Blogging Can Get You Hired

Posted on April 11, 2007

The Wall Street Journal has an article about how blogging can land you a job. A couple years ago the WSJ would have been a very unlikely place for such an article but times have changed. The article says corporate recruiters are surfing blogs -- especially in the tech and media industries. A Wal-Mart recruitment manager is one of the recruiters surfing blogs for potential employees.

Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. "Blogs are a tool in the tool kit," he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.
In addition to blogs that focus on their industry or field of interest, recruiters say they check candidates' blogs about noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how well rounded they are.
Most blog-related recruits are professionals in technology and media because jobs in these fields often require knowledge of the blogosphere, says Kirsten Dixson, a founding partner at Brandego LLC, a career-management firm in Exeter, N.H., that specializes in personal branding.
In June, Brian Balfour's blog, SocialDegree.com, inspired an unsolicited offer for a product-manager job from an executive at Zoom Information Inc. "I was impressed by the points Brian was making and the way he was making them," says Russell Glass, vice president of products and marketing at the Waltham, Mass., technology company. The blog also offered details about Mr. Balfour's work history and education. "It was a no-brainer to give him a call and see if he'd be interested," Mr. Glass says.

Blogs offer recruiters a tool for assessing the skill level of the people writing the blogs. This is something that isn't nearly as easy to do with a resume. Bloggers will want to avoid the obvious things that will turn off recruiters -- foul language, discussing drinking and partying, lewd photographs, etc. If bloggers avoid the negatives and write well enough about the industry they work in or are interested in then it's possible to get a job from blogging -- even the Wall Street Journal says it's true.