Blogging About Why An Employer Should Hire You
One of my favorite tactics for college students hunting for internships or recent graduates searching for entry-level jobs is for them to create a blog or other type of web site about why a particular employer should hire them.
Many and perhaps most large organizations now have Google Alerts set up to email them whenever a new web page is posted that includes a reference to the organization, so if you're targeting a web savvy organization then your web site will quickly come to their attention and if what you've written on that site is compelling then you'll pretty much force them to hire you -- which is good for you and them.
Want an example? Jamie Varon is the poster child for this tactic. She wants to work for Twitter so created a site all about that. Rather than just talking about how great Twitter is and how much she wants to work for them, she explains in some detail why hiring him makes tremendous business sense for Twitter. The result? She scored an interview and I'll be shocked if she doesn't get hired.
This is a great idea. I've been doing this myself for a while on my blog.
You always hear stories of people's Blog, Facebook or Myspace accounts getting them into trouble, but smart people will use a strong online presence to better pitch themselves (companies would be foolish not to do some form of online background check - all this information is public domain anyways).
I recommend google and yahoo alerts for assistants of high ranking executives to keep on top of the news as an added value to assisting their boss... my boss loves it. They know instantly when someone writes about themselves, the company, our products and our competitors.
Using these alerts for job hunting is another great use that I hadn't really thought of... but if you really want to work for a specific company or in a specific industry, it does help to get smart about them and alerts are a great way to do that. Great post...