, how well he does it, where he's done it and how much of it he's done. Moreover, by noting what's not listed, we can determine the things that he likely DOESN'T do that much of, again saving us time.

So, does Jasen just want to save me valuable time? We do have a good rapport, so I can tell myself that's his aim, however, there's definitely a better reason for it and it's the reason I write this post. He's opening up more of the world to himself. He's getting valuable keywords out there and coming up in more searches. By doing so, he appears more professional and buttoned-up. This in turn ups his stock.

I mention him here with his permission -- I told him my goal is to get more people to follow suit. Everyone from Project Managers to Account Services to IAs to Creatives: give us the juicy details upfront and you'll reap the rewards.

Here are his summary and specialties sections from Linkedin:

Summary

Award-winning leader with 12 years of interactive, marketing, and branding experience. Proven ability to supervise teams and develop design talent in others. Passion for innovative strategy, design, and technology.

Specialties

creative leadership, web design, web sites, intranets, interaction design, usability, branding, business strategy, ecommerce, financial services, pharmaceutical, photoshop, typography, color theory, HTML, CSS, photography, successful new business pitches, inspiration

It's wonderful stuff, very informative. Now check out his portfolio: http://www.jasen.net/
Notice the way he specifies his % of involvement in various capacities AND how he gives credit to the other contributors. Providing the level AND kind of involvement you had on specific projects when you have a breadth of skills, goes a long way in establishing credibilty and setting expectations.

If you're looking for work - or just like to keep yourself current like Jasen - please take some time to enhance your profiles and portfolios. And make sure they all link to one another. Do it not for the sake of us recruiters, but for you.

Jasen, congrats on being this "teacher's pet", and thank you for letting me use you as an example! Keep on truckin'.

Tip for the day #3 when applying for a job

Hopefully you've read "Tip for the Day (a.k.a. TFTD) #2" before reading this one. If not, please do!

...Now that you've read it and have that online portfolio, some things to keep in mind (recruiters and hiring managers, feel free to add some comments):

• No downloading required, please! Your work needs to be viewable without having to download individual images of each sample. If you are guilty of having this kind of site, you have just given the very busy Creative Director an excuse to check out the next person's book instead.
• How do we know you can write if we can't read the text? Copywriters, please! We never expect that you have a gorgeous, flashy, hi-tech site. (Though if you use one of the sites I mentioned in TFTD #2, you'll have a nice looking one!) We simply expect the text within samples to be a legible size. Often when we are able to zoom in on the image, the text blurs. Since getting a hold of good sample files isn't always easy, this may be one of those times when sending a follow-up pdf "mini-book" is required. In that case, please have everything in one document, compressed or low-res, and if the text is too small to read, have the copy you wrote in a call-out boxes so we can read it. (Oh, that mini-book document you're sending should have your resume as the last page, a cover sheet with name, title and contact info as the front page.)