Today was a big day for me! Thanks to Marketing Headhunter Extraordinaire, Harry Joiner, I was in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal, front cover of the Marketplace section in an article about How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job.
Sure, the whole article was interesting, but the part that really matters is here:
Some companies encourage employees to blog because they can use them to recruit others. When recruiter Harry Joiner was hired to fill two positions at Musician's Friend Inc. in November, he used an employee's personal blog to help sell his client's rural location of Medford, Ore., to job seekers. "Candidates were using Medford as a reason not to consider the jobs," he says. "As a marketer, I thought, if you can't change it, promote it."
The blog, by So Young Park, the company's director of e-commerce marketing and customer-relationship management, describes her move to the area a year ago from New York City. It includes details about her work, her experience owning a car for the first time, a bear sighting near her new home and related topics. While she started the blog to share information about her experiences with family and friends back East, she acknowledges that it has also been a good resource for attracting job hunters.
Mr. Joiner says he linked to the blog in ads he posted on job boards and in emails to potential candidates. He says it helped him get professionals to leave jobs in Los Angeles. "The blog made a ton of difference," he says. "It humanized [Ms. Park] to candidates and made the jobs more attractive."
Interested in a job at Musician's Friend? Click here for open positions at our corporate headquarters, as well as great jobs from friends of mine at other great companies.
Here's the full article or download wsj_syp_article_4.10.07.doc
This is, like, the coolest thing ever. :)
