Writing for your future boss
The other day I added another comment to a posting I’d made. The comment I made was on one of my many postings about online social networking sites, in order to bolster the point I was trying to make I linked to Jakob Nielsen’s advice on blogging. Jakob Nielsen is considered by many to be the guru on website usability. He can also come across as dogmatic and unwilling to compromise or to allow for artistic creativity. I prefer Steve Krug and his book. None the less, I tried to incorporate Jokob’s advice and to that end added a picture of myself in the sidebar when he originally advocated it.
But it is the ninth point that inspired me to make this posting so I’ll quote it if you are feeling particularly lazy:
Whenever you post anything to the Internet — whether on a weblog, in a discussion group, or even in an email — think about how it will look to a hiring manager in ten years. Once stuff’s out, it’s archived, cached, and indexed in many services that you might never be aware of.
Years from now, someone might consider hiring you for a plum job and take the precaution of ‘nooping you first. (Just taking a stab at what’s next after Google. Rest assured: there will be some super-snooper service that’ll dredge up anything about you that’s ever been bitified.) What will they find in terms of naïvely puerile “analysis” or offendingly nasty flames published under your name?
Think twice before posting. If you don’t want your future boss to read it, don’t post.
I try to do this, maybe some people still don’t believe that, but I do proofread and edit my postings and emails, however sometimes things aren’t taken as you intended. Humor, particularly black humor or sarcasm can be misinterpreted or missed entirely especially when dealing with people for whom English isn’t their first language.
This point was driven home this morning during a phone interview I had with a potential employer. Both the people on the other end had read my blog and I got the impression they poked around a fair amount as I tried to refer them to my writing samples page and they seemed to have found it by themselves. I did link to it from my resume… They supposedly didn’t have a problem with the content or tone of my blog, it was considered a positive in fact, however I can see how it is also a liability.
I know all about discretion and restraint. I even used to work for a military contractor and they had no complaints about me and that says a lot. Apparently some people back at Sauder noticed and appreciated this. Of course I also value honesty and silence though golden need not be maintained forever, especially when it was never for my benefit…
Another thing I’ve blogged about is the keywords people use to end up at my website. I make a casual check of this almost everyday and it can be a source of amusement. It also allows me to see if anything I write is being read. It also allows me to hypothesis if any potential employers may be checking up on me.
I’ve had a homepage online for over ten years. I also always post as Muskie or Muskie McKay in online forums. As a result there is a lot of potential results should someone Google my name. One advantage of publishing a blog or maintaining a website is in building a personal brand. If you don’t have a blog or your own website you are entirely reliant on other people saying what you want said about you.
To that end I’ve tried to be more professional of late in my blogging. I seem to oscillate between postings that are somewhat professional with ones that are not. A subset of my postings are only of potential interest to a few specific people, but I wrote them suspecting who might be reading. I am not however clever or conniving. I try to be honest and forthright. Once someone who I had corresponded with extensively online through a mailing list, posted after getting to know me offline, that I write exactly how I talk. I told Tom McCarthy that I took it as a compliment but I think he intended it as a bit of joke at my expense. ;-)
I also try to help people. To that end when I spend a lot of time gathering information, information that I think might be of use to other people, I freely pass it on. Of late that often means a blog posting. This is one of the reasons my blog has so many topics. I’m not trying to come across as an expert on any specific topic. I let the search engine spiders do their thing and I live with the results of my actions.
So if I suddenly write a posting on citizen marketing or how I BarBQ’ed ribs, it is because I’m interested in that topic at that time. It is not an attempt to manipulate anybody or anything. I really do read the Church of the Customer blog diligently and link to it often. We did have readings and discussions on word-of-mouth promotion in my marketing classes. Specifically we read “The Buzz on Buzz” by Renée Dye in Darren Dahl‘s class for instance and I really do barbecue a lot and am an excellent cook.
I’m always trying to become a better blogger and writer in general. That said I don’t always practice what I preach. I tend to ramble. I know it is better to give Google and your real human audience focused succinct pieces of writing, but blogging is definitely self indulgent and possibly therapeutic as well… I have a lot to say sometimes. I’m trying harder to write shorter more focused blog postings, to limit myself to one link per paragraph or to put the links at the end of the posting, but it isn’t always possible or necessary in a personal web log.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 10:03 am filed under: Blogging, Internet, Search Engines, Self Marketing and tagged: brand, career, perception, self marketing, writing, writing advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
