Blogs and Web Portfolios Offer Career Boosting Potential

Posted on June 8, 2005

Just a couple months ago news stories talked about people losing their jobs because of blogs at companies like Google and Friendster. Now there an article about how blogs are giving people a career boost. The first part of the article tells the story of a woman whose personal website gave her a career boost:

When the staff at a Scholastic Corp. unit heard that Cindy Eng was being hired as their editorial head earlier this year, they did an online search of her name.
Fortunately for Eng, their searches led them right to her Web portfolio, a personal Web site that trumpeted her professional accomplishments, including the books she helped publish and the companies she's worked for. "I think it set their minds at ease that their new boss knew what she was doing,'' said the Fanwood, N.J., resident.
Eng's story illustrates what some career consultants have been telling professionals for years: Having an online presence is an important part of managing your career. They are recommending that people build online identities through Web portfolios, blogs and other forms of online publishing.

Blogs are more important for some careers than others. If a blog can show someone's familiarity and/or expertise in a particular subject matters this might make an employer more likely to hire them or a contractor more likely to hire them for a project. However, some career experts believe it is more important to have a web portfolio than a blog since blogs are easy to launch but sometimes difficult to maintain:

Of course, blogs are also hard to maintain. For that reason, they're not as widely recommended as Web portfolios.
People who want to start building an online presence should start with a Web portfolio, especially if they worry they may not have the time to work on a blog. Another way to build an online presence is to contribute to other people's blogs, said Arruda.
Again, you want to keep the Web portfolio professional. That means no family photos or personal information beyond your name, email address and work history.
Also, be careful not to rely too heavily on your online presence when networking, recruiters said. An online presence is nice, but it's not important in certain industries, said Scot Melland, president and CEO of technology recruiting company Dice in New York.