Seth Roberts, on how blogging helps you get a job:
[With blogging,] each makes clearer to everyone else what is inside us. Human nature being what it is — closely tied to occupational specialization — it should be no surprise that blogging is very useful in getting a job, as Penelope Trunk says. To get a job you need a skill. Your skill is inside you; blogging makes it much more apparent. Blogging shows not only that you have a skill but that you have an emotional attachment, too: Bloggers write about what they care about. Not only does blogging help you get a job, it helps you get a job you want.
It’s pretty simple, would you rather read someone’s resume or someone’s blog? I know what I would choose. There’s also something to be said about blogs signalling who not to hire. Because blogs are often very honestly written, they can help you eliminate people who wouldn’t be right for the job. When you have a medium that helps you eliminate bad candidates more easily, it makes the good candidates look even better because you feel that you have a more credible assessment of them.
Ben, I just had another thought on this topic.
I wonder if people get dates through their blog. Have you ever been approached for a date through your blog?
In a lot of ways, the job search and mate search processes are very similar. That’s why a lot of “e-harmony for jobs” type sites are popping up now. With a blog, you can send the same signals that you are sending to potential employers to potential mates. It’s also got to help that a blog can often allow you to control the Google results for your name, so if you meet someone and they decide to Google you, they’ll find the information that you want them to find.
Cool article, it makes me feel better about myself. I used to be worried that I was hedging myself into self-employment by blogging, but now I find that it might help me after all.
I suspect that at some places it would still be looked down upon. A law firm would be one obvious place. Didn’t Alex have some issues there?
Willy, don’t knock the world of self-employment. I’ve been self-employed for a good part of my adult life, and it has enabled me to do things that I wouldn’t have done had I remained employed.
Becoming a homeowner is one of those things. Another is having the freedom to pursue interests that may lead to revenue. In many cases, they have.
And, yes, I do blog. It’s one of the ways that I show prospective clients what I can do.
Ben!
Your e-mail from me is bouncing. E-mail me back if you want to get it fixed…
-nitin
Willy:
“I wonder if people get dates through their blog. Have you ever been approached for a date through your blog?”
This is almost always guaranteed to be a – in my case, undesirable – side-effect of any public activity (in blogging, putting up an avatar, however ordinary often catalyses this).
This is not very different from how in college, the girls participating in social and cultural activities attract boys like flies to honey.
While it is impressive to see the lengths to which people will go to find the email ID for someone, it is slightly weird too.
Just like in real life, such approaches for jobs or dates need skill in handling. They open conversations that can be moulded without converting the ‘approacher’ into a hater or a stalker. That is one of the major skills I have polished while blogging.
I hope my dream job arrives soon. Before I starve.
This topic frequently comes up in the education blogs I read. Educators are paranoid anyway (at least at the K-12 level). One significant blogger, Miguel Guhlin, has expressed fears more than once that his blog will cost him future job opportunities, even though his blog is well-written, fascinating, and makes me wish he worked at my school district. I blog anonymously, but really, I don’t care. I’m more likely to quit a job than to be blocked from being hired, no matter how weird my blogs are.
Yeah, blogging can get you a job only if all employers were blogreaders. Worse, they hardly access the net for something other than tracking their stock price / portfolio performance. For everything else, including checking their mail, the secretaries stand in.