Ask yourself this important question: Is your blog your resume?
If the answer is yes, then it is especially important that you take your blogging efforts seriously and make sure you have a solid resume within your blog.
Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.
Ben Day blogged his way into a career as a high-earning software consultant while maintaining the freedom to schedule frequent jam sessions and performances as a keyboard player. Blogging gave him the opportunity to stand out enough to support the life he envisioned for himself. ”For your career, a blog is essential,” says Phil van Allen, a faculty member of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
”It’s the new public relations and it’s the new home page. Instead of a static home page, you have your blog,” he said. It’s a way to let people know what you are thinking about the field that interests you.”
Employers regularly Google prospective employees to learn more about them. Blogging gives you a way to control what employers see, because Google’s system works in such a way that blogs that are heavily networked with others come up high in Google searches.
But pick your topics carefully and have a purpose. ”The most interesting blogs are focused and have a certain attitude,” says van Allen. ”You need to have a guiding philosophy that you stick to. You cannot one minute pontificate on large issues of the world and the next minute be like, ‘My dog died.'”
BostonWorks – Blogs Essential to a Good Career
Blogging provides documented evidence that you know what you are talking about. It showcases your talent. It creates a network around you of fans, readers, and possible employers. It establishes you as an expert – in whatever field.
Here are a few points to consider if your blog is your resume:
- Blog with a purpose and focus.
- Stay on topic. The topic in which you want to be hired as an expert.
- Let your blog be your example. Your blog shows the world what kind of employee or consultant you are.
- Highlight achievements, expertise, education, training, and experiences in your blog posts.
- Let the world know you are available for hire.
- Don’t shove your expertise or availability into your reader’s faces. Let it become part of the conversation.
- Let quality writing, spelling, and editing glow from the pages.
- Include contact, about, resume, bibliographies, and list of recommendations and articles about your work and blogging.
- Talk to leading experts in your field and blog about them and publish the interview or tidbits of the interview, citing them as “experts” or “advisors”. This of it as very public networking.
- Write about the leading experts and events in your field to get their attention.
- Write quality articles worthy of linking.
- Include your blog’s URL in your correspondence, resume and business cards.
- Make sure your blog meets SEO standards to help search engines visit and searchers find you in search engines.
- Let people get to “know” you through your blog, your expertise, quality control, and standards.
- Tell everyone about your blog. Use good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising.
Remember, if your blog is your resume, let it speak well of you.
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen
Lorelle on WordPress 
17 Comments
How timely is that? I literally just walked out of a meeting here at school with local business owners/hirers discussing what they look for from students come graduation time. One of the biggest things I took away from the meeting was: all the certs in the world sound nice, but what do you have to show for it? One guy went as far as mentioning WP as an option that students should be using for building up a resume. That was 5 minutes ago lol. It let me know that, even though my blogging is beyond what alot of other students are doing right now, I need to change my blogging habits back to more of a traditional blog than just the delicious tagroll that I’ve been using it for (which is my totally selfish way of giving another UI to my http://del.icio.us/BillyG account).
As I imagine today’s teens entering the workforce en masse in five or ten years, I can see many of them rising or falling professionally because of the content they’re producing now – the text, photos, videos and tools they’re making at the MySpaces and Bloggers of our Web-saturated world.
Great point, Lorelle. I think for many people, their blog(s) will become an important part, if not the only important part, of their future resume. I know my blog may well make or break my reputation as an expert in my chosen topic somewhere down the road. Actually, already people are using my blog as a resume of sorts, judging my level of knowledge by what they see me publishing regularly and deciding whether or not to blog abotut me, contact me or work with me.
Hosing a blog hosted on a personal domain speaks more about the blogger than what is mentioned on the blog. Unlike hosting a blog on blogger.com or wordpress.com, hosting one on a paid host does require more than a working knowledge about a lot of things such as domain management, content management, design (example theme design), SEO and so on and so forth. Many a component of a blog do not figure in most academic curriculum. But in order to use them in a blog, the blogger has to do a lot reading,learning, and executing; all in a very short period of time.
Recruiters immediately get living proof of one of the most important skill set “ability to learn and adapt to new technologies.”
Lorelle,
Yes, great concept. Your blog is your resume as a lot of water flows under the bridge so there’s a lot of content (sample size) to judge a blogger by. I’d employ you Lorelle like a shot. I like your insistence on heavily networking a blog for performance in the search engines. Keep it up.
There is no doubt that both job seekers and prospective employers are using the web to check each other out. If you want to write a blog about what you really think and not what you know an employer will be looking for then either be prepared to explain yourself at an interview or use a pseudonym.
Hello
I’d rather read someone’s CV / resume than their blog …
What an excellent article.
Too many people are careless with their blogs and will comment in an unappropriate way assuming that blogs will never come back to haunt them.
As a mentor for people moving into a new job (Through promotion or into another company). I came accross one person, Peter, who had made some very unfortunate comments about a past boss. When Peter applied for a new job his personal blogs were found and he didn’t get the job because the new boss felt that he “Couldn’t trust Peter not to write bad things about him or the company.
the idea is much more focused on personal branding, isn’t it? Actually, i would agree with some commentator here is to read their cv, rather than their blog. BTW, when you’re trying to assess the potential target based on the website/blogs, you have to have some kind of judgement to be able to sense the personal touch, personality and the unique of that blogger
actually blogging by itself is not enough. Use all the tools, Blogging, resume, social networks, professional profile, CV etc… all of these can be tied togehter in one location at http://www.pzhone.com . The most important part about using any of these methods is to keep it professional at all times and make sure any duplicate names are cleaned up to avoid confusion.
“Don’t shove your expertise or availability into your reader’s faces. Let it become part of the conversation.”
Very good point. I do appreciate the sharing the knowledge and expertise to your audience. But claiming yourself to be an expert outrageously is a different story.
What a great article is this. It clear the blogging concept.
Loraines’ comments are invaluable. It is also very important in this economy to write a really effective resume. Because of the competition, it’s more important than ever to present who you are and market yourself with as few words as possible and more important that your resume speak to who you are wanting to be as well as what you’ve done in the past.
Good points made, Lorelle. Thank you for sharing these tips. Blogs would never replace resumes/CVs, but it could help your employer get to know you better. Juts be careful with the things that you post.
To some extend i agree that a blog can be some kind of a resume or CV, it certainly shows what type of individual you are and it shows your opinions and expertises or skills. I like your list of points to look at if one wants to have a blog be part of a resume. I would although point you in the direction of another issue, i would rather say that a blog made with your point taken into account would be proof to the headhunter/recruiter that the Resume/CV you have sent with your application is right and you are the one to pretend to be…..
Nice article.. 🙂
Thomas
Blogging is an aspect of job searching that shows your enthusiasm for a field. If you are applying for positions related to what you blog about, it is acceptable to put these blogs on your resume. However, resumes are still important- it’s a simple summary of the individual, whereas a blog can go on and on without ever defining the individual.
It is an excellent article Lorelle. But I think a blog cannot replace a resume/CV completely. But blogging can be included in resume which will add more value to it. Only a well maintained blog can impress the employer. Otherwise it will be a worse impression.
Actually, Helen, you are right and you are wrong. Many people are evaluated seriously on their Facebook (microblogging), Twitter (also microblogging), and blogs before being hired, and sometimes hired without ever seeing a CV, and can be fired for what they say on their sites, unfortunately.
Many resumes are useless, names, dates, places, badly written descriptions of the job and accomplishments, where a blog extends that expertise. Done well, it is the proof that this person knows what they are talking about. It proves they have the self-discipline, the focus, attention to details, and the skills it make take to do the job. A resume doesn’t show that.
Again, you are right, but in today’s world, I’ve found many people hired without ever seeing a resume just based upon the expertise found in their blogs. I’m one of them. I’ve shown my CV once in over 20 years to get a job. I went into panic mode as I’d stopped updating it 10 years previously after being so studious about it. 😀
Thanks!
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[…] I’ve just come across this interesting article on blogging and career via Lorelle. A Blog is might be a real good chance for your career. Well might be, since it always depends on how your carrer and blog referr from a professional point of view. Personally I have learnt a lot running my blog (mzungus), tecnically on blogging, webdevelopment, design, well and I hope I’ve improved my writing. In any case be aware that an employer probably will google potential candidates and read the articles you post. Therefor a blog is in a kind part of your c.v. Beware, also blogs you belief deleted might be found via archive.org (but until now I guess hope employers won’t search that far). Personally I am running this blog as “private and just for fun” so far. I guess I’ll have to get more frequent and focused with my articles here. Here are eight theses from the article at bostonworks.com […]
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