Congratulations, you've landed that job interview you've been working so hard to get! Someone finally saw how awesome you look on paper and wants to meet you face to face! Your resume is perfection. You've practiced interview questions over and over again until you can recite your answers perfectly. You've done so much research on the company that you should probably be training your interviewers on the company history and values. You're ready.
Now I'm curious, what previous positions are you going to talk about in your interview? I've talked on the blog before about adding your blogging experience to your resume and how useful it can be. Because blogging takes a lot of skills that are easily transferable to the workplace. But how do you get employers to take it seriously? Do you ever feel like when you mention that you have a blog, people kind of laugh and go "oh that's cute"? Happens to me all the time. And there's nothing worse than not being taken seriously during a job interview.
My current position is an administrative assistant at an engineering/surveying firm. I read through the job description a million times before interviewing which consisted of writing contracts, being organized, ability to multitask, attention to detail, etc. I've obtained all of these skills through various means, but I practice all of them with my blog. So during my interview, I didn't hesitate; I talked about my blog.
I told my future managers about how I would do well writing contracts because I write on a daily basis via my blog posts. I shared how my blog is something that I'm extremely proud of and it represents who I am and so I put every effort in to ensure my content is rich and well-written. I talked about managing my review copies and making sure that they get reviewed in a timely fashion. I'm a schedule reader and I've talked about that before so I talked about my color-coded Google calendar that consists of my review and blog post schedule and how that organization helps me stay on task.
I discussed my love of reading and my desire to expand my mind every day and learn new things. I used that desire to talk about my desire to learn and grow with the company. And I talked about how my blog is something that's completely up to me to keep going. No one is telling me to post or review books and that is what's given me my self-starter skills. I don't need a babysitter to get things done. I take the initiative and do them.
You know what this did for me? It made me stand out. Blogging is something completely unique to me and it's not something (I don't think) that everyone has on their resume. In today's job market you have to stand out and if putting your blog on your resume and talking about it during your job interview is the way to do it, then I say go for it. It got me my current position and my manager still asks me about how my blog is going almost on a weekly basis because she remembers it's something that I'm passionate about. The worst thing you can do during a job interview is be forgotten. I truly believe that my blogging experience made me stand out from the crowd and made my managers remember me.
Have you ever talked about your blogging experience during a job interview? How did you use it to your advantage?
Have you ever talked about your blogging experience during a job interview? How did you use it to your advantage?
I have! I wrote in a short introduction about myself that I'm a fervent blogger who writes reviews for books and I was asked about that :) It was fun to talk about that for a while, made the conversation a little less stressful :)
ReplyDeleteYes! It's so great to be able to talk about something you're passionate about! And I definitely think that there a lot of transferable skills.
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