Re.vu

There's a subset of personal Webpage services that are less personal and more professional. They're r?sum?-based landing pages, and Re.vu (free) is our favorite because it delivers a graphical look at your life perfect for prospective employers to take it all in. And it does it all for free.

The key to using Re.vu (pronounced "review") is to have an account with LinkedIn, the professional social network (a.k.a. the one where you try to get a job rather than post pictures of your friends at parties). When you set up a Re.vu account, you're asked to utilize its LinkedIn importer, so it can build your r?sum? timeline based on the data stored at social network. The timeline is the core of your r?sum? landing page at re.vu/username. (You can upload your own standard r?sum? for employers to download, too.)

Page creation is similar to that on other landing page sites, such as Flavors.me (free, 4.5 stars) and About.me, with a floating toolbar that makes it easy to change the background, theme, or arrange elements on the page. The choices are sparse?for a reason, as Re.vu limits things to keep you from getting out of hand with a crazy design. For example, you can't change a single font.

You can use Re.vu's custom backgrounds or upload your own (maximum size is 2MB). Unlike with Flavors and About.me, where the emphasis is on creating a personal statement with a fancy background image, at Re.vu the page is about the data, not the background. Generic better here; the images provided with the Re.vu templates are probably best, unless you've got some serious graphic-artistry chops.

The timeline of your work and education is only imported once. After that, you have to keep it updated separately from LinkedIn. If you have typos on LinkedIn, they'll also appear on Re.vu, so it pays to go to LinkedIn and clean it up first so you only have to make changes once.

Once the data is imported, visit your profile and make edits anyway, because the fun stuff for the page isn't imported, you have to add it. That includes logos or images for each job you've had in the past, which pop-up when a cursor is passed over that section of the timeline. The Infographics tab will let you insert vital stats (put in numbers for anything, like businesses you've started, articles you've written, etc.), as well as graphs showing your job duties, favorite pastimes, interests, and languages. You can also upload portfolios of your work (in PDF or MS Office formats) to show off. These are the extras that make for a more interesting online r?sum??and, hopefully, will lead to a great job interview.

It's too bad your LinkedIn updates are not instantly seen at Re.vu, but again, this might be a wise decision since it can take some tweaking to get the timeline just right. Re.vu provides stats, will generate a QR code graphic to put on business cards, blogs, or even your traditional r?sum?, and will let you promote your new r?sum? page with search engines or via Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

It's odd that Re.vu doesn't let you link from your page to your other social networks, but perhaps very smart. Re.vu wants to keep things totally professional. For that reason alone, a Re.vu page is the best place to send prospective employers than any other landing page. That it makes your r?sum? look so good is the other. Re.vu is our Editors' Choice for r?sum?-based personal Web pages.

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