Download a free workbook to help you design your site with confidence.
The email you entered is invalid.
Thank you for subscribing.
By entering your email, you indicate that you have read and understood our Privacy Policy and agree to receive marketing from Squarespace.
Your personal site is a chance for you to create your narrative. What piques your interest, inspires your creativity, and sparks your ingenious side hustles. For job-seekers, it’s an opportunity to share the parts of your story that a resume can’t capture. If you’re just starting out in your career, crafting that narrative can be intimidating. Here’s how one member of the class of 2020 created a personal website that helped get her hired.
When Micah Pegues had an interview for an internship, she checked out the interviewer’s social media to prepare. The interviewer had recently posted that “nobody knows how to make a good student website anymore,” so Micah updated her personal site overnight. She focused on making her site simple and easily navigable, keeping in mind that hiring managers and recruiters have limited time, so she needed to surface the information they’d want to find quickly and easily.
Now, Micah links her site on her LinkedIn profile and any job application she submits. “With my resume, you can see what I’ve done, but there aren’t visual examples. I want [potential employers] to know that I have these skills, and I have the potential to grow and do more than what’s stated in the job posting.”
The 22-year-old recent graduate studied Visual Culture, Media, and Postcolonial Theory while dabbling in photography, design, and animation in college. Throughout her academic career she has participated in a multitude of creative side hustles: interning at magazines, co-hosting a school podcast, and founding an online magazine for creatives of color. Micah spoke with Squarespace about the creation of her student website and how her site served as a vehicle to enhance her story as an individual and creative thinker, helping to open doors in her career.
Consider your color palette
While browsing some of her favorite photographers’ work, Micah found that she preferred clean, simple photography sites. “I’ve seen websites where it’s just overwhelming — the background is colorful, which is fine, but sometimes it really clashes with your images.” She chose a white background for her homepage, and images that display her own sense of aesthetics, like warmer tones and portraits.
Construct your narrative
Micah encourages “conveying a good message about what you do and who you are” with your site — and demonstrating growth. She considered the sequence of images and categorized her photography by setting (like outdoor, indoor, and studio), because she found that shooting in different environments required different skill sets, and she wanted to show how her work leveled up with experience.. “I could talk about what I was trying to learn and how I was trying to progress” as a photographer, she says.
Make your site intuitive
As a creative and visual-minded individual, Micah started off her website as a home for her visual works and photography to reside. She strived to make a portfolio that exemplified her outlook and style, capturing the essence of her creative work. She continued to design the site keeping it simple and intuitive, and in a way that promotes friendly user experience from a prospective employer’s perspective.
As she expanded the scope of her work, she structured her site to reflect her artistic growth and expansion of skills. From navigating through other portfolios, Micah noted features to avoid, as “endless scrolling can be frustrating when sending out to future employers.” She created concise folders and organized her creative projects thematically, to build a more perceptive experience in the eyes of the user.
Personalize it
Micah continues to emphasize making the site “an archive of yourself.” By designing her name in a handwritten font, she was able visually elevate her site as well as add a touch of individuality. Designing your site to stand out and reflect your creative self will ensure your site creates a lasting impression.
Parting notes
Lastly, in creating a memorable student site, Micah encourages including content that you would want employers to know about you. Amplify your creative endeavors and projects outside of academia, while highlighting what you deem as your best achievements. Ask yourself the question, what do you want people to walk away knowing about you?
Her sophomore year, Micah participated in a multitude of projects, one of which was co-hosting a school radio podcast. Including that project on her site allowed her interviewer to spark up a conversation, giving Micah room to speak about the breadth and depth of her varied skills in several creative fields.
Whether it’s a conversation starter or to simply show your diverse experiences and the skills you’ve acquired, portray your content in a way that will be positively received from an employer’s perspective.
Get inspired by the changemakers, innovators, and creators of the Class of 2020.