Blogging Away The Job

What is it with job seekers who also write blogs? asks the pseudonymous author from a search committee in the CHE. The author states that either through googling or from the candidates' own cover letter, the search committee found the blogs of some of the serious contenders for the job. Serious contenders until their blogging revealed that either academia wasn't a priority for them or that their personal lives and politics were too messy or that they had misrepresented their academic research [ouch]. But beyond all that was the very real caution and the conclusion of the piece:

The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.
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Not every case is so consequential. And in truth, we did not disqualify any applicants based purely on their blogs. If the blog was a negative factor, it was one of many that killed a candidate's chances.

More often that not, however, the blog was a negative, and job seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible.

We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and distraction. The search committee is composed of humans, who know that the applicants are humans, too, who have those things to hide. It's in your interest, as an applicant, for them to stay hidden, not laid out in exquisite detail for all the world to read. If you stick your foot in your mouth during an interview, no one will interrupt to prevent you from doing further damage. So why risk doing it many times over by blabbing away in a blog?

We've seen the hapless job seekers who destroy the good thing they've got going on paper by being so irritating in person that we can't wait to put them back on a plane. Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know"the real them" -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more.

As someone who is on the job market and blogs here and there, Bloggers Need Not Apply is of more than academic [ahem] interest to me. Jeez, if you google me, a blogging how-to is the first thing you get! An obvious response that occurs to me is Get with the times, people!. But that is not an adequate response. The author wants to argue that the job search is steeped in mythically incomprehensible calculations in any case - why make any"negatives" pronounced? Because I don't think my blogging is a negative. I also don't think that I have to hide my"techno geek" side from the committee [Shouldn't they try to hide their"techno phobe" side from me?] In real terms, the author should be thankful that the blogs revealed information about the applicants absent from the usual materials. Isn't it better to discover before you hire someone that they are mis-representing their work?

The point is that my cv, my dissertation, my blog [well, I wouldn't put it on my cv or coverletter], are all indications of who I am - as a scholar and a person. If as a result of close examination, the search committee does not think I am a candidate for them, fine. I'd rather not hide behind empty declarations on my cover letter. I'd rather my future colleagues know exactly who they are getting. As for dirt. Any job candidate worth their salt will have more than enough gossip and unsavory details about people in their field and in the departments that they are applying to. Without the help of blog entries even.

Also see Alan Baumler at the Frog in a Well [thanks to J. Dresner for the tip]