If you want to be found on this site, please read carefully

The most important part of your registration is what you enter into the 'About You' box. This is where you tell potential clients about your experience and expertise. It's the bit that will motivate people to contact you. Everything else on the registration page will help you be found in a search, but won't get you hired! Leave it blank, you will go on the naughty list.

If you enter a website address do not enter the https:// bit - this will break the link. Just enter the www. etc. And check the link!

To understand how best to profile yourself it's important to understand how the search works. Let's say someone needs a PEA or a bat survey. The search is easy, they just tick those survey competencies and up you'll pop if you are nearby. If however, someone is looking for something more specialised, such as bryophytes, then they will search for 'bryophytes' in the 'Field of Expertise'. Job done, you'll be found, providing you have entered that term in the 'Areas of Expertise' correctly (see below).

There are lots of specialist areas and creating a tick box for every taxon would make the site unusable, so that's where the expertise field comes in. Enter expertise using words like bryophytes, birds, coleoptera. Avoid phrases using 'and' as no one will search for 'and', it is a conjunctive not an expertise! Just use words and you'll be good to go. Phrases and long explanations go in the 'About You' box. You can go to town on all your specialisms in 'About You'.

In 'Professional Memberships', enter things like 'CIEEM, AEECoW'. Memberships give clients some confidence that you follow professional standards. Memberships of the British Ecological Society or Northumberland and Tyneside Bird Club aren't really relevant to potential clients. You can always include this information in the about you section. Their absence won't stop you getting hired.

In 'Letters After Your Name' things like BSc Hons, MSc, CEnv are what you may wish to go here. You may have many other qualifications and again these can be cited in the about you section. Only put stuff that's relevant. MNFFF, for example, isn't (Member of the National Fish Fryers Federation).

After creating your profile, check it by doing a search for yourself. Check web links work.

Thanks for reading. This site will only be as good as its content. We reserve the right to remove poor quality, incomplete profiles.

Thank you for your support.

Tim Sexton
Tyne Ecology