Writing Samples?

I have some HTML/CSS skills, so I spent some time putting together a nice little portfolio site that has lots of writing, photography and design samples.

For the story samples, I took PDFs of the pages with my stories, cropped them in Photoshop, saved them as JPGs and put them on the site like that so they appeared like actual clippings and not just plain text.

I would then just e-mail a PDF cover letter and resume that both clearly point them to the website.

 

Same here, for the most part (I keep my cover letters in doc format).

If you're relying on links for your writing samples, you never know when a prior employer could make some kind of technical change with their archive that might affect accessibility, and some of the work you're most proud of could vanish. With PDF's, you don't have to worry about that potential issue, and it's completely self-controlled.

 

I totally agree with this. Right as I got laid off at my previous shop, they had upgraded their website. As a result, EVERYTHING dropped off, right as I was looking for a new job. That wasn't helpful.

 

Yep. I always copy and paste stories into a word doc shortly after being published. I can save them and clean them up later if I want. Never know which ones I may need to use. I usually base it on the position I apply for.