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

[vk6zgo]

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 Electronics field in my own country is a fairly small community,so that pre-Internet,many folks  were quite well known to their peers.

They would often growl about their Employers to some close friends among that group,but it still would often "get back" that "someone" had made a comment.
There were definitely people who I would not have trusted,& who would blab to the Boss,probably changing the comment to sound worse!

The trouble with putting your "angst" out on the 'Net,is it is there for everyone to see,both your friends & enemies,as well as your Employer's  enemies.
 
I sometimes make comments in this forum about bad,silly,or funny aspects of my previous employment,but I don't name the Company/Organisation,unless they are defunct.

It is hardly fair to make a fuss about something nasty or stupid they did years ago,when you have no idea if it is ongoing.



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

There is a habit amongst EEs to stroke their beards & say,"The designer must have used this or that cruddy component for a reason!" when,(Politically Incorrectness alarm!!!)"Blind Freddy" could see that it was used because either:-

(a) It was the best they could get at the time.

OR,

(b) The parts store was full of the damn things!

In both cases,the employer would encourage the EE to use the thing,in most cases quite successfully.

[Bored@Work]

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.

Then call it zerobudget.

[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.

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.

Too me it's pretty simple. Having a blog and working on this on the outside, if anything, shows you are passionate about the field. Who wouldn't want to hire passionate people who enjoy what they do? Eeven a totalitarian dictator shold be impressed by having enthusiastic slaves

[EEVblog]

Then call it zerobudget.

Damn, I like that name!
Double damn, some squatter has it
http://zerobudget.com/
 

[Electro Fan]

A few thoughts:

Setting aside whether a blog will help you or hurt you with getting a job - we've heard good reasoning in both directions, and assuming you are going to make a blog anyway because you've decided that you will not worry about the employers who don't respond favorably if one good emloyer sees it likes it enough to hire you, then we are down to what is a good name?

A good name has some attributes.  These might include:

1. A name that has something to do with your business or in some way reflects your business or your endeavor.
- in this respect zerobudget isn't bad because it helps tell the story that you are resourceful and building something from scratch with your own ingenuity.  You can explain all this and it will be congruent with the name.  On the other hand, it doesn't really say what you are building.  So EEzerobudget or resourcefulelectronics might better help/more specifically tell the story.  These are just examples to convey the concept; with some thought you can probably do much better.

2. A name that consists of something someone might possibly search for with a search engine.
- if someone was trying to search on Google to find a really great engineer what would they enter:
Engineer?
Hardware Engineer?
Electrical Engineer?
Best Software Developer?
BestCDeveloper?
Arduino Expert?
I2C Expert?
FPGA Specialist?
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Or maybe AustraliaFPGASpecialist, or TexasJavaAce.com
- thinking through some combinations of such words might help you pick a blog name that is "representative" of what you do, be "specific" enough to reflect your desirable skills and attributes, and have a "positive connotation"  (I'm not sure that Scratch Monkey would have qualified as any of these).

3. Once you figure out the name that meets such criteria and determine that it is available / doesn't infringe on anyone's Intellectual Property then you can move from the URL to some search engine optimization.  It turns out that you can do SEO for words that have little or nothing do do with the URL but having a URL that humans might associate with what you want them to find (you) and value (your particular skills and attributes that you are prepared to defend as being the best available for the income you are seeking), then you can work on the SEO accordingly.

PS, Give some thought to how all of this is going to look 5, 10, 15 years from now. Is it consistent with how you want to be viewed then and even further down the road?  It is possible that as you start building your brand that you might like to grow it and enhance it and not have to start from scratch again.  A blog or a web site can evolve but think about where it is headed.  If you manage to have a blog/web site and find a job and you can keep the site you will be in a better position to attract valuable interest beyond attracting just an initial employer.  Or it can just be a transient "job wanted add/demo" - it's your call. 

[EEVblog]

PS, Give some thought to how all of this is going to look 5, 10, 15 years from now. Is it consistent with how you want to be viewed then and even further down the road?  It is possible that as you start building your brand that you might like to grow it and enhance it and not have to start from scratch again.  A blog or a web site can evolve but think about where it is headed.

I never did that for the EEVblog of course. I never liked EEVblog at first, it was just an acronym until I came up with a better name, but I never did so it stuck, and now it's my "brand" 
I'd recommend not doing that of course.

[george graves]

Good, presentable URLs are hard to find.  So I went the other way with it.   

http://www.digitalunderpants.com/

[ElectroIrradiator]

I will go against the flow here, and submit the name of your blog/website matters very, very little to its success. The exception might be if the name is highly offensive/NSFW to a lot of people.

Once your blog is up, people will find it due to the content you produce and the community recognition, not due to the domain name. Alternatively they will follow links provided by other sources. In both cases the name means nothing. The one exception is if people search for your *exact* domain name. However that would mean they either know about you beforehand (in which case their search is pointless), or it is just dumb luck.

Use any nice name you like, which won't get you in trouble due to trademark violations, find *some* halfway reasonable domain name to go with it, and produce some nice, unique content. If your writings/videos are worth reading/watching, then people will find them. Some form of unique 'trademark' name, like EEVblog, will be helpful for reference, but it doesn't have to be the domain name.

[Electro Fan]

You can use a name that is generally understood to mean something similar to what your blog or business is all about, or you can use a name that means something other than what you have to offer, or you can just plain make up a name.  Exxon is a made up name.  The company was previously well known (starting as Standard Oil and then becoming Jersey Standard) and they wanted a new distinctive name.  Among other things, the company had a pretty big marketing budget.

Today, anyone with a very small budget can have a blog and publish their own content and other PR, but everything (including gaining mindshare on the web) takes some resources (time, money, effort, etc.) 

Regardless of what name you pick, after that you have to provide something of value.  Even if you name your site heavenonearth.com it doesn't mean people will automatically find you or fully understand or appreciate what you have to offer.   

Think of it like a user interface.  You could label the off button "on" and the on button "off".  Or you could label each button "guess what this one does".  Most people would probably figure it out, but why make it harder than it needs to be? 

If people find you and understand what you have to offer and you deliver according to how you set expectations, things have a chance of working out.  If you want to make extra steps in the process by requiring people to study your blog to try to figure out what the relationship is between your name and your value proposition, maybe that's a good strategy for attracting curious and patient people.  You could name your business Jet Planes, and your web site Gorillas, and your products Basketballs.  These names would of course be hard to pin down due to the practicality of securing URLs and potentially IP rights, but even if you could, why would you want to use naming conventions that cause people to work harder at understanding your role in the market and your offerings? 

Making a coherent marketing plan might help, or you could have no marketing plan and overwhelm the competition with your superior value to the point that naming conventions make no difference.  It's possible.

Without a doubt there are many examples of successful companies that have names which don't tie clearly to their role in the market or what they sell.  And there are plenty of examples of companies that took some good artistic license.  Apple Computer doesn't make (edible) apples, but they still do make some computers, and right out of the gate they found a way to make a nearly universal symbol (the apple with a bite out of it) their symbol.  It was a thoughtful naming convention.

In my opinion substance often trumps form, and often rightfully so.  And if form (including a name or other label) has no value leave it out.  But if form has some value and it can be additive to the substance (if for no other reason than signaling intent), why not leverage the combination?

[arkanix38]

The name really depends on what the content and focus of the blog will actually be. If it is a personal blog, name it so. If it is a circuit design blog, then again name it as a circuit design blog.

Once you know the exact focus of the blog it should help you (or indeed others) come up with a creative blog title to match. For an employer browsing your blog, it's no use having a blog titled "Rockstar Electrical" if you are running a programming blog.

Also, needless to say be careful of copyrighted names like "Rockstar" etc...


Ark

[scratch_monkey]

I like the sound of zerobudget. Will likely go for some variation of zero budget electronics. My logic is that it is appropriate to what I am doing now, and in ten years, I will be either be able to give a reference from my (future) current job, or still have zero budget. Thanks guys. Now to make some content.....

Will be using a zero budget hosting service. Any recomendations on what to avoid due to googles recent activities? Thinking about hosting it on my file server, text with images, ISP quite reliable, upload speed more than I expect will be needed, some sort of dynamic DNS, is this a sane plan?

[moepower]

I agree with what others have said.   I am an employer in an engineering company and I wouldn't care if you've started a blog.   It is just not a skill set that is of any marketable interest, in my opinion, to an engineering firm.  I would say it might even hurt you as it doesn't really advertise you can solve problems.  It might give them the impression you spend a lot of time on the internet and not enough practical experience.

[george graves]

Will be using a zero budget hosting service. Any recomendations

Wordpress.org.  But hosting is so cheap - you can get hosting for like $3 a month.  Get a real URL - not a Blahblahblah.wordpress.org.  You'll never get free hosting with a "real" URL.  And the "zero budget" thing is cute - but anyone that will hire you, would care less at how many pennies you can pinch - that might be a turn off.  As soon as the interviews are over, you might have cost them 10k.  Once on the books for a year, 25k just to train you..  Your 122 sq foot office, about $500 a month.  Not to mention a dozen other things. 

[davidb_]

I have a website/blog, but try to keep it professional. I write about my projects, linux/programming type stuff, relevant conferences, etc. I also have separate pages for my resume and an online portfolio of projects.

I put my website on my resume and I have had interviewers mention they were impressed by the projects on my website as part of the interview. Ultimately it's all about content. If you keep your blog on topic and try to keep opinion/politics out of it, it seems to definitely be a net positive. Of course, I can't really speak to employers that are turned off by my website, since they've never told me.

The website has also been a very effective tool for me to get contacted from recruiters about potential jobs. Then, there's my favorite part: talking with others that see my projects and want to ask me questions or show off thier own similar projects.

As for a name, why not just use your own name?

[SLJ]

As for a name, why not just use your own name?

Exactly.
You can always add another domain name later on that points to the original or even a section of the original.

Example:
StevenJohnson.com and:

STEVESANTIQUETECHNOLOGY.COM
GRAYBEARDTECHNOLOGY.COM
GRAYBEARDELECTRONICS.COM
VINTAGETESTEQUIPMENT.COM
etc.

What you use for the domain name probably should be related to the subject but it's really not that critical in the end. Content is most important. Without that you have nothing.

[mazurov]

I'm getting most of my contracts via my blog. I don't even need to tell the potential clients about it - they are aware of it before we start talking. I guess this also filters out those who "don't see a blog as a positive thing" so I never see them.

[george graves]

What's your blog?  Link?

[mazurov]

Press on the globe above your name.

[scratch_monkey]

" And the "zero budget" thing is cute - but anyone that will hire you, would care less at how many pennies you can pinch - that might be a turn off."

My understanding was that engineers are employed to get the job done in the most cash efficient way possible.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

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. 

If I hire someone well known in the industry first thing I would do is to post his photo with bio on my company's website. This way I can get other candidates to pay more attention to my company and boost company's image in general. I am not the only one companies like Microsoft, Google and Lucas Arts, EA - all do that. And Of course I assume that employee will dedicate part of his blog to his employer in return and he/she will me considered about information that is disclosed without looking like PR person wrote it - people like that.

There are companies that don't like their employees to be active in community, blog about company and their work, and some of them are very powerful like Apple. On other side I have known engineers who we could only hire if they allowed to keep their blog, sometimes even their own independent companies and those ones were people most sought after.

If you don't want hire bunch of mediocrity into your company you have to learn how to convince talented and out-of-the box designers and engineers to work for you.

[Rigby]

Unless there is undeserved deliberately negative content on a candidate's blog, I don't care if candidates have a blog at all.

Trying to control employees outside of work hours is folly, and shows a lack of respect of the employee as a person.

That said, if you don't want them blogging, I think it's fair to ask them to not ever mention who they work for on their blog, or mention any of the employers' products (positive or negative), etc.  If they can't agree to that, then they don't respect you as an employer.

Good things come from blogging.  Don't be afraid of it.  You hire to grow your company, but you also hire to grow the employee; don't unduly hamper that growth.