Your Blog Is Your Resume

I read a very interesting related article in the Harvard Business Review recently. I have taken to including my blog URLs on documentation that I submit for anything, and I’ve updated my resume to include them as well. However, for some social-media-skittish employers, I suspect the fact that you even have a blog might be enough to exclude you from the shortlist!

I discovered recently that I may have seriously damaged my husband’s employment prospects on our family blog. A prospective supplier who had come to try to sell my husband something had googled him and advised him of the information he had managed to glean about him (the odd thing was that, having gone to all that trouble, he tailored his presentation not one jot to suit the person he had thus researched). In my regular updates, I have repeatedly mentioned that he has been looking for a different job for 6 years, but has not even managed to secure an interview in most instances. Our suspicion has been that this has been largely due to his age (laws against ageism only kicked in here last October, but some people still find ways to work around them), and I have made mention of that, too.

So an employer who googles my husband will learn (a) that he hasn’t been shortlisted by several other prospective employers and (b)that he is outside of the age-range they’re seeking.

Oh my, that’s a horrible blog story! It would probably be enough to keep someone from blogging. I had lunch with some old friends at work and they said ‘oh, we’re keeping up with what’s going on with you because we read your blog.’ I immediately wondered if I said anything (negative) about where I used to work. What can come back to bite me? Ah, well. What’s done is done.

This is copied from people management (CIPD members mag)raising the question, Should employers use social networking sites to check job applicants’ backgrounds?

Social networking sites are personal and ‘not appropriate for recruiters’

Lucy Phillips
Issue date: 26 July 2007
Source: People Management magazine

Donna Miller will be speaking at the CIPD’s annual conference and exhibition in Harrogate on 18-20 September. To request a brochure, contact the CIPD • T 020 8612 6248 • http://www.cipd.co.uk/ace

Using social networking websites to research job candidates is the equivalent of “going into somebody’s house and searching through their cupboards”, according to Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s HR director for Europe.

Donna Miller told PM that information on sites such as Facebook and MySpace was personal and not appropriate for recruiters to use.

“I think a lot of students use these sites to meet people and to share pictures with friends, and it’s certainly not a way that people look for jobs,” she said. “They go to specific recruitment sites for that.”

A survey by financial services recruiter Joslin Rowe has found that 20 per cent of employers now use social networking sites to run searches on job applicants. The popularity of such sites has grown dramatically over the past year, with Facebook now boasting more than 3.5 million users in the UK, compared with 500,000 in October 2006.

Following consultation with staff, Enterprise introduced a company-wide policy preventing recruiters and other employees from accessing the sites last year. Existing checks on the professional areas of a candidate’s background were seen to be sufficient.

Miller said the policy was also an extra safeguard against discrimination. “While I agree that everything you put up on the internet is in the public domain and that everyone should be careful, I don’t feel it is appropriate for recruiters to look at all of it,” she said.

Miller added that the policy was in line with the organisation’s values of personal honesty and integrity.

Hi Lynn,
The word “copy” makes me a bit uncomfortable. I assume you mean ‘similar topic’ since the issue date for the CIPD article is July 26th and the (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/your-blog-is-your-resume.html) article I referenced is from July 9th and points to (http://bokardo.com/archives/the-blog-is-the-new-resume/) of April 19 which in turn points to (http://www.darowski.com/tracesofinspiration/2007/03/06/the-blog-is-the-new-resume/) March 6.

That said, I agree with Donna Miller but suspect many companies would not on the basic of public domain. The US is highly litigious so the threat of discrimination suggests employers may avoid this kind of search for making decisions. However, it’s equally hard to prove or disprove discrimination. One would have to show that all other qualifications/experiences/education being equal ‘but for’ the social networking content, they would’ve been hired. Thanks for the link to Donna’s information. Hooray for Enterprise!

Best-
Janet

Re the ‘copy’, probably a bad choice of word, just wanted to point out that CIPD had written about this too.

thought so thanks. I’m like the word police, no?

Words do make a difference. Just as long as after my interview the word police let me off with a caution. he he

I thought I should update my previous comment. Recently, my husband was contacted by a company in need of a new CIO. Having screened him, they then followed their internal protocols and put their recruitment agency onto him. The agent who contacted him asked him at some point if he had a blog. He mentioned that I had a few, including a family blog in which he featured. The agent then confessed that she had already googled him and found said family blog and asked him to relay her congratulations to me. So all is not doom and gloom it seems! Perhaps it was this post that did the trick: http://romeisfamily.blogspot.com/2007/05/let-me-tell-you-something-about-john.html

The wheels of the process are turning, and we shall see what transpires. In the meantime, I am praying fit to bust…

I’m just about to find out whether the content of my blog is good or bad for finding new roles. The company I was working for ceased trading at the end of last week so I’m now taking stock and starting to look for another job…..
Instead of consulting for the company, I’m now consulting with my fish in my aquarium on facebook. They are very wise!!
Any advice??