PTSD

When job-searching, call a "blog" by any other name

According to this, bloggers aren't among the first people that come to mind when deciding on a short-list of candidates to be hired in academia.

After describing a recent job search process, the author writes about the candidates who had blogs: "The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum."

Eh? So the temptation to blog about the slag-like behaviour of certain colleagues, about the bloke who ended up with Ms X at the academia XMas party, and to indulge in activities more suited to reporters (and I use the word loosely) of The Sun just can't be resisted by one and all bloggers? And, read the paragraph again: having done NOTHING of the sort so far is also a sign that a blogger MIGHT do something in the future. Does it also mean that a blogger would be the first under suspicion if any "departmental dirty laundry" was being hung (no matter where)? I'd rather have someone slag me off in public (ie on a blog) than in private in any workplace. Also, has this bloke heard of living things, commonly called "people", those who go around and spread "DDL" to friends, family, colleagues, and even the family pets? It's a part of academia (or any other workplace).

He adds later, "Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know "the real them" -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more".

Basically, the bloggers were fine until these people Googled them (the blog address was often not provided in the cover letter) and started reading their blogs, which supposedly showed the "real them". What gives the author the idea that the "real them" were coming through these blogs and weren't what they heard/saw during the interviews? Do hirers automatically assume that because you write a blog (especially, if in my case, it contains a lot of whinging and posts about MP and football :-)) that is all you are?

To me, it makes more sense to write a non theory, non-IR blog (well, apart from a few posts) since we do the other stuff for a living. We talk IR all the time. Isn't this a problem in IR that things not related to states and "big issues" and "boring and often dead people" are seen as outside of the discipline? I could argue our blog is IR too (and thus the inside/outside dichotomy is being blurred) by why should I have to? Just because this bloke thinks bloggers should keep their fingers unmoving, should we start censoring what we write here in hopes of not losing out on that Very Important Job that we are sure to get if we had not blogged? At least Elizabeth has a law degree to fall back on. Me, I'd be stuck (but then I"d whinge about it on the blog :-))

He does say no one was rejected based on blogging alone but, after reading the article, blogging was seen as wholly negative in that job search process. Maybe, we can call blogging something else when applying for jobs. How about calling it "Expert in creatively expressing and summarising ideas in coherent but not-often-read form"?

posted by Priya @ 7:50 AM