First impressions are obviously important so your first point of contact by whatever means needs to catch the eye of potential employers. So good design on your cv/ covering letter and portfolio website is vital. think about branding yourself.

My current website is pants! done a year ago I thought that a website that could show off my potential flash skills would be the best way. I sacrificed alot of key design principles. Now I cringe and am attempting to design a more user friendly site that is easy to update.

So my advice is that design yourself simple and clean website (and cv etc) thats easy to update as your portfolio grows. Be careful on the amount of time you spend doing this as you will miss out on potential work! give yourself a strict deadline