For those of you who aren’t from India, this may come as a surprise. But campus recruitment drives are quite common in India. To such an extent that students choose colleges based on past placement performances.
Placements have not always been good everywhere. But one of the ways in which you can cut through the competition and stand out from the crowd is by maintaining your own blog. This will give you an edge over other candidates for sure.
Here are 9 ways how a personal blog can help you get recruited.
- Enhances your professional appeal:
During the personal interview round, most students lack anything solid to boast about as work experience. That is quite common! In fact, over 90% of them have nothing solid to put up on their resume other than a couple of months of internships. That too if they were lucky!
This is where a blog could come in handy. I mean, maintaining a blog on your passion or interests could make a strong impression on your interview. In general, having a Blog helps recruiters understand you are professional enough to be part of an office.
I mean you just gave them a solid piece of work which in itself is proof that you can do stuff that most people don’t try to.
- The blog puts a spotlight on your strengths:
First of all, finding the energy to set up a blog and keeping at it for months if not years, is not something small in the eyes of any recruiter. It shows that you are
- an initiator
- a consistent person
- a decision maker
- a bold person
- an active individual
- an expressive person and
- an intellectual among other things
This list could very well go on and on but you get the idea, right? The qualities in this list depend partly on the type of content put up in the blog. So it may change slightly but generally, it highlights what sort of a person you are. That gives you some serious extra points.
- Poor communication skills could get overlooked:
Many non-native English-speaking students have a hard time conversing in English but ironically some of them write well. This is a typical divergent case and something common too. I don’t mean to say that everyone falls in the same box but issues like stammering, grammatical errors, etc are quite common.
Even if the candidate performs poorly In the face-to-face interview rounds due to his or her communication flaws, a blog will be a great supplement and support.
You may not have to worry too much, as the interviewer might accept you as a person of initiative who can overcome these challenges quickly once you join the firm.
- You will be seen as a natural leader:
Generally, most blogs are informative and this is where you could score. Maintaining an informative blog shows that you wish to help other people by sharing information or your expertise in a field. This is what many companies want, they want people to take initiative to help other people in their teams.
This is seen by them as a strong leadership skill that also amplifies your capacity as a teacher. People who have leadership skills and a skill to teach are generally seen as valuable assets, especially by recruiters.
- A blog compliments your work experience:
I know it’s hard to show meaningful work experience as a fresher. Most people faced this issue including me very early on in my career. The only work experience that you could show might very well be that internship you did last summer. Recruiters understand that they cannot expect much from candidates in this regard during campus interviews. Or at least that is a common perception. Your job is in surprising them and letting them know that you are not like the rest of them.
Big or small, it doesn’t matter just put your blog out there in front of them. Let them be the judge of your work. This takes a lot of guts but it is bound to pay off well. Setting up and maintaining a blog is considered a good soft skill experience by many recruiters so don’t miss out on that opportunity.
- Your resume / CV gets stronger with the type of blogging experience:
As a fresher, your resume will not have much of anything to boast about. That’s quite normal but the idea is to add something unique that will interest the interview panel. Most amateurs put in their hobbies and other interests to make up for a fall in work experience in their CVs. A little bit of that is fine but too much of it can be quite repulsive if you know what I mean.
The blogging experience can have certain areas that you worked in or something you promoted on the blog. For example community development, helping with environmental protection, volunteering, social welfare, etc. Social welfare is seen as a noble and humanitarian cause that will go down well with recruiters. This is one way in which a blog can add value to your resume.
- Blogs help in enhancing your Digital Footprint:
We live in a time where people search us up online and find out a lot about us. Our social media life, online public interactions, and citations can all say a lot about our personality. Recruiters are keen to know more about the people they recruit and may go to the lengths of checking you out online.
This is where your digital footprint plays a vital role. Apart from keeping your online presence clean, a good blog will always add to your digital persona and this is bound to get the attention of decision-makers in a firm. You might be wondering if they would go to such lengths but believe me most of them do.
For instance, Truecaller is an app where you might have gotten notified about someone checking your profile every now and then. I have experienced it and it’s more frequent when you have your CV/resume put up on job portals like Naukri and indeed. Recruits usually do a thorough online search about you to make sure you fit their requirements, which also helps them weed out unfit candidates.
- The blog shows your willingness to learn and stay updated:
Blogging is an area where you need to remain updated with online developments. So recruiters know that bloggers need to be active and stay relevant. Your willingness to learn is well understood if you maintain a blog. This is again a trait that companies are looking for.
Having a blog will give you a great level of exposure in the digital world. It will help you develop skills like
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- Writing
- Analytical skills and ability to interpret data
- Managing a CMS (Content Management System like WordPress etc.)
- Social Media communication
- Photo editing etc.
A research done on blogging to enhance writing skills revealed the following:
- Over 90% of the bloggers agreed that writing blogs made them more careful about paragraph and sentence structure.
- Over 95% of them agreed that writing blogs made them check their word choice and spelling more carefully.
- All of the bloggers said that writing blogs made them carefully revise the way they presented their arguments or put forward their descriptions in essay writing.
- Over 93% of bloggers felt that they could improve their skills for argumentative and descriptive writing by blogging on the Internet.
- All of the participants agreed that Blogging is an effective way of learning written English.
Reference or Citation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269916750_Blogging_to_Enhance_Writing_Skills_A_Survey_of_Students’_Perception_and_Attitude
It’s not necessary that you will develop all these skills but there is a good chance that you will have acquired some of them. This is great news for recruiters as they have to spend less time and resources to get you up and running as a full-time employee. Well that depends a lot on the type of industry you get placed in but generally, every industry today seems to have conveniently overlapped with the digital space.
- Blogging could help you build business-relevant networks:
Oftentimes recruiters come across candidates with extraordinary networking skills. This is great news especially if the firm wants you to be a sales or marketing executive. Extroverts are generally extremely social and have great people skills. If this is you then a sales and marketing job might fit your persona. Blogs can help you gain an edge in marketing.
So guys I hope this was useful one way or the other.
And one last thing. It is quite possible for you to start earning money from your blogs that can supplement your day job. So that possibility is something you should not rule out. Remember, maintaining a professional blog doesn’t cost you much in terms of money but requires more of your dedication and time!
If you would like to set up a professional blog that could possibly make money in the future then check out this post on “How to start a blog to make money for beginners”.
