There is still a lot of debate about the usefulness and longevity of blogs. I can see both sides, i.e. that blogs can be dangerous, erroneous, harmful; and that blogs can be very beneficial, informative, and useful. One aspect to blogging that has also been discussed is its effect on one’s job or future job prospects. There was a good article about this in The Chronicle of Higher Education some months ago that resonated with me. Basically, the author advised against blogging, period, viewing it as detrimental in the job search process.
The reason it resonated with me is that I had recently been involved in a job interview (this was early last summer) in which the existence of this, my personal blog, played a significant role. This was a big surprise to me at the time, although it shouldn’t have been, I guess. Throughout the two day interview process at a private liberal arts university here in Illinois, my blog was mentioned several times. It even came up during the first meeting I had with members of the search process, when I met with two people from the library for an introductory meal the evening before the formal interview began. The next day during a part of the interview in which I met with other university (non-library) faculty, the topic of my blog came up again. I remember one faculty member brightly declaring to me, “I learned so much about you from your blog, including answers to questions that I could not have legally asked you in this interview! Oh, and by the way, you have wonderful children!” This, from a complete stranger, was rather weird and somewhat unsettling for me. Somehow I just didn’t think much about the possibility of someone Googling me and finding (and reading) my blog. The next day I was scheduled to give a formal presentation on a topic of my choice. I had had a topic in mind but after the comments about my blog, I decided to switch topics at the last minute to focus on blogs and blogging: what is a blog, how to create your own blog, uses of and implications of blogs and blogging for libraries. This was, in a way, an attempt to turn the tables on my interviewers. My audience consisted of students, staff, and librarians, about 10 or 12 people, including the library director. By the end of the session, each person there had created her or his own blog using Blogger. I thought it went well.
However, the upshot is that I was not offered the job. I have no idea what, if any, role my blog had in this library making that decision. But I do think that in some way, my blog did play a role, for good or ill, in how I was evaluated.
My point in telling this story is that I learned in that experience that you never know who might read your blog or when. I think I can confidently state that a personal blog can and does play a significant role in how people evaluate you, especially in job interviews. There is nothing I am ashamed of in what I’ve written here, but I do know that I have views and beliefs that many disagree with and might even feel threatened by. Does that mean I shouldn’t blog? No. But it does mean that I am far more aware of and careful about what I write in this blog. Like it or not, maintaining your personal blog is like opening yourself up to the world in ways that were not as easy to do in the past.
One final note: It is not easy to gauge the readership of one’s blog. Sure, you can get a vague idea from, say, how many are subscribed to your blog in Bloglines. Or you can use Google Analytics (a service which I really like) to obtain some idea of who, what, where, and when people are accessing your blog. But there is no single way to really know for sure, what the readership is. It’s a guessing game at best.
