Quintessential Careers:
Use Your Blog as a Resume? Part II: Tips and Examples
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
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Editor's note: This article is the second of two parts.
Part I discusses the
pros and cons of using a blog as a resume.
If you've decided you'd like to experiment with using a blog as a resume, consider these tips:
Include elements you can't include in a traditional paper resume.
Linked from his blog, The Bryper Blog, social media blogger Bryan Person offers what
he has coined his Social Media Resume
and notes that the resume include items not found in a conventional resume, such as:
A commenter to Person's blog further suggested an audio or video interview
with one of your references as a valuable Social Media Resume component.
Others have suggested case studies, links to must-read blogs, and links to buzz
and testimonials about the blogger.
Tell the world who you are and what you want to do. "Once you have a
clear idea of who you are and what you want to do, you can start to tell the universe and
attract the people who you would like to work with, talk their language and sell your
future," writes Blogging for Beginners author Margaret Stead, who has been
advising clients to blog their resumes since 2002. Consider including such elements
as a bio page and/or an About Me page in your blog. Rich Page has both
(see bio), and his
About Me page particularly
conveys -- in a FAQ format -- a sense of who he is.
"NahLiz" has also successfully blogged her
"who am I" story,
along with her answers to oft-asked employer questions, "What motivates you?" and
"Why should we hire you?"
Establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. Be purposeful and specific
in choosing what you will blog about. Projecting confident expertise and current commentary
about emerging trends can get you noticed by employers in your field. "When I started my
blog, I knew I loved marketing but it helped me evolve towards specific topics I closely
identify with (such as customer evangelism and community marketing)..." writes Mario Sundar
on his blog Marketing Nirvana.
"Blogging, I realized was a great way to effectively share thoughts, energize, and converse..."
Sundar assures readers that blogging with purpose will deliver your "circle of interest," the
audience for your blog to you. Interviewing leading experts in your field and blogging about
them will also raise your profile, notes Lorelle VanFossen on her blog,
Lorelle on WordPress.
Tell specific employers how much you want to work for them, as Carolynn
Duncan did in her blog when she had her heart set on working for Provo Labs and
blogged her way into a job with
Why
Provo Labs Is Hiring Carolynn Duncan. She blogged about why the company excited her
so much and what kinds of problems she could solve for them. (She got the job but is now
working elsewhere). Consider using your blog to express your passion for working for
your dream employer.
Tell the world you're looking for a job as Christian Crumlish did in an April 2005
blog entry. The total of his three posts became a mini-narrative of searching for the job,
culminating with his blog entry on his attainment of the new job two months later.
(See my
critique of his postings.) He did a great job of employing classic networking techniques --
he didn't ask for a job; he asked for help and was specifically described about how
readers could assist him.
Update your blog regularly. Frequent blogging is key to gaining attention,
remaining visible, and being seen as current on your topic.
Tell interesting stories about projects you're working on. A blog gives you far more
latitude than a resume to tell a compelling and detailed story about the kinds of projects you
would normally list on your resume. Writers are consistently exhorted, "Show, don't tell."
Resumes are about telling, while blogs are about showing, and here's an awesome
(and successful) example, posted by Matt Coddington on his blog,
MattCoddongton.com.
Be careful about blogging while employed. While your blog is a great
medium to describe your work and accomplishments, some employers have policies
that prohibit employees from revealing anything that goes on in the organization. Be
sure you know your employer's rules before blogging about inner workings of the firm.
Be professional. Yes, you can have more freedom of expression in a blog
and write more conversationally than in a resume, but be sure to represent yourself in
your blog the way you would truly like to be seen by employers. As Joshua Porter writes in his
blog, Bokardo (referenced in
Part I of this article),
"Your blog is serious business. It has the power to completely sway someone's opinion
about you." Echoes VanFossen, "Your blog shows the world what kind of employee or
consultant you are."
Write well! If your writing is not engaging or if faulty grammar, spelling,
and punctuation make your blog entries hard to read, your blog may do more
harm than good in your effort to get yourself employed. Porter notes that blog
readers care more about ideas than perfect writing. I see many flaws in the writing
of those who've succeeded in getting jobs through their blogs, so I suspect Porter
is correct. But it's also quite possible to cross a line into writing that is simply unreadable.
Make your blog archive a living archive. Past entries in your blog don't have
to remain static. You can go back and make revisions, as well as update previous
material to keep it fresh. Just as it's advisable to keep your resume updated, keeping
your blog current propels you to the cutting edge.
Syndicate your blog. Syndicating your blog is only indirectly a way to use it as
a resume and relates more to distribution than content. (See
an explanation of RSS, a software commonly used to syndicate blog content.)
Syndication ensures that more people have access to your blog than if you didn't syndicate.
The better known you and your blog become, the more likely you might be sought out for a job
opportunity. Syndicating your blog is a bit analogous to using a resume-blasting service
to disseminate your resume, except that syndicating is much less annoying to recipients,
who can choose whether to subscribe to your content. A variation on syndicating is
providing a feature on your blog in which readers can receive an e-mail notification of a
new posting. Also include the Web address of your blog on your business cards and
e-mails and spread the word about it in networking situations.
Take advantage of the networking benefits of blogging. Popular blogs attract
many comments, and your blog can become a community, a continuing conversation.
Visitors to your blog can become valuable members of your network and can very quickly
discover more about you than the average in-person network contact, as Jason Kottke
notes on BlogAds: "Anyone
who meets me online -- including possible friends, fellow Web design enthusiasts,
or potential employers -- has access to 4+ years of my thoughts before they even
have to strike up a conversation. That's damn powerful stuff."
Examples of blogs-as-resumes and resumes-as-blogs
Resources
Blog article: Leveraging Your Site to Land That Dream Job
Blog article: Blogging Yourself Into a Job: Is Your Blog Your Resume?
Blog article: Blogging to a Job
Blog article: 5 Steps to Making Your Blog Your Resume
Blog for Jobs: A showcase for those who blog for jobs.
ResumeBlog™: A service for members of
SPM Jobs, a list of experienced software and Internet product managers and marketing and business professionals
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search
terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Have you taken advantage of all the many free resume tools, articles, samples, and more that we
have in the Resume Resources section
of Quintessential Careers?
I asked him to what extent he felt posting on his blog helped him obtain his new job. His response:
It helped, I think, although it did not directly lead to the job I ended up taking. That came
from a craigslist ad I responded to. I do think that my blog presence and my visibility
(Googlability) was a factor in getting my new job, as my firm is looking to get its name
out among the web savvy audience and they feel I can help with that. I'm very happy I
put my job search into the public, because I think it strengthened my network. A lot of
people gave me advice or passed along leads or sent my resume to their
recruiters/HR people.
Because of my age and lack of formal experience in the industry, I would like to
present you with a case study of my work rather than a conventional resume.
This case study will be of my most recent website. It is a blog in the online
business niche that is only 4 months old yet has already become an
authority in the field and gained widespread recognition:
Net Business Blog.
Bob Sutton, a commenter on one of the blogs discussed in
Part I of this article
suggests the kinds of questions a reader have in mind and to which a blogger can
provide answers by detailing professional accomplishments: "What can I conclude
about the writer's critical faculties? Are his judgment or perspective distinctive or
valuable to me? Does he wield influence? What does his use of language or other
cultural tools say about him? How does he handle spontaneity?" Adds Henry Copeland on
BlogAds: "Other important factors
get recorded: do we play well with the other children in our class? do we share credit? do
we collaborate? listen? articulate? admit mistakes? grow?"
Continuing to engage your fans with content and converse with them through
comments is a bit like handing out your resume in a social situation. While not
every commenter will agree with you, many comments to your blog serve as
endorsements and testimonials. Employers will notice that you are talked about.
(Be sure to comment on the blogs of others to enhance this effect.)
Final Thoughts
It's likely that job-seekers are just beginning to scratch the surface of the resumes-as-blogs
concept. With some blogger care and creativity, this emerging form of job-search
communication will continue to evolve.
Blog Article: 5 steps to let your dream job find you
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate
publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author,
and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers,
edits QuintZine,
an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling
in the job search at A Storied
Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her
personal Website
or reach her by e-mail at
kathy(at)quintcareers.com.
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