Blogs "essential" to a good career?

The Boston Globe has a story today Blogs "essential" to a good career with eight reasons why blogging can help your career, and several examples of people who have improved their lot in life through blogging.

Blogging, in my opinion, can be great for your career...or ruin you. It depends on how mature, articulate, and insightful you are. Teenagers who are "blogging" on MySpace today may later regret it when their potential employer does a web search for their name. Many adults would also be wise to think twice before they write.

Blogging is a natural, enjoyable, and positive experience for me. The feedback has been amazing, and has led to meeting new people, new learnings and deeper understanding. Writing forces me to think through my assumptions to a deeper level than I otherwise would, and improves my clarity of thought.

Blogging can certainly get you noticed...for good or bad. I have been contacted by lots of executive search people over the past 9 months including recruiters from Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Disney, The Gap, and NBC. I have the best job in the world at Microsoft so the temptations have not swayed me.

The Boston Globe article lists 8 reasons why blogging is essential for your career. While I disagree that blogging is essential...if done well it can certainly help. Here are the 8 reasons;

1. Blogging creates a network.
2. Blogging can get you a job.
3. Blogging is great training.
4. Blogging helps you move up quickly.
5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.
6. Blogging provides more opportunities.
7. Blogging could be your big break.
8. Blogging makes the world a better place.

Tim Bray, who now works at Sun Microsystems, goes the Globe one or two better with 10 reasons why Blogging is Good.

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.

2. You have to get noticed to get hired.

3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”

4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.

5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.

6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.

7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.

8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.

9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.

10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

Blogging is not for everyone. It takes a lot of time, thought, and practice to do it well. Blogging is good exercise for thinking critically and writing clearly. If you don't feel comfortable writing your own blog, start by commenting on other blogs. There are at least 35 million blogs out there so there is something for everyone. Enjoy!

Comments

[David Eckoff]

Don, good find with that article. Thank you for highlighting it, along with your perspective.

Your post was one of the best reads on my reading list today.

David

[viinnie mirchandani]

Even in tech world (and more so in other industries), people look at you amusedly when you are introduced as a blogger. Somehow people think it is only teenagers - the MySpace generation.

Jury is still out for blogs and impact on recruting for folks in the 20s and beyond.

On the other hand for practitioners in small businesses (like me) it is lots of brand value for relatively low investment irrespective of age. Till we decide we want to take up a job!

[Russell Miyaki]

Don,
I agree with you about how blogs could be great for or ruin your career. I would also add the fact that it can also do the same to the corporations or employers who either sponsor them or are attached to them in someway.

Companies are starting to use employee blogs more often as a means to engage possible candidates into the "real" culture of their organizations. Instead of the traditional employee profile with the typical interview questions with the typical answers, the employee profiles are turning more into mini biographies. The soul and spirit of the employer's brand.

When done well, people engage further with that company. When done inappropriately, it launches cynicism into people's minds about the company. Microsoft does a very good job with Channel 9.

[Walter Lounsbery]

I hope that blogging is good for your life and your career! I certainly enjoy it.

But I'm not too sure about employers. If you aren't in Marketing, PR, Sales, or some other people-networking business, your employer may not appreciate your efforts. Worse, even technically backwards hiring managers are now searching for some personal history on the Internet.

The bottom line: if they make the effort to read your writing, is it because they treat it as free and open public speech, or a potential problem? Perception biased by prejudice is a bad thing.

Given that we can't cure our addiction to blogging, is the better strategy to openly talk about the subject with potential employers? Put it out there, try to settle any open questions? Turn any negatives into positives?

The next decade will be very interesting for the blogging community. Or perhaps we'll all be blogging as John or Jane Smith.