Job Opportunities. Bloggers Need Not Apply.
Discrimination. Oh yes, thats what i would call it. But there must be a reason for that. I mean bloggers in general have mutated to become worse than even journalist. So, what is it with job seekers who also write blogs?
In a recent visit to chronicle careers, i came across this topic Bloggers Need Not Apply By IVAN TRIBBLE and i couldnt help but read through a very long article that went on to give examples of such instances whereby the employers actually went to Google to investigate the online activities of their applicants by tying the applicants name as the query. They employers actually use the content, to evaluate the job seeker, and that is really shocking.
I really do understand the stance of this employers, especially for the fact, that bloggers talk to much about themselves and their life on their blogs. We would discover that a lot of bloggers, just get the whole idea of freedom of expressing oneself wrong. Its the International network, for goodness sake. And anybody, infact everybody can read your stuff, whether protected or not, and things that are private should be private. And they should totally stay offline.
My advice to all bloggers out there,is if you know that you are going to be a “job seeker” in the future, avoid blogging on too personal stuff, especially things that are just meant to be private.
And here is a little excerpt from Chronicles to give you an idea of the degree of the situation here.
We’ve seen the hapless job seekers who destroy the good thing they’ve got going on paper by being so irritating in person that we can’t wait to put them back on a plane. Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know “the real them”—better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn’t want to know more.
When bosses don’t listen and workers prefer not to talk to their superiors, you end up with cases like this. It isn’t fair that the boss wouldn’t understand. I think the bosses soon should use the personnel’s blog as a tool to find what’s lacking or worst committed in the office by the personnel then just read how the personnel hates work or something.
Cheers.
Comment by dannyFoo — 7/18/2005 @ 4:36 pm
You have a good point there, but then again you shouldnt forget the fact that the internet can cause a lot of damages, because virtually everybody reads it. Anonymous complain box in a working environment would be great. But blogging about it is not good for the companies image.
And infact i wouldnt allow my employees to blog about the wrongdoings of the company in any aspect. Rather i would prefer them raising issues that bother them in my companies weekly meetings. The internet remember is a global library. Your customers, your potential ones, and your competitors are reading it.
Freedom of speech shouldnt just be abused, especially when damages can be caused.
Comment by kayode muyibi — 7/18/2005 @ 4:43 pm
Interesting stuff! I’ll have to agree with you; freedom of speech should have its limits. In the US, its against most company regulation now for workers to blog during working hours.
As for evaluating workers by reading their blogs, I guess potential employers are ‘evolving along with the changing times’
I still think its a bit far fetched though. Personally, I don’t mince my private life with my business life, but someone reading my blog might think I’m psychotic. So that method has a potential of backfiring, in that employers might actually miss out on productive workers (such as myself, hehehe…)
Comment by dt — 7/18/2005 @ 9:54 pm