Job by Blog

Blogs are transforming recruiting and business. It is startling but extremely exciting. If you are a .Net Developer in New Zealand for example the blogosphere has opened up huge opportunities for you to get your thoughts, knowledge and personal brand out to the marketplace. At the same time it allows you to gain as much from other bloggers.

IMHO, the company that seems to "get" blogging the best in terms of recruiting, retention and building brands towards software developers is Microsoft. The number of bloggers from and focusing on Microsoft tools is considerable globally and in New Zealand. People like Sean McBreen, Nic Wise and Paul Andrew. As a Recruiter I can only be impressed by their dedication to their craft by publishing their thoughts and sharing them with their colleagues in an open fashion.

Furthermore, Microsoft have some excellent recruiting blogs from the USA for technical and marketing and Australia. It makes them so much more attractive I believe to candidates and at the same time makes it easier for them to get a human side to the process. Furthermore, serious candidates will glean every detail from them to base their decision on. At the end of the day everyone wants a win-win situation so if the candidate can get the kind of information that they are giving they are bound to make a better decision.

Does this threaten the third party recruiting industry? Definitely, but it also provides lots of opportunities as well. The opportunity for your company to present it's culture to prospective employees. It will put more pressure on companies to be their best because good candidates will have more information to base their decisions on than ever before.

Comments

[Tim Haines]

I couldn't agree with you more. I was having trouble finding .Net developers to work on a few projects for me. I tried advertising on my blog, and pretty soon I had resumes to choose from - I got a high number of suitable and strong candidates reply. See http://ims.co.nz/blog/archive/2005/02/18/393.aspx for the job ad - now filled. :-)

I should also mention that Nic Wise - who you linked to - keeps an OPML list of NZ .Net bloggers. You can import the OPML file into your RSS reader or Bloglines account. Get it here - http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/blog/nzdotnetblogger.opml

[Ntsike]

One question that always helped me was: How do my skills and credentials stack up against the type of person you expect to hire in this position?

This always seems to generate an open reply from the interviewer and I get a flavor of if I’m the right person for the position I’m interviewing for. If I’m under-qualified, in the interviewers opinion, then maybe there are other skills that I could discuss that would be relevant to the job requirements or maybe I will decide the job is not for me.

If I’m overqualified, them maybe it is not a good fit or I can downplay some of my talents to assure the interviewer that I a good candidate for the position.

I’ve got a lot of juice out of that question to help me determine if I’m a good fit for the company and if position matches my needs.