An old friend of mine, a prolific blogger, recently embarked on search for a new job.

He was sending his resume a long to a handful of places and it was important to him that he be able to track which of them clicked through to his blog URL from his resume.

It would act as an early indicator for a successful job application, as once they saw his blog, they’d want him for sure! (He’s now gainfully employed by the way).

His idea–create a unique landing page for each resume he sent along. Decent idea, but not terribly original. A lot of people do this.

This is what I suggested he do instead:

Add this snippet to his WordPress theme…

<?php if( $_GET["utm_campaign"] && $_GET["message"]=="yes" ) { echo "<h2 style='color: red; text-align: center;'>Thanks for reading my resume ". $_GET['utm_campaign']. "!<br />Click around and get a sense of who I am.<br /></h2>"; } ?>

Placement for this depends on your WordPress template, but in all likelyhood, should go in your header.php file within your theme directory.

For each resume he sends, add a redirect to his .htaccess file:

Redirect 302 /companyname/ https://searchwilderness.com/?utm_source=resume&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Company%20Name&message=yes

(he needs to change “Company%20Name” to the name of the company he is sending his resume to)

Then, he needs to link to /companyname/ on each resume he sends out.

For example: https://searchwilderness.com/companyname

This way, whenever someone clicks though to his blog from a resume he sent out, it will redirect to a URL that is tracked via a UTM parameter and will also display a message like this:

My reasoning for doing this:

It’s a little faster than creating a unique landing page for each company you are applying to.

It allows for tracking and personalizes his website for the company he is applying for, but doesn’t detract from the overall experience of this blog.

Helps him stand out from the pool of applicants

Isn’t a cliche landing page.

Shows and ounce of technical experience and originality.

Analytics Campaign Tracking + Personalization for Job Search Success!

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