Latest / Job Hopping with Fexingo: Tenure, Loyalty, and the Modern Career Resume / Why Job Hoppers Need a Personal Brand Website
Transcript
- Lucas: So, Luna, let me start with a number. A 2024 study from CareerBuilder found that seventy percent of employers research candidates online before they even schedule an interview. Luna: That's huge. Almost three out of four. Lucas: Right. And that means your resume isn't the first thing they see. It's often your digital footprint. For a job hopper — someone who's changed roles every eighteen to twenty-four months — that digital footprint can be the difference between getting called in and getting filtered out. Luna: So you're saying a personal brand website matters more for job hoppers than for the person who's been at one company for fifteen years? Lucas: Exactly. Because the stable candidate has a single narrative: 'I was at IBM, and I grew there.' That's easy for a recruiter to understand. A job hopper's story is more complicated. It needs context. And a one-page resume doesn't provide that context. Luna: Give me a concrete example. Lucas: Sure. I talked to a marketing manager — let's call her Sarah. She had five roles in seven years. Two were contract gigs, one was a startup that folded, and two were at agencies. On paper, it looks like she can't hold a job. But her personal website told a different story. She built case studies for each role: the problem she solved, the metrics she moved, the team she led. She even included a short video of a campaign she'd run. The recruiter told her later that the website is why she got the interview. Luna: So it humanizes the hops. It turns a red flag into proof of adaptability. Lucas: That's the whole idea. The site lets you control the narrative. On LinkedIn, you're stuck with the same timeline format as everyone else. A website is a blank canvas. You can lead with your impact, not with your chronology. Luna: But isn't LinkedIn enough? I mean, LinkedIn has the 'featured' section, you can add media, you can write articles. Why go through the hassle of building a separate site? Lucas: Great question. Two reasons. First, ownership. LinkedIn owns your profile. They can change the algorithm, the layout, the visibility. If they decide to deprioritize external links, your portfolio vanishes. Your website is yours. Second, design constraints. On LinkedIn, you're in a template. On your own site, you can design a narrative flow. You can embed a slide deck, a code snippet, a dashboard. You can show, not just tell. Luna: Alright, I buy that. But the time investment. How long does it realistically take to build a decent personal site? Lucas: For a non-technical person? Two hours. Use a platform like Carrd, Squarespace, or even a simple Notion page published to the web. It doesn't need to be fancy. It needs to be clear. One page with four sections: who you are, what you've done, what you're looking for, and how to contact you. Luna: That's manageable. But let me push back on something else. If a job hopper has employment gaps, won't a website highlight those gaps even more? Like, what if you have a six-month gap between roles? On a resume, you can format it away. On a site, it's visible. Lucas: That's actually where the site helps most. You can frame the gap. You can say 'During this period, I completed a certification in data analytics and consulted on two freelance projects.' You can show the certification badge, link to the freelance work. You turn a blank space into a growth period. The resume leaves it open to interpretation. The site closes it. Luna: I've heard of the 'ghost resume' problem — where job hoppers get eliminated by automated screening because their tenure looks too short. Does a website help with that? Lucas: Indirectly, yes. The ATS doesn't crawl your website. But once you get past the ATS — or if you apply through a referral — the first thing a human does is Google you. If your site shows up, it can override the resume's weakness. I've seen cases where a candidate's site had a 'Projects' page that was basically a portfolio of open-source contributions, and that became the focal point of the interview. Luna: And honestly, that's more impressive than a list of job titles anyway. Lucas: Exactly. Let me give you another example. A software engineer I know — three jobs in four years. His resume looked like job hopping. But his site had a page for each project he'd shipped. He embedded live demos. One of his projects was an API that handled a million requests a day. He didn't just say 'Built scalable API.' He showed it. He got an offer from a FAANG company, and the interviewer told him the site was the reason they brought him in. Luna: So the website acts as a pre-interview. It filters in your favor instead of against you. Lucas: Right. And look — if we've helped you think through a career move like building a personal site, or navigating a job hop, I want to be honest about how this show keeps going. A small group of listeners chips in monthly through Buy Me a Coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's what keeps this ad-free and lets us drill into these topics without any sponsor constraints. Luna: Yeah, and it's genuinely a small thing that adds up. If it's useful to you, it helps. No pressure. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the website. The other big benefit for job hoppers is what I call 'career continuity.' When you leave a company, you lose access to your email, your Slack, your internal portfolio. Anything you built there is locked behind a firewall. Your personal site is the one place where that work lives forever. Luna: So it's like an external brain for your career. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. And it doesn't have to be extensive. I recommend a quarterly update. When you finish a project, add a page. When you switch roles, update the narrative. It's a living document. Luna: What about people who are in industries where a website might seem weird? Like, if you're a nurse or a teacher, does it still make sense? Lucas: I think it does, but the content changes. A nurse could have a page on continuing education, or a case study on a quality improvement initiative they led. A teacher could showcase lesson plans, student outcomes, or a blog on pedagogy. It's not about being a tech influencer. It's about owning your professional story. Luna: Alright, so let's say I'm a job hopper listening right now. What's the first step I should take tonight? Lucas: Step one: buy a domain name with your name. FirstnameLastname dot com. If it's taken, add 'dot me' or use a variation. Step two: pick a platform. Carrd is free and takes ten minutes. Step three: write three bullet points for your current role — what you did, how you measured it, and what impact it had. That's it. You don't need a full site on day one. You need a start. Luna: And add a contact form. Make it easy for recruiters to reach you. Lucas: Absolutely. One more thing: include a testimonial or a quote from a colleague or client if you can. Social proof on your own site is powerful. Luna: I like that. It's like giving the recruiter a reason to trust you before they've even met you. Lucas: Exactly. And for job hoppers, that trust is the biggest hurdle. A website is the fastest way to clear it. Luna: Alright, I'm convinced. I'm actually going to update my own site this weekend. Lucas: Love it. Let me know how it goes. And listeners, if you build one, share it with us. We might feature it in a future episode. Luna: That would be fun. Alright, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.