Employee Blogs Might Reveal Job Openings

Posted on March 21, 2006

The fired for blogging stories have been popular topics in blogs and in newspapers over the past six to twelve months. Despite these stories, employees still discuss work-related topics in their blogs. Some companies also encourage their employees to blog. An article in the Houston Chronicle says that by reading some of the employee blogs job seekers may learn valuable insights about a company including the possibility of job openings.

Here's the kicker: Sometimes bloggers mention job openings at their companies or others. Or they report they're changing jobs, which, to a careful reader, might indicate a position is opening up.
Also, companies are eager to recruit the people reading the blogs because they're likely to be the sort of folks they'd want to have on board.
Blogs find passive job seekers, said Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster, an online, Seattle-based job board with a built-in referral feature.

Some of the big companies like Microsoft have a lot of bloggers but it might be difficult or impossible to find employee blogs for many companies.