Does having a blog help you in getting hired or … fired?
If you believe that Robert Scoble is the most powerful geek blogger in the world, you will agree that having a popular blog will increase your ‘market value’ in a recruiter’s eyes beyond one’s imagination and will get you almost any job that you want. Not only Scoble, a lot of people / companies including Tekriti have immensely benefitted because of the blogs that they maintain.
But is there a flip side to it? I contributed my thoughts to a Financial Express article by Banasree Purkayastha which talks about the fairness of judging a prospective employee based on his / her blog or another online journal.
I think the article covers the subject very articulately. When I am hiring somebody, particularly a senior team-member, I do a quick google search on the person or read up few of his / her blog-posts (if there exists one) to know the mental make up of the person. I can live with a few incapabilities or technological short-comings in a person but the attitude is something which cannot be compromised. For one potentially brilliant guy who doesn’t have the right attitude, I will not let the company culture be affected. And the blog lets me get that information quite easily / accurately.
As I said in the article – the fact that a employer can find out about a prospective employee through his / her blog works well for both the parties. The advantages for an employer are pretty obvious. For an employee, it’s even better as they are likely to perform best in a place where they are hired after knowing that his / her mindset and of others in that company are aligned.
From the article:
More and more recruiters and employers are checking out the online profiles of potential candidates in a bid to filter out the ‘not-so-fitting’ employee. According to a recent survey by ExecuNet, an executive job search and recruiting network in the US, 35% of executive recruiters said they dropped a job candidate because of information uncovered online. That is up from 26% just one year ago. Another 77% of respondents said they use search engines to learn more about prospective employees. And the trend is making inroads in India too.
“I think employers in India have begun to do a reference check through blogs/online journals, etc. We, at Tekriti, have done it a few times. We are hiring based on the profile of the person and the position,” says Ashish Kumar, an entrepreneur, who is a keen blogger himself.
Recruiters can and do often read about their potential employees on the Net. And ‘digital dirt’, all that dirty linen now available for public consumption via the Net, could spike your chances of getting that dream job. Your online reputation precedes you in the digital age, say experts, pointing out that recruiters regularly use search engines like Yahoo! and Google to find out about the ‘real’ you.
“I think blogs/online journals give a very good idea of a person. Blogosphere is built on the assumption that people, in general, are genuine and they write things that they really feel about, and the assumption is very valid. A blog tells us a lot many things about a person, like his mental setup, if he likes to work in a team or works better as an individual, etc. At times, it also gives information on anything fake the person might have written on the resume,” says Kumar.
Read the complete post here. I wrote a similar post at GoingOn and Syven made a good comment, which is copied below:
The recruitment industry isn’t today exactly the epitomy of perfection, but times change mindsets and what looks like an act of negligence today could transform ito wise cultural language tommorrow. It is true that the future is always looking backwards and I don’t want to paint bloggers as martyrs, but when a massive shift in public opinion occurs, recruiters will begin to hire those who show their hearts, rather than hide behind their glossy personal brand. Remember it was only 50 years ago a negro guy in America wasn’t allowed to use the same toilet as his white counterpart. Mindsets like that changes with experiences and time, don’t they?
Update: Chetan has a nice post on his views on the subject, which is opposite to mine. Though I don’t agree exactly (as noted in the comments on this post), he has some good points.
What about the argument that a person tries to live by his blog not normally possible in his work or professional life. Just because you have the convenience to dig up someone doesn’t mean you’re reading his or her mind.
People have radically different views and hobbies often not at all related to the work. People might be using blogs to vent as a channel their stored energy to, if not nothing, to be themselves.
By encroaching on personal domains such as blogs, you would only hurt bloggers in their right to freedom of expression without worrying about HR people peeking.
Don’t forget that you have the ultimate power to fire someone on grounds of insubordination, rotten apple attitude. Then why intrude the personal space? By doing so, you’ll only see or will eventually be seeking fake personas.
Chetan, I agree with some of your points and appreciate that the decision is not that easy. I don’t think that blogs are just personal – it’s little more ‘public’ than ‘personal’ really!
Firing is one of the most difficult thing for any company – I believe that it’s better to take precaution and not hire anybody potentially misfit rather than hiring and then firing.
IMHO – misinterpreting somebody’s blog in a negative way and not hiring that person is better than deliberately avoiding the blog and potentially making a bad hire.
“IMHO – misinterpreting somebody’s blog in a negative way and not hiring that person is better than deliberately avoiding the blog and potentially making a bad hire. ”
I tend to disagree, Ashish.
One, you are being unfair by misinterpreting someone’s personal (no matter how publicly available they are, they are still personal)thoughts with out giving that person a chance to explain what prompted those thoughts. I agree no one would like to hire some one who is blogging about porn (no pun intended), but disqualifying some one who might “sound to be misfit” by just reading a few intimate thoughts might be considered unethical & maybe illegal(?).
Second & more important, as Chetan said, you can always fire them, if they really are misfits, but not giving them a chance, you probably are hurting the organization more, since a person might be totally different in work life than he/she is in “blog” life.
Just my thoughts, but if by reading blogs you could judge a person, a whole lot of HR personnel would be outta jobs themselves!!!
Hi Ashish:
> it’s little more ‘public’ than ‘personal’ really!
They may be public but in a particular sense of: seeking like-minded thinkers, friends, or finding synonymity with what they think is right or wrong and so on. This employer thing sort of throws a spanner on a spinning wheel. I say ‘personal’ in the context of not-work related. As, I mentioned in my post: do read, but don’t form an opinion entirely or primarily based on it’.
I think conventional method of interviewing a candidate in its thoroughness [in subject and in attitude, problem solving, team play tests] are far better tools to judge the candidate for a specific job.
In a market where the talent is direly sought in addition to the right attitude, it’s hard on everybody. If one were to limit selection of candidates by reading blogs, it is not just the prospective employee who is at a loss, but it will be the employer who stands to lose a prospective good employee more.
I therefore say, if HR managers do a thorough job while interviewing [develop a thorough company guideline on tests to be conducted], giving them [analytical, logical reasoning, technical, common-sense] problems and see how candidates solve it [and such other methods, there are aplenty], then you would read his/her blog only as additional interests [like the last paragraph of his/her cv that says interests/hobbies].
> Firing is one of the most difficult thing for any company
Yes, I agree, and in the end, it’s always about weighing pros and cons. Utilize the probation period if you need to weed out the misfits.
Anyway, it was nice to discuss these issues in the wake of technology enabling what is possible today. Call me a traditional modernist, but I prefer weighing the right to do something, than using a technology just because it is available. It may ease the work, but it surely does not guarantee a fool-proof solution.
Shobhit / Chetan, good points. I think the difference is that you guys are stressing more on the ‘personal’ part and I am stressing more on the ‘work-related’ stuff. So – I am not bothered if the person writes about porn or intimate stuff. But I will be bothered if the person writes that they have a certain opinion about certain technology / domain / approach (doesn’t matter whether it’s positive or negative) but say something exactly opposite during the interview. Or what if the person claims to be in the current job for 3 years and I find out from the blog that he / she has changed 3 more jobs since then (this is a real case).
Though that one answer will not decide the outcome of an interview, it is alarming since there are chances that the person might respond similarly in future. It might be okay in case of freshers or people who have just started their career. But if I am hiring a senior resource, I need to be extra careful – because they will / should have a big effect on the company-culture also. So, yes, the companies have a trouble finding the right set of people because of the excessive competition but I will rather wait a bit longer and be more sure about the person than hiring somebody where I have my doubts.
And, Shobhit, I am not ‘judging’ the person by their blog. I am just trying to find if the person is a fit or not in that particular role – and, more than often, it is the last thing to be done (after the technical / HR rounds). I am of a strong opinion that recruitment is a specialist’s job. I can make-shift and help in the process but I may not be the best person to drive that process – and, now that you mention, I believe that it should be the responsibility of a HR person to be reading the blogs and analyzing. It’s just another tool for them.
Without any formal procedure for “blog analysis”, I wonder how can you simply put your faith into finding about someone’s personality by analysing his/her blogs. As for inconsistency between what a person says and writes on the blog, that sounds more like a lie detector test! There are questions, mannerisms, and psychoanalysis tests developed by experts to find that out. Rummaging for blogs, in my opinion, sounds desperate. A sneak, if you will, into someone’s life, which he or she may not intend to reveal. It will be sad, if upon reading this, people start creating blogs, only to exaggerate their skills, and to get some more points in an interview.
Sach1tb, thanks for the comments but I am not sure if I agree with you. How is reading blogs sneaking into somebody’s personal life, if they wrote it with their real name? IMHO, if somebody is writing their real name on the blog, they don’t mind those things being known to people. Else they will write with a pseudonym. So, it’s really not a lie-detector test which is the motive – though it may be one of the outcome.
Regarding somebody exaggerating their skills on the blog – it may again not be that successful. Remember I mentioned that this is done in the end and is just one of the criteria for selection. They still have to pass the initial rounds. And something written on a popular blog gets more points than a not-so-popular one because of the credibility factor associated. If you read the HT article, one line that I contributed is “Blogs becomes popular when people write their true feelings. The readers, over time, can make out if somebody is faking or are writing their true feelings.”
I believe that the day, you will start needing a formal process for analyzing blogs – the blogs will start losing its charm. Do I see somebody creating a not-so-ethical business out of providing blog-writing service on their customer’s behalf sometime in future? Well – if we see blogs serving as a replacement of resumes in future, it won’t be surprisinng to see such a business come out. Oops… that will be sad.
Ashish, I can see your point. You are right about blogs being public domain, but most of what I see is sharing opinion more than profiles. So yes, the things people don’t mind being known are their views, not necesarrily an affiliation of those views with their name. And well, who knows where this may go — orkut, myspace… I can see though that you share my concern. In fact you put a scarier scenario…
My only fear is that not everyone will be as discreet about where to put blogs in the recruitment process. Hell, people may even get lazy and base all their judgment on blogs. And while a nice blog may get some brownie points, a not-so-good blog, may draw sudden conclusions about what a candidate is like when all there is to it is that someone doesn’t enjoy writing.
Much as I am concerned about companies using blogs for recruitment, I think recruiters too should be careful or they stand to loose more than gain.
oh,i like here
i will come here again!
welcome to my website and take look~
you will get fun!
http://www.heyjokes.com
I am hunting jobs and i never put my blog on my resume, too risky. Plus, unless i was going for a journalistic job, it won’t help.
Blogs are a good way to see if someone you hire has some passion. I have interviewed THAT many (*making wide hand gesture*) candidates and have more often than not, found myself sitting on the other side of a graduate robot. There’s just so little passion, or hobbies, or anything that might identify the person from, say, larvae, except larvae know more C++. Or less, depending on the type of larva.
I think a person with a blog, regardless of quality of english, heavy metal affinity (heck, that’s a plus with me), obsession with politics, randomness of hour, statelessness of time etc. – is far more interesting to have around than your average gloomy “my hobby is cricket” Rajus.
Why do you need passion? Er…in companies like Infy, you don’t. You put yer head down and get down to it, and go home in the evening. Period.
You need passion in a startup. Early-stage tech decisions like solid architecture involve heated discussions on frameworks, tools, code techniques etc. You get a “Cricket Raju”, you’re finito – the poor guy will only do exactly as he’s told; the ability to question the decision, look for better alternatives, or plug in already available code is simply absent. This is sabotage for a startup – don’t hire the lemmings.
GoRecroot (www.gorecroot.com) is an intelligent, global, multiple sector, jobs to resume sourcing and mapping engine. GoRecroot is multi dimensional, multi media (images, voice, video and text-data) and mobile enabled.
Powered by custom algorithms and cognitive search sciences, GoRecroot brings the recrooter (recruiter) and the jobber (job seeker) to actionable results in short spans of time and exponential savings.
GoRecroot has specialized feature sets for:
1.Recruiters, placement consultants, Corporate HR, staffing, agencies – Recrooters
2.Job seekers, candidates, job applicants – Jobbers
3.HR branding specialized web products – for corporates, recrooters, agencies
4.Job position and resume referrers – agents
>>>>What is special for Recrooters?
Laser sharp jobs to resume sourcing and mapping
No block or advance payments – Innovative on demand micro payments model
No sign up or account access fee
Online job order creation wizard
Specialized products for Recrooters to attract skills
Revolutionary web partnership program for Recrooters
Create value and earn from your resume archives
Mobile integration – comprehensive business features, SMS on the go
Recrooter groups, events and blog
Membership and reward points
Recrooter contest and fabulous prizes
Photo, audio, video – know your target jobber better
More features and benefits coming soon
>>>> What is special for Corporates?
No sign up fees or block advance payments
No restrictions on number of users in your account
Micro payments that will soothe your budget pains
Specialized products for your recruiting outreach programs
Global network of recrooters – best attention and reaction times for your job orders
Mobile integration – comprehensive business features
Mobile and SMS products for recruiting and HR brand building
Multi dimensional mapping, filtering, slice and dice – huge time savings
Photo, audio, video added in resumes – know more before you hire
>>>> What is special for Jobbers?
We bring global recrooters together – you have your best shot here
Photo resumes, Voice resumes, Video resumes
Specialized products for you to target opportunities and choose your career path
Mobile integration – comprehensive job search features
Mobile and SMS alerts
Custom resume creation wizard
Powerful multi dimensional job search
Tell a friend contests
Working closely with the recruiting industry and focusing on business pain areas, GoRecroot brings results and solutions for recruiters, corporates and for Jobbers. GoRecroot is purely an online enterprise and is supported by a fast growing community of affiliates from around the world.
To know more about the GoRecroot ‘effect’ on recruiting and job searching, to talk to a vibrant community of progressive recrooters, blog at http://www.gorecroot.com
GoRecroot is backed by a US based multinational with around 50+ person years of global staffing solutions experience.
To contact us visit “www.gorecroot.com”
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article fired?, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.