The New York Times is reporting about the growth in using video as a format for resumes. The article talks about WorkBlast a new site to make the creation of these video resumes even easier.
This is not new but is becoming more popular and for some roles it will become a mandatory part of the job application.
In a week that for many in the US will be remembered for a long time we see another reported workplace shooting. This time over a performance review.
Police in the US state of Texas say yesterday’s murder suicide at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre happened after the space engineer responsible was given a bad job review.
Personally this is a sad reflection on society.
For me this is a question that has been floating around for a number of years, for others it is just coming to the fore front. Take today, Techmeme, it is a topic on the front page, based on a post from Adam Darowski.
The simple answer to this question is no your blog is not your resume. Let me explain.
The resume provides a framework for you to summarise your skills and experience in a short easy to digest document. Your blog does not. This does not mean your blog is not a valuable tool in finding a new job or finding new employees. Adam puts in nicely:-
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).
Basically your blog becomes part of your professional reputation and is a marketing tool to help recruiters and prospective employers find you. Bokardo gives us some great tips and points to remember about your blog and how to use it to enhance your professional reputation.
Having said all of that some people, a very limited number, might be able to land a job without a resume. For the rest of us it is just part of the recruitment equation.
Remember only a smaller percentage of the population blogs and an even smaller percentage of recruiter know about blogs (I know they should). Therefore most of the time you will still have to play ball by the same rules if you want to land a dream job.
Remember your blog is about participating in the community, this will expand your professional network, which helps you land a job. I wrote about this a long time ago after Jeremy Zawodny called blogs “professional lubricant”.
Finally remember what happens online it fairly permanent and can be found in most search engines by a half way decent recruiter or employer. Who can forget last year’s Miss Universe publicity.
There is lots more discussion on this topic.
A while back Guy Kawasaki published a post about the 20 happiest countries in the world. The list was based on a study by Adrian G. White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester.
The meta-analysis is based on the findings of over 100 different studies around the world, which questioned 80,000 people worldwide. For this study data has also been analysed in relation to health, wealth and access to education.
The research found that capitalism is not necessarily “making” people unhappy, a belief that is often stated. In fact what the study confirmed that in countries where the basic needs as defined by Maslow were met people were happy.
people in countries with good healthcare, a higher GDP per captia, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy
So the twenty happiest countries are:
Other interesting results USA (23), Germany (35), UK (41), France (62), China (82), Japan (90), India (125) and Russia (167). The three least happy countries were Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Burundi. I don’t see Australia listed but we can’t be too far below New Zealand!
There is a nice map of happiness for the visual learners, like me.
UPDATE: As an interesting side note the top Twitter users don’t seem to be in the top 20 happiest countries
Over the last week or so there has been some renewed interest in the top blogs in Australia, first was Craig Harper’s Ultimate Australian Blogroll. Then Meg from dLook pulled together a really good view of the Australian blogosphere taking Technorati and Alexa rankings to come up with the Top 100 Australian Blogs, she has also provided some details on the index. Today The Age continues the theme with a small article about the list.
There are some really good blogs on the list, the problem is I now have more feeds to read!
I am distressed that I am not in the list, maybe next time, however I might need to spend some more time on my blog :-).
It seems a fancy advertising campaign will not save you is the cut throat business that is online job boards in Australia, just deep pockets!
Jobs.com.au seem to have gone they way of the dodo. The Fin Review was reporting yesterday that receivers have been appointed (Hat Tip Trevor Cook & Mark Fletcher), today their web site does not seem to be in operation.
I have said before the only way someone is going to take control of the online job market in Australia is with lots of money and lots of reasons for both job seekers and employers to use your service. To quote Mark:-
Jobs’ mistake was that they did not offer a point of difference, they brought online an expensive offline model.
It seems they did not have enough money to support their model, nor did they really add enough value to make people switch.
Last night I received a letter from Domain Registry of America about renewing a couple of my domains. Not so strange except they are NOT my domain registrar!!
Once again we seem to have someone in Australia trying to scoop up domain registrations through not the most honest of tactics.
Privacy of your employee and customer data should be one of the top priorities of any board for any organisation. However sometimes C level exec’s are more interested in things right in front of them, like this quarters sales or the new product introduction.
To get them to pay attention you sometimes need to be a bit smart at getting the issue on table. James Governor points to a post by Michelle Dennedy from where she lists 10 tips from Scott McNealy. As Michelle says, I don’t “recommend anyone tries these at home, but they are pretty funny to imagine” the next C level meeting afterwards.
Top 10 Ways to Make Privacy a CEO-Level Concern
10. Show him his daughter’s MySpace page
9. Tell him the external auditors lost his personal data (on a laptop)
8. Install a hum generator in his handset
7. Pre-text his phone list– okay maybe not such a great idea
6. Update his Wikipedia posting
5. Publish his recent Netflix orders (assuming your CEO would be embarrassed)
4. Tell him you lost the corporate archives
3. Re-route his security camera to YouTube
2. Remove sticky notes, with his passwords, from his computer screen
1. Spend $1,000 to do a security check on him
Jason Calacanis a while back decided to loose some weight, coined the term fat blogging, registered the domain and got a few overweight geeks to join in to loose those kilos (pounds if you are still old-school).
Over the last 6-9 months I have gone through my own weight loss program. I needed to reduce my cholesterol and losing weight is a part of that process. I have lost about 10 kg or 22 lb, about the same a Jason is looking for so I thought I might share what I did.
Result: lost 10 kg, dropped 36″ waist (91 cm) to 32″ (81cm), stopped snoring and feeling better.
Promoting weight loss is a great idea in any organisation as you will have both happier and healthier employees.
Joel Cheezman has stirred up a hornets nest asking “Is Jason Goldberg killing Jobster?” There is some very heated debate going, with what looks like death threats, don’t we learn!!
Joel will be posting a follow up in the next couple of days after he gets some facts which will be interesting.
My view is there are a lot of people who have been impacted both personally and professionally by Jobster, their growth and growing pains. Did they raise too much money, probably. Are they a bit confused in direction, possibly.
Right now Jobster looks like a teenager going through puberty and turning into an adult as all teenagers they are doing dumb things and smart things, getting hurt and hurting others. I hope that the get through this period and emerge an adult possibly in a different form but at least they get through the changes and don’t end up a statistic or worse the poster child of the Web 2.0 bust.
As for Jason Davis leaving Recruiting.com again a sad thing but not unexpected you can’t over the long term have multiple entrepreneurs in a single company.
Jobster needs to focus on it’s core business helping recruiters fill jobs with high quality candidates. The how is the secret sauce that will be if they succeed or fail. And YES social networks are part of that sauce they always have been.
Recruiting.com needs to determine it’s core business. To me it needs to be either the entry point into the recruiter side of Jobster or a communication portal for recruiters on the internet. You can’t be half pregnant.
Michael Specht 