Blog Review – The Skill Center

The Skill Center is a blog where you can learn to write impressive resumes to get an employer’s attention using the expert advice and effective tips from Adrienne F. Manson.

Look & Feel:

The blog is hosted on Blogger and uses a default 2 column theme. The template design is very simple and there is hardly anything that can be customized. Adrienne, you should consider designing a matching header image for your blog as blogger now allows you to replace the header text with an image or you can use both the text and image in the header.

Also, organize the sidebar by grouping together widgets of similar size. AN example is the MyBlogLog & BlogCatalog widgets that haven’t been placed together. Re-arrange the widget code and place these social network widgets together as shown in my left sidebar! A 468×60 Google Adsense ad banner in the sidebar doesn’t fit and extends out into nothing beyond the sidebar. Either change the format of the ad, or remove it. Seems like you don’t use feedburner for your RSS feed. I recommend you use this service using which you can monitor your readership base, and if its not big, then work for it. Place your feed subscription options at the start of sidebar as they are shown here on my blog, both at the start of left and right sidebars!

There’s no “About” page or a short intro of yourself, that makes it impossible for your readers to know who you are. If you’re working for a good cause, let the people know who’s behind these efforts. Its recommended that you, at least, fill your Blogger profile and display it at a prime location in your sidebar.

Content and Usability:

The site offers some really good tips to write resumes, helpful advice on career and career counseling. I really liked this particular post about 7 deadly sins that can spoil your career. This post is not by Adrienne, but the source has been duly mentioned. This is an appreciable gesture. I’ll love reading your blog in future as I am myself a student and need to know all this properly. This can also help me to write better resumes for my computer-illiterate cousins who keep on asking me to submit theirs at some site or the other. The content is comprehensive and easy-to-follow as well.

Some pieces of advice that may help your blog’s content more usable are:

• Use relative font weights so that readers can easily make out between headings and paragraph text. I have pointed this out with the arrows in the image alongside. Underline the headings, make ’em bold or highlight them with a different color.
• Reduce the number of posts to be displayed on the main page to not more than 3 or 4. This is because your posts are generally too long and displaying a large number of posts makes the page load slower and get very long which a user may not like to check out, down, too deep.

Overall, Your blog has the potential to make it big. Try to come up with more content on your blog’s niche and post more often and regularly. Try to get a new impressive theme for your blog. There are unlimited templates available for Blogger! Back up your widgets, apply the new template and restore the widgets.

I just hope this review helps you. Wish you good luck with your blog.