Over on The Recruiting Animal, our favorite Canadian Headhunter recaps a recent podcast with Global Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang on the topic of business blogging.   Among other things, Jeremiah discusses the ease in measuring the effectiveness of blogs versus other traditional marketing and outreach tools, like, say, billboards, and well, more billboards.  (I get it … billboards create buzz that you don’t necessarily need to measure – but we all don’t have the cash to pop up a sign on the 101, now do we?)

The effectiveness of blogs as recruiting tools has been discussed A LOT.  Just about every HR / recruiting conference these days features the topic, and we’ve even witnessed a few less than professional debates in the recruiting blogosphere.  To track or not to track … that is the question.

Non-recruiters talk about blogs as recruiting and career tools all the time, too.  Last week’s Boston Globe article, Blogs ‘essential’ to a good career, discussed the effectiveness for would-be recruits.  Scoble’s stunt double Bubba pondered it with the Scoblites, and Shel Israel acted as though he had never heard of it, eventhough there's a section in his and Robert's book that references Z and me and is entitled 'Blogging for Recruits.' That's on page 21, Shel, but I digress. :) 

Earlier this month, Dennis Howlett questioned the ROI of blogging and even let me weigh in with my own results.  Scoble quoted the stats I published back in my Microsoft days.  As a few people pointed out to me privately, those are some very commendable stats as compared with industry averages.

Anyway, what do I think?  As Jeremiah says in the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast, the marketing benefits are secondary, and I agree.  I don’t think anyone should ever start a blog to market anything.  In fact, since my role at Microsoft had moved toward marketing career opportunities versus recruiting candidates, I had already decided to step away from writing for JobsBlog, whether I stayed at Microsoft or not.  Blogs aren’t meant to be soapboxes for marketers.  They are intended as channels for real people to talk to real people, and good marketing is just a great by-product of that conversation.

JobsBlog was and continues to be a strong recruiting marketing tool for Microsoft, but that’s not why it started or why it continues to exist.  At its core, it’s an information delivery tool.  Z and I realized a long, long time ago that better prepared applicants and interview candidates equated to more hires.  We didn’t need to stir up more interest in Microsoft jobs; we just needed to educate those who were interested and give them the tools to succeed on their own.  Kinda like we’re doing here.

Blogs can serve as great vehicles for employment branding and jobseeker self-promotion, but the best blogs are ones that do it naturally.  I’m sure many engineers apply to Yahoo! because they want to work with Jeremy Zawodny.  Or they apply to Google because of Matt Cutts.  Or Microsoft because of Raymond Chen.  People, these guys are your best recruiters. I do hope these companies realize that.

And on the flipside, the blogopshere is an increasingly popular venue to recruit candidates. Blogs are living resumes, and in the software engineering world, it’s not uncommon to see a prospect post original code, discuss a difficult project, or simply reveal his or her true passions. Like with business, I don't ever think a jobseeker should launch a blog just to generate interest in her career, but a blog that highlights a person's expertise and skills certainly isn't a bad supplement to a good resume.

Of course, blogging can have a nasty side, especially for the jobseeker.  What gives can also take away, but I’ll save that topic for another day … and a glass of wine. :)

Later gators,
gretchen