Blogging as a negative determiner for job seeking
The linked article suggests that the personal variety of blogosphere media is far more damaging and negative to career seekers than one would simply assume.
They raise the question: why? That is, why blog? Why detail thoughts and events that would have, in any other era, remained invisible to the majority to now enable the entire world access?
I can't speak for the world just yet. Nor for my generation--perhaps the first to be nearing that job-seeking point in "normal" life to be fully affected by the emergence of blogs. But I can always speak for myself.
In entries months and years past I have visited the question of why, and have in a few cases even explained, face to face, my incentive to a small number of scholars. And I continue maintaining that blogging about my thoughts and personal life is my way of practising, nearly daily, the act of writing.
While maintaining a blog, I am aware that any number of people could eventually find it. Every last implication and factor of the possibility of decades-old entries returning to haunt me in employment may very well not be yet realized, but I am aware that as I write and publish my own words at my own discretion, my full audience here is indeed, "the entire world."
This said, I believe I am aware of my (potential) audience. Though I assume it is my friends that mostly read what I write here, I know that my enemies, distant relatives, and complete strangers (as well as possible employers) are able to read this. In my awareness, I employ slight discretion in choosing my topics. Though I do occasionally post self-revelations and epiphanies that very much reveal current and previous weaknesses, I tend to distance my writing from sharing the inward thoughts that ever target specific people.
Well, maybe I haven't from the first day, but I have been growing as has my blog. And I wager that I have done nothing to actually defame individuals outright (though have occasionally nicknamed one or two) in my archives.
Blogging allows me a public outlet to practise writing and, it is my hope, that will eventually achieve a readership that might grant, via public comment or email, insight and advice that I will be able to employ in my own life, personal or otherwise. By writing, I can maintain a consistency with my written voice as well as develop my abilities as I slowly notice my flaws and work to erase them. If a future employer reads a future (or past) entry of mine and decides the person (myself) who would write as I do would not be a good job candidate solely for my written/online voice, then I am compelled to believe the employer would be right in his/her assumption as much that I would find myself, eventually, stifled and lonely in the environment that would only accept me when censored.
But it is a chilling prospect. Most blogs by students from my former highschool I read are, at best, vicarious popularity or, at worst, suicidal diatribes concerning every major failure. They are written heedlessly for a select audience and their authors seem reproachless that their words might be found in the future. My guess is that the referenced article is about them.
And it is a wonder to me, because I assume that these are the peers dreaming of normal jobs whilst I continue dreaming of exceptional and self-derived...
They raise the question: why? That is, why blog? Why detail thoughts and events that would have, in any other era, remained invisible to the majority to now enable the entire world access?
I can't speak for the world just yet. Nor for my generation--perhaps the first to be nearing that job-seeking point in "normal" life to be fully affected by the emergence of blogs. But I can always speak for myself.
In entries months and years past I have visited the question of why, and have in a few cases even explained, face to face, my incentive to a small number of scholars. And I continue maintaining that blogging about my thoughts and personal life is my way of practising, nearly daily, the act of writing.
While maintaining a blog, I am aware that any number of people could eventually find it. Every last implication and factor of the possibility of decades-old entries returning to haunt me in employment may very well not be yet realized, but I am aware that as I write and publish my own words at my own discretion, my full audience here is indeed, "the entire world."
This said, I believe I am aware of my (potential) audience. Though I assume it is my friends that mostly read what I write here, I know that my enemies, distant relatives, and complete strangers (as well as possible employers) are able to read this. In my awareness, I employ slight discretion in choosing my topics. Though I do occasionally post self-revelations and epiphanies that very much reveal current and previous weaknesses, I tend to distance my writing from sharing the inward thoughts that ever target specific people.
Well, maybe I haven't from the first day, but I have been growing as has my blog. And I wager that I have done nothing to actually defame individuals outright (though have occasionally nicknamed one or two) in my archives.
Blogging allows me a public outlet to practise writing and, it is my hope, that will eventually achieve a readership that might grant, via public comment or email, insight and advice that I will be able to employ in my own life, personal or otherwise. By writing, I can maintain a consistency with my written voice as well as develop my abilities as I slowly notice my flaws and work to erase them. If a future employer reads a future (or past) entry of mine and decides the person (myself) who would write as I do would not be a good job candidate solely for my written/online voice, then I am compelled to believe the employer would be right in his/her assumption as much that I would find myself, eventually, stifled and lonely in the environment that would only accept me when censored.
But it is a chilling prospect. Most blogs by students from my former highschool I read are, at best, vicarious popularity or, at worst, suicidal diatribes concerning every major failure. They are written heedlessly for a select audience and their authors seem reproachless that their words might be found in the future. My guess is that the referenced article is about them.
And it is a wonder to me, because I assume that these are the peers dreaming of normal jobs whilst I continue dreaming of exceptional and self-derived...
posted by SJ at 7/14/2005 02:13:00 PM
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