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Beware of your blog

Today, a job applicant sent me a resume in English (and very nice job, well formatted - the resumes I'm getting have improved a lot, just in the three years that I've ben here in China). She also sent me a link to her Chinese-language blog. I sicced Google on it and it was a dramatic, existential, cry-for-help type of thing.

Note to potential job applicants: If you send me a link to your blog, make sure it's all dry and boring. My ideal blog topic? You read economics stories and point out math mistakes.

I don't mind if there's occasional personal life in the blog -- just enough to make you seem human. Here's the kind of entry I have in mind:
Today, the doctors told me I might have cancer. The results won't be in for a week. The agony of not knowing is unbearable. Meanwhile, I have story deadlines. Thank god for work! Nothing takes my mind of my troubles better than writing a thousand words on agricultral subsidies.
Or:
My boyfriend called me today. Drama, drama, drama. He wants me to leave work early to go to some concert. Then to a nice dinner in a fancy restaurant where he says he has an important question to ask me. Well, I do like eating. But... leave work early? No way! Then, get this, he says I love my job more than him! Well, duh! So long, loser!
If I Google a writer's name and a personal blog comes up I might glance at it briefly to check it out - is it well-punctuated? Does the writer confess to any crimes or profess a hobby of stealing office supplies? Is there massive plagiarism or copyright violation going on? But otherwise I'm not going to read it too much -- a personal life is a personal life.

But if you email me the link to the blog as part of your job application, I'm going to take a pretty close look at it. I mean, just the fact that you're sending me a link to a personal blog means that you're having trouble with the whole "work is work and personal is personal" concept.

This is the same reason I have problems with including hobbies on resumes -- unless, again, your hobby is something job-related like statistical analysis.

I have to confess, though -- I'm not consistent about this. If I'm hiring for a senior-level management position, I want to know about a person's personality.  If I'm hiring for an entry-level job, I mostly want to know that the person is professional.

I guess, after you've had a few years of work experience, I'm going to assume that you know how to stay focused on the job.

But with entry-level staff, especially those who have never held a job before, the ability to keep your mind on work is very critical. I've had employees -- both in first-time jobs -- who would take off early (or disappear for weeks) -- because of personal problems. Personal problems that wouldn't even phase someone older. Such as fights with boyfriends.

Employees with more experience who have a personal problem will schedule things in advance, take sick days or make up the work on their own time, and not tell me too many details unless I ask. Basically, they arrange things so that they impact work as little as possible.

I don't mind hiring people who don't live for their work, who have hobbies and real lives.

But I do live for my work and, I assume, most people who rise high in organizations are the same.

So when you send me a resume and supporting materials, I want you to be able to convince me that, for eight hours a day, you can at least pretend to be living for your work.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria
Published Saturday, April 14, 2007 9:13 AM by MariaTrombly

Comments

# re: Beware of your blog

Sunday, April 15, 2007 12:33 AM by ElysseJames
That's good advice, especially in the age of social networking sites like MySpace, and the growing popularity of personal blogging. It's curious she would add that on a job application, especially to a potential boss she knows nothing about.

# re: Beware of your blog

Sunday, April 15, 2007 11:26 PM by Maria Trombly
You have to remember, in China (and, apparently, in France) students don't work in high school and college. So, when they look for their first job after graduation, they haven't spent the previous few years in a series of low-paid part-time jobs. As a result, they don't really understand what's appropriate for work and don't separate their personal and work lives. And their expectations of what work will like are often very far from reality. It is nice to have the government pay fo your education -- but I think, warts and all, I prefer the US system where students come out having a pretty good idea of what they want to do.
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