Quintessential Careers Press:
Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media
Chapter 5: Blogging for Jobs, Visibility, and Employer Research
Page 65
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We've hired two people fresh out of college in the past four months that we found through their blogs -- one didn't even have a formal resume. Frankly, he didn't need one. A blog trumps a resume every single time.Our stance is that blogging is important -- at least in our medium -- and we are developing a strategy around it. We are conducting a search for a Marketing Director right now -- if an applicant doesn't blog, or at least contribute heavily, it's fair to say that we are going to pass them by.
The concept of the blog as resume has been the subject of several recent articles, most of them, appropriately, blog postings with numerous follow-up comments by blog readers and posters. Dave Lefkow's 2006 entry on ERE.net (a site for executive recruiters) entitled My Blog is My Resume (registration may be required to see the full article), talks about "the changing dynamics of the Web's second generation." His article's implications for job-seekers are apparent in these excerpts:
Privacy is no longer an issue. This generation seems quite comfortable publishing all of the gory details of their lives online. Some of these details will shock you. Get used to workers who are perfectly functioning members of the work world, but who perhaps make decisions in their personal lives that you find appalling.Many job seekers, growing up in the level playing field that is the innovation economy, will often expect to be judged by their ideas, not their experience. Resumes will become irrelevant (or at best, a meaningless formality that describes your work history, not who you are).
The Christian Science Monitor published an article, "Blogs: An Effective Job-hunting Tool?, that points out that even if a blog is not seen as a resume in itself, job-seekers can blog to supplement their resumes. Article author Marilyn Gardner quotes job-seeking blogger David Atkins: "A resume gets the attention of people who are looking to hire someone in a particular role. A blog complements that by showing what else I do that makes me an interesting person." Gardner cites another blogger, David Erickson, who "regularly receives job opportunities as a direct result of his blogging." Erickson notes, though, that it's most effective to start a blog before you enter a job search.
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