Yeah, yeah, I know I’ve done this before … a burst of blogging and then a long silence. This time I have fewer other distractions. No full-time job. I’m committed to being a full-time blogger and growing A Storied Career. Hope you’ll come along for the ride.
For the first month or so, I’ll be catching up on stuff I’ve wanted to post during my long absence, so dedicated story fans may see material they already know about – though I hope you’ll find it presented in a fresh format.
Inspired by the Social Media Resume of Bryan Person, described in the previous entry – though more modeled on Rohit Bhargava’s Social Media Bio – I’ve created my own, another step in socially constructing my online identity. I still need to fill in lots of details at the various social networking sites.
Editor’s note: This article is the first of two parts. Part II provides tips and examples for using a blog as a resume.
Through the use of a variety of online tools — blogs, wikis, social-networking sites, portfolios, podcasts, Youtube videos, and more — individuals, especially younger people, are socially constructing their identities in ways unimagined a dozen or so years ago.
Where a dedicated careerist of old constructed a job-seeking identity through a resume and a few other printed materials disseminated to audiences that seem puny by today’s standards, postmillennial upwardly mobile types are establishing their career identities to vast global audiences using the tools of the so-called Web 2.0, defined in part by Web guru Tim O’Reilly as comprising an “architecture of participation.” The concept of Web 2.0 “suggests that everyone … can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves,” writes Andrew Keen in The Daily Standard.
And recruiters are responding. Case in point is the notion of the blog as a replacement or accompaniment for a resume. Sarah E. Needleman reported on the Career Journal site that Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., recruitment manager, had filled an estimated 125 corporate jobs by reading blogs. Well-known recruiting blogger Heather Hamilton, a staffing manager at Microsoft, noted in her blog that “recruiters are searching blogs specifically for resumes.” Recruiters who responded to blog postings on the topic of blogs as replacements for resumes made such comments as:
“We’ve hired two people fresh out of college in the past four months that we found through their blogs — one didn’t even have a formal resume. Frankly, he didn’t need one. A blog trumps a resume every single time.”
“Our stance is that blogging is important — at least in our medium — and we are developing a strategy around it. We are conducting a search for a Marketing Director right now — if an applicant doesn’t blog, or at least contribute heavily, it’s fair to say that we are going to pass them by.”
The concept of the blog as resume has been the subject of several articles in 2006 and 2007, most of them, appropriately, blog postings with numerous follow-up comments by blog readers and posters. Dave Lefkow’s 2006 entry on ERE.net (a site for executive recruiters) entitled My Blog is My Resume (registration may be required to see the full article), talks about “the changing dynamics of the Web’s second generation.” His article’s implications for job-seekers are apparent in these excerpts:
Privacy is no longer an issue. This generation seems quite comfortable
publishing all of the gory details of their lives online. Some of these details will shock you. Get used to workers who are perfectly functioning members of the work world, but who perhaps make decisions in their personal lives that you find appalling.
Many job seekers, growing up in the level playing field that is the innovation economy, will often expect to be judged by their ideas, not their experience. Resumes will become irrelevant (or at best, a meaningless formality that describes your work history, not who you are).
Why are some employers and recruiters coming to see tools like blogs as more revealing and authentic than resumes? One blog commenter explains: “Think about it — a resume is one or two pages, of flat, static information. A blog is an interactive space where you can
really see inside of a prospect’s head — their ability to innovate, think, and communicate. You not only find out what they’ve done for work, but what their passions are, and frankly if they’re the type of person you think would fit into your organization.”
Another commenter noted that the new generation craves personal contact. A blog provides a way to move beyond a resume’s “one to two pages of flat, static information” and create a sense of personal contact. When you reader a blogger’s work, you often have a sense of
knowing him or her even though you’ve never met.
Lefkow’s blog entry and indeed the entire discussion of the idea of blogs as replacements for resumes seems to have originated with an entry on Scobleizer, the blog of Robert Scoble, who noted that he hadn’t needed a resume to get his most recent job and implied that he didn’t expect to need one in the future. Scoble also asserted that his Wikipedia
entry takes the place of a resume. This brief posting elicited 59 comments. Similarly, Adam Darowski in his blog, Traces of Inspiration, submitted an entry entitled The Blog is the New Resume, and Joshua Porter followed with an identically titled posting on his blog, Bokardo, both of which generated extensive comments that provide glimpses into a future in which blogs — or other tools — might take the place of resumes – or not.
Darowski wrote, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have more than a vague bulleted list of accomplishments before actually picking up the phone to call the person? There is. There’s blogging. Blogging is the perfect way for a candidate to give an employer a more detailed sales pitch — to show they can ‘talk the talk’ (as opposed to just fill a resume with buzzwords).”
Porter added a five-point list of the advantages blogs have over resumes, including a blog’s ability to represent the individual, its archival quality, and the blogger’s editorial control over it. One of his commenters noted that the editorial control enables the blogger to
go back into archived entries and update or revise them.
Among other pro-blog-as-resume points made by commenters:
Darowski proved his point when he was hired by a new company, whose hiring manager wrote of Darowski’s blog,
“While Adam’s cover letter and resume provided a telling introduction, his blog was the real page turner. I learned he thinks beyond the immediate problem, he self motivates, he aggressively educates himself, he aggressively educates those around him and he’s a Red Sox fan. I would have discovered some of this eventually from the interview, the references and various other communications. But in the blog, it all became part of the first impression, helping him stand out from the crowd early on.”
Ram Prasad, creator of the MegaLinux blog reported: “I have been fortunate enough to have gotten a job because of my blog.”
Not all of those who commented on the Scoble, Lefkow, Darowski, and Porter blog entries agreed that blogs are the best alternatives to resumes – or even that resumes should be replaced:
Final Thoughts
So, bottom line, which should you have — a resume or a blog? Both, for now. Many in the career field predict the death of the resume, but for now, it’s still expected in most job-seeking venues. But a blog, carefully handled, communicates 24/7 to a global audience your personality, passion, expertise, skill in expressing yourself, sense of humor, and often, your fit with a company or industry. While blogs are more embraced — and even expected — in some industries more than others, they comprise one more tool that will get your name and expertise out there and boost your job search.
Blogs also have the advantage of what Scoble calls Bloggings’s Six Pillars, six key differences between blogging and any other communications channel. Blogs are publishable, findable, social (because the blogosphere is one big conversation), viral (meaning they spread information quickly), syndicatable, and linkable (potentially many other blogs will link to yours). Of these pillars, only publishability and findability apply to resumes.
Update, as of Nov. 29: I believe many of the goodies associated
with the book release are still available.
Denning’s book is a centerpiece of “Stories Reveal the Soul of Companies” by Barbara Rose.
Steve Denning’s new book The Secret Language of Leadership:
How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (Jossey-Bass)
was released on October 15, 2007. I’m one of the
folks offering bonus gifts for those who buy the book (see below).
Here’s what other leadership experts have said about the book:
Financial Times: “If business leaders do not immediately
grasp the vital insights offered by this book, both they and their
organizations are doomed.”– Stefan Stern, Financial Times,
August 29, 2007.
Jim Kouzes: “I highly recommend you get it today and
read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely different
kind of day if you do. –Jim Kouzes, Co-author of
the best-selling, The Leadership Challenge and A Leader’s
Legacy
James MacGregor Burns: “I don’t think I have ever read a more
compelling preface. And best of all, the advice Denning
gives to the reader about speaking and writing is exemplified
in the way he has written this impressive book.”
–James MacGregor Burns, Author of Leadership
Larry Prusak: “Engaging and erudite, this book draws on very wide
reading and research to help any leader or manager master
the arts of narrative in a way that is both pragmatic and
original.”
–Larry Prusak, Co-author, What’s the Big Idea? and Working Knowledge
To celebrate the launch of the book on Oct. 15, I joined
with Steve and other colleagues, including Larry Prusak,
Jim Kouzes, Seth Kahan, Kevin Eikenberry, Steven Sonsino,
Rob Cross Annette Simmons, Chip Heath, Katalina Groh,
Madelyn Blair, Cliff Atkinson, Shawn Callahan, Svend-Erik Engh,
Lori Silverman, Stan Garfield, and the International Leadership
Association — in offering to purchasers of the book an impressive
array of supplementary bonus tools on leadership, storytelling and
knowledge management, at no additional cost to you.
Here’s how to take advantage of the offer:
you can get the book and all the supplementary leadership tools,
at:
http://www.stevedenning.com/launch.html
Check it out. I think you’ll find this offer
of considerable interest.
PS. Feel free to share this offer with friends and colleagues.
See the list of bonus gifts in the extended entry.
BONUS GIFTS (some may no longer be available)
LEADERSHIP TOOLS
NARRATIVE TOOLS
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS
COACHING AND MENTORING SESSIONS;
STEVE DENNING’S BONUS TOOLS
Update: Above are the books that have come out of Joni Cole’s Day Diary project. I submitted an entry on March 27, 2007, my birthday, and Joni was kind enough to send me a birthday greeting. The book from the 2007 project is The Watercooler Diaries (my submission wasn’t chosen), while the other is from a similar project in Jun 2003.
The makers of Lady Speed Stick® 24/7 and author Joni Cole of the series This Day in the Life: Diaries from Women across America are partnering on the first National Day Diary Project. Joni Cole was having a bad day when she conceived the idea for the This Day in the Life book series. Trying to deal with a serious illness in her family, job woes and a child who refused to wear socks in the winter, she wondered if anyone else was feeling so low. What were other women doing and feeling and thinking on the very same day? And so This Day in the Life was born out of self-pity, curiosity and a need to connect.
Submissions for the March 27 diary date can be entered online from March 27-April 6, 2007, to qualify for a chance at publication.
I submitted a diary entry on March 27 because it happens to be my birthday!
You can read more about the diary project here
Here’s an article I recently wrote for Quint Careers:
If you’re confused about what to do with your career — or what to do next with your career — and you haven’t gained insight from taking assessments , there is another way. You can learn more about yourself, gain insight into the best career for you, and plot out how to get there through creating stories.
A small but growing collection of research, for example, has looked at using story and narrative in career counseling. “Psychotherapy is based on the premise that we each create our own life story from the time we are born,” wrote Jack Maguire in The Power of Personal Storytelling. Career counselors are increasingly using narrative approaches to encourage clients to build their career stories.
Authors Christensen and Johnston suggested in the Journal of Career Development that developing narratives can significantly help individuals to know what to emphasize in their career planning. They proposed that counselors perceive clients as both authors and central characters in their career stories, which they are “concurrently constructing and enacting.” Constructing their career story, the authors said, enables clients to discover connections and meaning in their careers that they might not have otherwise. When individuals imagine their desired future stories, they facilitate their belief that their storied, envisioned future will play out in reality. The authors’ research indicated that, indeed, clients who could tell these future stories tended to be “more effective in bringing those plans to fruition,” while Maguire characterized the narrative-therapy process as revising or replacing negative stories with positive ones.
Instead of answering the question traditionally explored in career counseling, “Who am I?” by listing traits such as interests, skills, aptitudes, and values, narrative approaches articulate the job-seeker’s preferred future. Larry Cochran, who has devoted an entire book to the use of narrative in career counseling, notes that the narrative approach emphasizes “emplotment,” which refers to how a person can cast himself or herself as the main character in a career narrative that is meaningful, productive, and fulfilling. Plotting out a career story can also help a person conceptualize the steps needed to attain his or her desired career, remind the narrator of career goals, and enable him or her to stay on track in achieving the envisioned career.
Following are a number of approaches to exploring your career desires and passions through storytelling. Considerable overlap exists among these story exercises, so don’t feel you need to use all of them. But pick a couple that resonate with you and use them to examine meanings, themes, and patterns in your career to date, as well as to plot out how to attain your career dreams.
Final thoughts
If career assessments that yield lists of possible careers have left you cold, consider a story-based approach to career exploration. You just might be amazed at how much you can learn about yourself and how you can design your future through developing your story. As Kerr Inkson writes in Understanding Careers, “By interpreting the past, we use narrative to make sense of the present and thereby see a way to the future.” Remember also that crafting the story of your career is an ongoing exercise in that you will need to reconfigure the story to account for new occurrences in your career and life.
I’ll be presenting the popular audience version of my dissertation research at this conference this year:
GoldenFleece 2007
Successful story processes: From global to local
The 5th Annual Conference on the Use of Story and Conversation in Organizations is planned for May 5, 2007, in the Washington, DC, area. This year, more than a dozen presenters will share tools, tips and techniques for using storytelling and conversation to accomplish organizational goals in organizations ranging from large, complex global business to a community-based not-for-profit.
Larry Forster and Seth Kahan will tell the story of their work with Shell, a global group of oil, gas and petrochemical companies in its “connect-and-collaborate in a command-and-control world” initiative in which storytelling played a key role. They will present their approach to implementing complex change in the oil and gas industry including running a simulation of the methodology. Their approach relies on the participation and engagement of key stakeholders in the process.
A local setting is the focus of a session presented by Tony Maione, President and CEO of United Way of Rhode Island and Lisa Hirsh. They will discuss their experience in United Way and how it focused on stories of personal and organizational courage that are often pivotal moments in an organization’s life. Lisa will demonstrate how to elicit stories, and Tony will provide the stories right from his own experience. Learn how to ask the questions that help an organization hone in on the stories that exist within it to highlight the personal and organizational courage necessary to move strategy forward.
Come and learn from Larry, Seth, Lisa, and Tony along with 10 other presenters the why, how and what of story and conversation in organizations. To see information on all the full day of sessions and register here.
This conference is co-sponsored by Goldenfleece and KM Institute.
Just a miscellaneous addition to the collection:
Storytelling is really about connecting with people in the moment of telling the story. It’s something that happens in a dialogue between the storyteller and the audience.
– Lea Thau, executive director of The Moth, a collective of New York City writers, actors, and regular folk who gather to tell their stories three or four times a month. See this entry.
Steve Denning provides a good rationale for the disagreement with Mel Kleinman’s article on fact-based hiring that I voiced in this entry.
Discussing his work on a chapter on changing minds in his forthcoming book (to be published by Jossey-Bass in September 2007), Denning writes in his newsletter:
I looked into the … psychological literature on persuasion, and found that it was vitiated by a fixation on the mind as a “sequential information processor”, when it is obvious that most of our thinking is intuitive, associative and done in parallel, and most of our key decisions have a huge emotional component. It took me a while to figure out how all this stuff fits together. Finally, to pull it into focus, I included some very personal stories about occasions in my life where I had changed my mind — subjects I’ve never written about before.
I end up with (a) three ways we change our minds; (b) four ways to persuade people to change; and (c) three basic principles of leadership.
Bingo: “Most of our key decisions have a huge emotional component.” Mel Kleinman seems to think we can skirt that component and conduct hiring based on facts alone and linear, sequential decision-making.
I like collecting products related to storytelling because I think they illustrate the growing prominence of story in our lives and tend to focus on an aspect of storytelling I’ve become increasingly interested in — storytelling for individual growth, self-actualization, and creating a better future.
Another one I spotted while Christmas shopping was the Story Teller Photo Book Creator by Epson.
The Edge of Avalon site has reviews of a couple of story resources.
I bought some “build your own autobiography” books at Christmastime, and while I found some of them disappointing, I see much potential.