Why Blogging is better than a resume
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Imagine this scenario-
Mega corporation XYZ needs a skilled and professional rocket scientist. They have searched left and right for a talented rocket scientist and now the company recruiter is digging through hundreds of resumes saying “I’m the best rocket scientist there is”
Well that’s great. We’ve all read the personals page - “Interesting guy seeks intellectual lady”. Online resumes have become word centric descriptions of candidates that are often searched by computerized systems looking for the right keyword, the right education, or the right set of numbers. If any one of those factors is off our information may never see the light of day.
In the past few years however blogging has allowed individuals to create a constant and ever growing database of who they are and how they think. Rather than see a candidate for what they think they can do, you can read about how a candidate thinks and conveys information on a consistent basis.
Anyone of us could go out and hire someone to write up a fancy well worded resume and we may even be able to sit through a few interviews and sound like skilled and professional individuals, but blogging takes us to the next step of being able to prove and relay our original insight and ability over a duration. It also allows us to connect with industry professionals over time and build experience with them as individuals, sharing personal ideas and inspiration that cannot be related through a one page resume.
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I live in Silicon Valley, a land that is presumably all about creating the future.
There is one thing I have never understood with so many quests towards the latest and greatest. Why do employers still request resumes?
Resumes only speak about what you have done for someone else. If you as an employer really believe in creating things for the future, why would you concentrate so much on what somebody did in the past as opposed to what they can do for you today?
As a hiring manager myself, I rarely look at resumes. The concentration during recruitment, selection, and interviewing has to be on the current job. When spotting a candidate of interest, I make it clear and emphasize that our time together will be spent on what the 2 of us and our team are out to accomplish. Examples of success in a previous playfield may be of no relevance to my current situation.
I do this because far too many candidates express tremendous disgust with the obsession on the past from both resumes and behavioral interview questions. Fellow employers complain that so few candidates bother researching their firms and Web sites in advance. Speaking to candidates far from the falsified overly choreographed theatre of interviews, they tell me they want to focus on the new challenges they'll be facing with their next employer instead of rehashing their past.
The best blogs also tend to stay current and fresh. They can reveal far better what a candidate is currently thinking about and where he is targeting himself than resumes. Just like we declare certain things obsolete in a nanosecond in high-tech, it's time for the resume to die. A blog with the things latest on one mind, including one that describes the ideal industry and career situation can result in far better matches. (Besides, one question I always ask when conducting interviews is "What do you hope to accomplish by working for us?" A blog can provide that preview.)
