Blogito Ergo Recruitum

Where are you looking for job candidates? If you’re not reading blogs, you’re missing out.

In, How Blogging Can Help You Get a Job, WSJ writer Sarah Needleman says recruiters are using blog readers to find potential hires:

Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.

Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. “Blogs are a tool in the tool kit,” he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.

Sure, I’m partial to blogs. I write articles for two of them almost daily. Why I like blogs so much is that you get a chance to read a writer who doesn’t use an editorial committee or corpspeak. Blogging is authentic writing (with all its blemishes.) If you want to get an unfiltered view of a job candidate, I can’t think of a better way than by reading what they wrote when they didn’t have to.

Tomorrow: What Everybody in HR Ought to Know About Blogs and How to Read them Fast

About the Author

Frank Roche

Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.

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