The New York Times > Job Market > Before Applying, Check Out the Blogs

The New York Times > Job Market > Before Applying, Check Out the Blogs
The article in the New York times talks about blogging as this brand new cool way of applying for jobs and being contacted for jobs. While I do not argue with the validity of the statement that this happens and the anecdotal evidence presented, what bothers me, is the theme of "this is soo new and good and wonderful!"

This phenomenon is not new (how good and wonderful it is, time will show, I doubt it will last long in its pure form once the branding begins, but I've just read "no logo" so its clear why this paranoia seems logical to me). This phenomenon, in fact, is simply another in a list of more and more elaborate iterations that started with personal web-pages, expanded with the coming of search engines, became more popular with job-search sites, was perfected by Craig's list (where at some point, several SF companies hired exclusively from Craig's list claiming they could advertise to exactly the right kind of people there and the response they got was far more personal. Similar claims were from the employees seeking jobs on the site).

Blogs are a different approach to the same problem of job-seeking, fine, maybe it is, but not SO different from previous online iterations of this process. In a way that it IS different is that the employee allows the company know a lot more about them than the company previously could. I am not sure that such levels of disclosure are actually a good thing. Granted, in "hip" and "cool" companies that are still growing this may be an advantage. However, words are a tricky medium especially in a case where they persist despite their authors once they are made public.

Lovely statement about 2 million people blogging by the way... It eerly reminds me of the hayday of muds where 2 million people were mudding and the level of engagement was dramatically changing everyone's lives too. 2 million people is less than 2 percent of the 250 million on this country... just a bit'o'perspective.