How To Use Blogs to Land a New Job

by Lucia Apollo Shaw

A blog is simply an Internet Weblog. Blogs are created for personal or professional use. They may promote a product or a service, announce job news or career promotions, or merely serve as a personal online journal. In April of 2004, Internet statistics revealed just over four million blogs (with a new blog born every seven seconds). How fast are blogs growing? More recent accounts indicate that there are well over eight million blogs and growing by the hour! In my practice as a recruiter, I use my blog (www.hiringinsider.com) as well as other blogs as an informal means to meet job candidates. Could you do the same thing to see faster results in your own job search?

The job market maze. Marketing yourself in today’s job market is a daunting task. It’s often a maze-like experience to call into a company and try to reach a recruiter, hiring manager, or human resources representative. What’s more, even if you’re able to get through, you’re likely to only end up with voice mail (according to recent statistics, this occurs 82% of the time!). But don’t give up on making those phone calls and leaving voicemail messages! The key is separating yourself from how most job candidates typically approach hiring authorities; having a personal blog could be a great way of distinguishing yourself. 

For example, what if you were to try something like this the next time you leave a voice mail message? “Before you decide whether or not to call me back, I invite you to visit my blog at www.myblog.com." Or, “Before you call me back, you might be interested at what you find if you ‘Google’ me.” (Then spell your name very slowly and clearly).

I can tell you from ten years of helping companies make smart hiring decisions, I would be very receptive to such a voice mail and would visit your blog. Your chances of getting return calls or e-mail may be much higher by using approaches such as this. The idea is to help us help you. Give us a reason to call you back! You can be compelling and still maintain a professional demeanor.

What can blogging do for you? Did you know that less than 12% of all hires made are as a result of the “Big Three” (Monster.com, Hotjobs.com, CareerBuilder.com) job boards? It’s also known that some 85% of people conducting research use the Internet. Blogging is one way you can avoid the “cattle run” experience of job boards, but still leverage the Internet’s power to uncover exciting new career opportunities.

You can use blogs in a few different ways. First, you can start your own blog! You can easily create a profile about yourself, list your resume, and blog about your accomplishments and achievements. You can blog about a mistake you may have made on the job, how you handled it, and what you learned. 

What you’re really doing is fulfulling a form of behavioral interviewing, just online and not in person (yet). Of course, do NOT share confidential information (information proprietary to a company you work or have worked for). Do not name names. The objective is for you to highlight your skills and experiences plainly, so that recruiters can easily gain a sense of who you are and what you’ve done. Ideally, you want to provide information in such a way as to compel a reader to pick up the phone and invite you to an interview. So, how do you do this? 

Be yourself. Blog about topics that are of interest to you. Talk about specific types of corporate culture or size that appeal to you, the types of projects you like to work on, the environment you enjoy most, and, importantly, what you feel you can contribute that no one else can! Remember your creative writing class: Show, don’t tell!  Visitors to your blog need to see what you can do and have done, and feel like they have a sense about you before they even speak with you.

Pass the blog-rolls, please! Most bloggers have what are termed “blog-rolls” that appear on either the left or ride side of the web page. Here is where you’ll find other blogs that they like or endorse, which are usually related to the subject matter on their own blog. Do some research about those blogs that are related to your profession, and then list them on your site. Citing other relevant blogs will strengthen your credibility as well as educate your future employer, further demonstrating what a great catch you are!

How do you choose a service to blog on? There are many services available. For beginners, I recommend using blogger.com. Google acquired blogger.com in February of 2004 and is continually enhancing its features. It’s also FREE.  Yep, you can register for an account in less than ten minutes and be up and blogging. Other great blogging alternatives include Typepad, which starts at $4.95 per month.

But what if you don’t want to start your own blog? If you’d prefer not to create and maintain a blog of your own, you can still search other blogs and develop great contacts and relationships. Job blogs are growing in popularity. Some job blogs are specific to an industry and some are specific to a given geographic area or community. Your own research will yield the best results for what you’re looking for. Soon you’ll discover whole new worlds at your fingertips! There are literally hundreds of sites you can find on your own, depending upon your specific skill set and niche interests. 

But how can you keep track of updates to a blog? There are two ways you can keep track of updates to blogs:

1) RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS was originally created by Netscape when they were seeking an easy way to retrieve content off the web to increase their own Internet viability. There are many RSS aggregators you can use, but the bottom-line objective is the same for all of them: RSS is used to put a watch on specific blogs whenever an update is posted to it. Basically, you can use an RSS tool to subscribe to updates when they are posted to those sites you specify. Some aggregator (reader) services include Newsgator and Feedburner.

2) Bloglines. You can register with this service, and then read only the updates to those blogs you have an interest in. You can have Bloglines “watch” for updates to the blogs you select (either by name and/or by topic). This way, you won’t miss out on up-to-the-minute news for your interests.

By keeping track of changes and updates to blogs, you may learn about a new job posting before the masses. Or you might read about management and internal reorganizations happening within companies that are on your “most desirable” target list (i.e., where you’d like to work). 

Blogs are simply one of the best ways you can stay up to date with your research, which is critical to finding the job of your dreams. So seize the day and jump in!  The water is warm, and (relatively) shark-free!

Lucia Apollo Shaw is a recruiter for HireWorks, Inc. HireWorks, Inc. helps small to midsize organizations in the life sciences make better hires faster. Visit our blog at www.hiringinsider.com or reach us at info@hire-works.com. (This article originally appeared in Thinking Aloud, the WorldWit Newsletter, March 28, 2005. Used here with permission of the author.)