My Blog Got Me a New Job
My wife and I just arrived home from a 6 day trip to Kauai. The reason for the trip? We were celebrating my new job.
For me, one of the most amazing things about my new job is that the job found me through my blog. I am going to be writing more about the job and the amazing company I am joining over then next few days, however, in the short term, I’d like to focus on describing how this blog has helped me move on to the next stage in my career.
Building a network
According to my web server site stats, the article about my departure from Ernst & Young has already been viewed over 800 times and this blog has already received over 116,000 visitors this year. Although the site started off slowly, last month, the site received over 22,000 unique visitors. Because of the blog, I was asked to speak at 5 conferences this year, and was approached by a major publisher about writing a book. By writing the blog, I also had an opportunity to connect with other people who specialized in how this technology can be used within the Enterprise. Those people included the Enterprise Irregulars, professors at leading business schools and the CEOs of numerous technology start-ups.
Why am I giving you all this background information?
First, when compared with a hit blog, such as Scoble’s, my traffic is almost nothing. I’m sure there are many day’s when Robert gets more visitors in a day that I get in a year.
However, I still managed to get a new and exciting job with a company that I am really impressed with and a team that I really like.
How big is your personal network?
Think about it this way. Say you write the world’s best resume, and a stellar cover letter. Send it off to one company. You can reuse parts of the resume, and some of the cover letter for a second company. Are you going to reach 100,000 companies within a year? Are you going to be able to demonstrate clearly how excited and interested you are in what ever it is that you do? Are you going to be able to show those potential employers how you think, how you handle yourself in tough situations, and truly how much value you can add?
Hiring a blogger means hiring a known quantity
Let’s look at it from the other side. Imagine you are a prospective employer, and you can compare two identical candidates. The first candidate has simply handed you a 2 page resume + 1 page cover letter. The second candidate has done the same, but they have also included a link to their blog. Now, further imagine that although the blog gives a more detailed picture, it does not change your opinion of the second candidate.
Which candidate would you choose? My guess is that you would choose the blogger simply because they are a known quantity. When you hire someone, you do not know exactly how they are going to work out. There is a quality distribution. The resume, cover letter and interview give you some information. Based on that information, you can guess on average how the candidate is going to work out. You might guess the exact same quality level for the blogger candidate, but because you have more information from all the blog posts, all the links, searching on their site for instances of how they have handled angry comments, you get a much better idea of how that candidate is going to perform.
Thus, hiring a blogger is a lower risk proposition because you have more information and a better idea of how they are going to perform.
Job? Job? I bet it’s more than that. I’m guessing it’s a whole new way of life.
Good luck. Hope everything works out brilliantly.
Great blog man. I love your ideas on Enterprise 2.0 fostering innovation. It’s more about a cultural change to the way enterprises operate than anything.
Good luck with your new endeavors.
Congratulations. Always insightful.
Your “Elevators should have undo buttons” was brilliant. Good Luck.
Rob,
Congrats on the new gig! I can’t wait to here more about it;) Have to say I love that you find the new gig by blogging!
-Julia
Congrats. I also got my job via my blog, and was hired through a posting on my employers blog (Union Square Ventures). It’s a terrific networking tool, and a great way to perform due diligence on a candidate.
Umm, how many people are going to post here: I lost my job because of my blog. When a prospective employer saw the [political views | sexual orientation | flaming | gossip ], that position evaporated in an instant!
Seems like confirmation bias is being used.
Thats kool!
SO what about Full time Blogging? dats better rite
Rod,
Fantastic stuff. Congrats to you, Peter, Jeff and the Teqlo team.
This is my first time here. I like so far what I’ve read and you all seem to be very inspiring people.
Raul
Rod,
FYI according to your Sitemeter statistics, you had about 8,000 visitors in November and about 12,000 pageviews.
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s21rodboothby&r=33
Ed,
Sitemeter isn’t perfect. I get my stats directly from the awstats.pl tool provided by my web host. It is amazing the tools that exist for open, standards compliant systems, such as Apache.
You should see the stats I can get on my Lotus Notes-based blog. I can report dozens of different ways on traffic (both HTTP and RSS, google hits, site searches, referrers, pageviews per page, etc.). And I always have those stats with me, in a replicated database.
I run google analytics too, just to get some different sense of things. Google does well at mapping network locations, domain names, etc.
just discovered this blog with your google video. It’s a great blog with some great info. I have downloaded your white paper on Web Office.
Good luck with the job, hope everything goes well for you in 2007.
Hi,
I am doing a seminar this Friday evening the 26th at Lydgate Park Pavilion in Kauai and thought I would surf the web for blogs about Kauai and came across yours.
Congrats on what you have accomplished. You deserve it.
Al Diaz
http://www.thetitusconcept.com
I believe we will soon see the advent of the wiki resume. You post the job description, highlight your skills against the job, have your persoanl references comment on your relevant abilities, then wait for your prospective employer to join in with questions. Wish me luck. I need to work where there’s a wiki.
Wow, Seth Finklestein, you mean what works positively for one person may backfire for another? You mean different outcomes for different bloggers is a possibility? You mean life is unfair? Really? Gosh, I had no idea ;-)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Leave+a+Reply%22+%22Anti-spam+word:+(Required)*%22&hl=en&newwindow=1&start=570&sa=N&filter=0
Congrats! Great blog. http://www.gimmearaise.com