Starting a blog to show potential employers. What to call it?

[scratch_monkey]

Like the title says, I need a name for it.

Scratch Monkey does not seem to be taken, but I wonder if the reference is too obscure, or too unprofessional.

Also wondering what degree of sillyness you guys think I can get away with. I do things because I think they are awesome. I recently discovered that I can make gun powder with stuff from ebay. Would that be OK, or does that make me look mental?

[Corporate666]

I may be alone in this, but as an employer, I don't think having any kind of blog is a good thing at all.

Whether you are talking a successful blogger, an unknown blogger, an outspoken blogger, a very polished professional blogger.. none of those style of blogs are something I would consider a positive aspect of a candidate. 

[scratch_monkey]

Fair enough.

As an employer, how would you suggest I show the tallents I have, when I have no real proof?

[Stonent]

As an employer, how would you suggest I show the tallents I have, when I have no real proof?

Isn't that called lying? 

[scratch_monkey]

No.  Lying would be if I claimed skills I do not have.

[Corporate666]

Fair enough.

As an employer, how would you suggest I show the tallents I have, when I have no real proof?

Just to be clear, I don't claim to be the authority on employment by any means... I just know that my gut feel is if someone came in and showed me their blog, it is not something I would count as a positive.  I know that employees will always have good and bad days and days when they are frustrated with their work and job.  I would be concerned at the person voicing their angst to a huge audience when they are peeved.  Also, I know from the days I used to do consulting work that being known among your peers is a good way to market your consulting company... so the more renowned someone is through a blog, the more likely they are to have other job offers coming their way.  No problem for a consultant, but not what you want in an employee.

Again, just my experience and opinion.

The best example for me as an employer to show your talents are to show me your past successes in the field I might be hiring you for.  If it's electronic design, I would be impressed with someone that brought some parts along with them and explained some of their design decisions, compromises, challenges, etc.  I personally would be extra impressed with someone who showed an understanding on the cost side and mechanical side of things, since I've dealt with lots of EE types who only want to use top shelf parts because they don't deal with the cost side.  But you bet your bippy that the employer always cares about cost

[Stonent]

No.  Lying would be if I claimed skills I do not have.

Well if you can't prove them, then that may be what the employer could be thinking.

[EEVblog]

I may be alone in this, but as an employer, I don't think having any kind of blog is a good thing at all.

You are not alone in that opinion, although I do not share it myself.
But it is very likely that if I went back to work "in the real world" I'd have to leave my blog stuff off my resume for many companies.
In fact I have been turned down a job specifically because I did stuff on the outside.

Whether you are talking a successful blogger, an unknown blogger, an outspoken blogger, a very polished professional blogger.. none of those style of blogs are something I would consider a positive aspect of a candidate.

I disagree.
Let say you only did very polished professional engineering tutorials. I can't see what harm that would do in most companies.

[EEVblog]

Just to be clear, I don't claim to be the authority on employment by any means... I just know that my gut feel is if someone came in and showed me their blog, it is not something I would count as a positive.  I know that employees will always have good and bad days and days when they are frustrated with their work and job.  I would be concerned at the person voicing their angst to a huge audience when they are peeved.

You are making the assumption that all blogs involve ranting etc.

The best example for me as an employer to show your talents are to show me your past successes in the field I might be hiring you for.  If it's electronic design, I would be impressed with someone that brought some parts along with them and explained some of their design decisions, compromises, challenges, etc.

What is that is done via a wordpress blog for example?

[Corporate666]

You are making the assumption that all blogs involve ranting etc.

No, I'm assuming that the larger audience a person has, the wider they are able to communicate a message.  I think that's a fair assumption.  It's possible their message may be ranting.  It's also possible their message may be critical of the product they work or their employer.  And it's also possible they love their job but inadvertently give away some information I didn't want released (BOM info, costs, failure rate, whatever).   Or maybe they just love their job and mention the various trade shows they've been at and how people loved XYZ product (i.e. competitive info). 

But the other thing I said was that the more renown someone has, the more likely they are to be poached by someone else.  I don't really want my competitors knowing who I employ and in what role. 

It's not that there is a single reason I would be against it - but more of a "I can see several bad outcomes for me, and no good ones".  I can feel people getting heated and ready to launch the "you corporate bastard!  You want to control your poor employees lives!" charges against me    but I'm certainly not alone in this feeling.

What is that is done via a wordpress blog for example?

It's hard to say.  I suppose everyone would have their own delineation between OK and not-OK.  For me, I guess it would depend on how much the blog is about them vs the work.  In your case, you are a very big part of your blog.  If you quit, it's not like someone else could be hired to take it over.  On the other hand, if someone wrote an article for Hack-a-day every week with just their name on it and only about the topic, I'd be impressed with that.


I'm also not trying to necessarily defend my stance other than it being my right to hire and fire anyone I please  (Corporate666 after all!) , just giving my gut feel on the matter.

[Bored@Work]

I would consider a good(!) blog a good thing if I need to hire a professional blogger, or maybe a professional educator for a particular subject, and the blog in questions demonstrates the subject knowledge, teaching and communication skills. But thats almost it. Maybe for a few other very special cases, too.

As for normal situations, I am a big fan of that one should be allowed to do every(legal)thing in the privacy of ones lab at home, and that I just don't want to know and care. I don't care about little scratch's "discoveries" with Arduinos in his home lab. But if little scratch sees the need to blare about it all over the Internet and shove it under my nose, well ... Not a good idea. Same for Facebook or Twitter addicts. Hint: Stuff gets timestamped, and if you claim you are currently employed, but there is a constant stream of status updates / tweets during working time, well ...

[ElectroIrradiator]

Out of curiosity: What would people's 'gut employer feelings' be toward someone with no official net presence. At all?

No Twitter.
No FaceBook.
No LinkedIn.
No other social network activity.
Extremely rudimentary homepage, containing just an email address, no personal info nor any 'articles'.
No forum posts, anywhere (in the person's own name anyway).
No presence in the wayback machine.

Any info you can glean from Google using the person's name suggests the info is either put up there by somebody else, is part of an author's list on scientific publications, or it is clearly about another person just having the same name.

The person claims to have been very active on the net for almost 25 years, from well before there were even a www...

[free_electron]

The-first-how-to-lure-an-employer-with-my-blog-postings-to-increase-chances-of-a-job-blog.com

There. See what i did there ?

[MacAttak]

I may be alone in this, but as an employer, I don't think having any kind of blog is a good thing at all.

Whether you are talking a successful blogger, an unknown blogger, an outspoken blogger, a very polished professional blogger.. none of those style of blogs are something I would consider a positive aspect of a candidate.

I am going to disagree strongly with this mode of thinking - even though I can understand where it is coming from. It is just antiquated and counterproductive in today's technology world.

Case in point: We (my company) go out of our way to hire people who are as active as possible in social networks. We actively encourage employees to blog, tweet, etc. We go so far as to pay bonuses to employees who are engaged in those activities (nice bonuses too - a few thousand $ a year).

That kind of amplified voice in a community of peers is something that money cannot buy and is worth far more in marketing value than any crap the marketers can sling against the wall. You will spend FAR more cash on marketing bullshit than on a few bonus checks to employees, and get significantly more sales leads (and recruiting leads!!) from it. It's easily tracked (just ask people how they know about your company), and our internal statistics show it is clearly an order of magnitude more effective than even our very best advertising campaigns. We no longer waste money on marketing bologna.

Who is going to tell the world about the cool stuff your company is doing (and that people will believe them)?

Who is going to spread news about awesome new technology your company is now supporting?

Who is going to demonstrate that your organization is indeed on the "leading edge" and "thinking ahead of the competition"? Those are just empty marketing statements unless they are backed up by social network involvement.

Who is going to defuse negative outcries from your customers when you make a mistake? It is amazing how far a "guys, we screwed up, and here's how we are fixing it" social media post can go towards mending mistakes and even attracting NEW business.

How are you going to know how the market perceives you if you aren't engaged?

Why would anyone want to work for you if they don't previously know anything about your organization via trusted peers?

Why would anyone want to do business with you if all of your employees are scared to death to speak in public?

And why would any decent intelligent person continue working for you if their voice is squelched, while your competitors are encouraging their employees to be engaged? (this is a huge thing for us)

[ejeffrey]

As for normal situations, I am a big fan of that one should be allowed to do every(legal)thing in the privacy of ones lab at home, and that I just don't want to know and care.

This.  From my point of view go ahead and have a blog or whatever but you don't need to show me.  I am not going to count having a blog against you, but if you put it in your application I might.

If you have written technical articles or project writeups that you think are good, put them in a portfolio, rather than just sending your prospective employer to your blog.  If you really had a blog that was exclusively technical content with no rants, no personal stories, and no off-topic posts then it wouldn't be terrible.  Even so a blog is not really the most effective way to present a portfolio.   Put some organization into your portfolio and it will be easier for someone to asses it.

Of course all of this is assuming you are applying for an engineering job.  If you are trying to get hired as a writer, journalist, or educator probably something different applies, and obviously not everyone agrees at all.

[jancumps]

What MacAttack said is the how it's happening where I live.
My company hr asks me politely to share new job openings. Blogging and contributing to the open source community is well regarded. We also blog internaly.

[jancumps]

... And when the network team of one country decided to block facebook and similar websites, they had to open it up again immediately.

[Corporate666]

I may be alone in this, but as an employer, I don't think having any kind of blog is a good thing at all.

Whether you are talking a successful blogger, an unknown blogger, an outspoken blogger, a very polished professional blogger.. none of those style of blogs are something I would consider a positive aspect of a candidate.

I am going to disagree strongly with this mode of thinking - even though I can understand where it is coming from. It is just antiquated and counterproductive in today's technology world.

I don't think a blanket statement like that fits at all.

If you are working for someone like, let's say, Makerbot... where an important aspect of the company growth strategy is getting the word out, then I can see having your employees be evangelists would be helpful.

On the other hand, if you are a regional manager at Alcoa and your focus is keeping the aluminum forges running with the least energy use and best safety record, the bloggy/evangelical nature of an employee is irrelevant and counterproductive.

Most major companies also want to be very careful about what information is getting out there and from whom, and for good reason.  Even if you take a modern and forward thinking company like Apple... they absolutely do not want their employees out there tweeting, blogging and being "amplified voices in their community of peers".

I totally see where you are coming from and I respect it, but I think there is an element of the same type of thinking that brought game rooms and "pets allowed at work" type 'forward thinking' policies.  How many of the Fortune 1000 follow these modern "forward thinking" business practices?  For sure they have their place, but I don't think shying away form them is antiquated or counterproductive.

[MacAttak]

It's not irrelevant. Even if all you get is an ear to the ground, some confidence about their personality and a few good recruiting leads.

I'm guessing Dave or Mike or Jerry or any of the other EE bloggers / vloggers would be a no-hire then?

https://twitter.com/Alcoa

That twitter account has made over 20 status updates already today. I would conclude that a company which appears to be paying someone to produce official tweets is pretty serious about social media.

Ultimately, a recruit who openly shares experiences on a blog/twitter (as long as they are not hidden from the employer) brings extra value to the table. It is free advertising for the employer (both in terms of advertising to customers but also advertising to other potential valuable recruits). It brings credibility to the employer, because someone who was already blogging/tweeting before getting hired is much more trustworthy as opposed to someone who just parrots their company's official statements. It also gives you an immensely valuable insight into this recruit's personality before you hire them. Are they self-motivated? Do they engage in activities on weekends that will prevent them from passing a drug test when you need them to be clean? Why were they fired from their last job? In general, are they a mature person? You can get a feel for all of these things (many of which you cannot legally ask them in an interview) long before you hire them. It's always cheaper and faster to disqualify a bad hire early on than it is to hire them, invest a few paychecks, and then fire them later.

[Corporate666]

It's not irrelevant. Even if all you get is an ear to the ground, some confidence about their personality and a few good recruiting leads.

I'm guessing Dave or Mike or Jerry or any of the other EE bloggers / vloggers would be a no-hire then?

https://twitter.com/Alcoa

That twitter account has made over 20 status updates already today. I would conclude that a company which appears to be paying someone to produce official tweets is pretty serious about social media.

Ultimately, a recruit who openly shares experiences on a blog/twitter (as long as they are not hidden from the employer) brings extra value to the table. It is free advertising for the employer (both in terms of advertising to customers but also advertising to other potential valuable recruits). It brings credibility to the employer, because someone who was already blogging/tweeting before getting hired is much more trustworthy as opposed to someone who just parrots their company's official statements. It also gives you an immensely valuable insight into this recruit's personality before you hire them. Are they self-motivated? Do they engage in activities on weekends that will prevent them from passing a drug test when you need them to be clean? Why were they fired from their last job? In general, are they a mature person? You can get a feel for all of these things (many of which you cannot legally ask them in an interview) long before you hire them. It's always cheaper and faster to disqualify a bad hire early on than it is to hire them, invest a few paychecks, and then fire them later.

I am not sure what Alcoa's twitter feed has to do with the topic, other than supporting my point that corporate wants control of these things and does not want random workers taking the initiative themselves... because that twitter feed is the epitome of "corporate sterilized" and the direct opposite of "employee empowered", IMO.

As for "would be a no-hire"... well, Mike is self employed, so is Jerry, and so is Dave.  Which also helps supports my point, in addition to Dave's comment that many employers don't like it, and the countless stories we've all seen in the news about people getting fired over FB posts (and the number of people we probably all see sterilizing their social media outlets for job reasons).

Your last paragraph suggests there is all upside and no downside to hiring an active blogger/tweeter.  But it ignores the reality that it's something most companies don't want.  You can't just write off the collective experience and decisions of the majority of the world's most successful companies as being antiquated and counterproductive because it doesn't agree with your ideas.  All this stuff about ears to the ground, grass-roots marketing, and qualified peer reviews vs. planned corporate ones is great.  Does it provably translate to higher sales or more profit?  If so, that doesn't jive with the fact that most companies - certainly the biggest ones - aren't on board with having their modern and empowered workforce participate in social media and mixing in their work with their social media presence.  So if they are wrong and it's costing them $$$, where are all the forward thinking upstarts kicking their asses and becoming market leaders while the stodgy outdated ones fall by the wayside? 

It reminds me of all the buzzwords and bullshit that led to the dot.com bubble and it's eventual collapse, when people realized that there needs to be underlying value in doing something. 

[rsjsouza]

I think there are opportunities for both "vocal" and "non-vocal" engineers in the marketplace. However, how this is perceived by the company or the employer is completely dependent on the core business and the sensitivity of the work you will be doing.

For example, a manufacturer of consumer products will fire employees that discuss the latest secret product being released - I have friends that work in some of these companies and they don't talk anything to anyone. Period.

For a T&M manufacturer, they will be very pleased to get an applications engineer that tweets/facebooks/blogs their latest cool way of measuring something not trivial - however, a design engineer that does the same about a key technical aspect that differentiates their product will not receive the same greetings...

Semiconductor manufacturers are the same: discussing key technologies is vetoed. Discuss an application is encouraged. I am an eyewitness to that (and I am very "vocal").

Having hired people in the past I personally don't consider blogging a deal breaker, since other aspects would have a much higher weight when evaluating a candidate.

But never forget the blog must work in your favour: it must show your passion and enthusiasm about your hobbies and interests and be well written in whatever language you write it. Also, keep in mind that any strong points of view about heated topics may be considered poorly by the person employing you - to MacAttack's point of evaluating a candidate in topics that are untangible in a typical interview.

[scratch_monkey]

Wow, Thats a lot of replies! Had some morbid, not relevant, stuff to deal with, so did not think about responding sooner.

I will think carefully about if a blog is a suitable thing to show, but my question was about the name of the blog, not if I should make one.

I understand why some employers would be worried about what I might type, and they won't give me a job. My logic is that more than zero employers might see that I am better at electronics than my qualifications suggest.

I plan on making the blog anyway, but it is hard to change the name, so want to pick something that won't be offensive if I decide showing it to employers is a good idea. The general theme will be building cool stuff from junk with almost zero budget.

[tszaboo]

Having a blog myself, I always having trouble writing about stuff what is not work related. I signed an NDA that (I'm not legal expert) probably doesn't permits me to write about it. The company only sells crazy expansive stuff, so my blogging would not help them in any case. Hell, if I understand correctly they could even take any intellectual property right I create while I work there, including my blog, or open source stuff I make.

And how on earth would I bring something I designed (not at home for fun) to a job interview? Sneak it out the door and scrape the serial number and delete it from the beautiful ERP system? Seriously, if you did not design some white goods, radio or something you can buy in a shop, there is just no chance I could bring something (other than a brochure to a job interview. And hope that the other person knows what PPM means and understands the difficulties involved making that kind of stuff.

Am I paranoid here, and only I put three big wall between my online, work and personal life?

[george graves]

I don't think I would even want to work for someone that didn't encourage me to do things on the outside.  And I would hope they would encourage sharing knowledge, and learning new skills on my own time, and trying things that you might fail at.

[EEVblog]

I'm guessing Dave or Mike or Jerry or any of the other EE bloggers / vloggers would be a no-hire then?

In many companies, yes, they wouldn't touch us with a 10 foot pole.
If I was looking for a real job again, I'd have to potentially have two resume's, one with the blog stuff, one without.
Of course you could argue that those companies/people aren't worth working for etc, but that's a different argument.