Kevin Geary is the author of Employee Revolution: A guide to being indispensable, irreplaceable, and higher paid (without lying, cheating, or joining a union).
If you have a personal blog, I’m talking directly to you. If you don’t have a personal blog, get one now. Sorry, but this surefire strategy doesn’t work unless you have a personal blog (you can keep your other blogs, you just need a personal one too).
What is a resume`?
Try not to fall asleep. This is short and to the point, I promise.
A resume is a list of your qualifications on one page. It’s supposed to make it easy for a company to quickly determine whether or not you are qualified for a job.
But companies actually use your resume` as an excuse to exclude you.
Secret: They don’t look at what’s there, they look at what’s missing. The key is to not play by the rules.
This is where your personal blog comes in. The resume` is dead. It’s time to be unique. It’s time to be relevant. It’s time to be revolutionary. It’s time to be a real problogger.
I want you to use your personal blog as a launch pad for your dream career. The personal blog is the new resume` of the revolutionary.
What’s it look like?
In the new global economy, skills and titles are commodities. The times are changing so quickly that it’s nearly impossible to keep up, much less completely stand apart from others skill-wise or title-wise.
How much better of a programmer are you really? How many more titles can you achieve over the next person in line? How much faster can you complete the design process? It’s all a race in the wrong direction because there’s always someone (or a computer) who can do it better and faster than you (or good enough to get paid a little less and keep the job).
What’s important for the revolutionary is not physical skill and titles (things that look good on resume`s) as much as it is: personality, uniqueness, imagination, relevance, artistry, passion, personal connection, fearlessness, and problem solving. These are things that can’t be replicated; things that make you an individual and not a commodity.
It’s also a list of things that are impossible to communicate on a resume`.
Your personal blog is going to tell your real story. It’s not the story of physical skills and titles. It’s the story of getting things done. It’s the story of being invaluable. It’s the story of doing what nobody else has done, solving problems nobody else could solve, and not just having ideas, but consistently acting-on and shipping them (getting your idea to the public).
The revolutionary doesn’t have a resume`. The revolutionary has a story that is digitally recorded, spread across the globe, talked about, shared, commented on, revered, admired, hated, and loved. It’s uniqueness translates into scarcity, which translates into value in the marketplace.
Your personal blog is a chance to tell who you are and show what you do (beyond skills and titles) in a way that makes you irresistible. It’s the way you’re going to land the job you really want. It’s the way you’re going to make an absolute fortune.
This is where you expect the list.
There is no list. There can’t be. If there was a step by step process to creating a blog that accomplishes what we just talked about, everyone would have one.
There’s only step one: get started. Use what you’ve learned here from Darren to get everything set up. Then think about answering the following questions:
- Who are you, really?
- Why are you different?
- How are you relevant?
- What have you accomplished (not ideas, but actual accomplishments in your industry)?
- What do you think?
- Who will recommend you?
- What have they said about you?
- What are your ideas?
- What problems have you solved?
There are many more, but I think you get the point. These are all things a company should ask, but doesn’t. This is how you change the rules. This is how you win.
The revolution is new, but the revolution is real. I invite you to leave the confines of the box everyone lives in and be a revolutionary. You’re important. We need you.
Hi Darren,
Thank you for your AWESOME post. I’m totally with you and could not agree more! I am transitioning in my career and I am starting a blog precisely for those reasons, and it’s great to hear you describe the rationale so succinctly.
Stephanie
Nice post because it brought a different perspective to the ordinary thinking and everyday idea.
This has got me thinking of how to do more things differently.
I definitely agree with this 100% and a lot of people will know that is what they need to do in order to succeed in most faucets of life. The tough part is finding where those gaps are and taking advantage.
As a manager for over 27 years. I can say Kevin, this was a brilliant post. Your right I use to look for what was not on the resume as a pose to what was on the resume. People don’t realize that the more personable the resume is the more the interviewer want to learn a bout you the applicant. If your resume is boring depending on what position you are applying for will reflect who you are. That fact that you can only put but so much in a resume in the first place make the idea of putting your info of you (that is your personality) into a blog and what you know is great. Well just letting you know from an interviewer point of view of this posts.
There is definitely confusion in the head of whoever penned that piece. Great title, but only remotely connected to the content. He really needs to clarify for himself the exact meaning of the words “revolution” and “revolutionary”. What he is talking about is the opposite of “revolution”. More like adding to an existing trend… And he only needs to spend half a day in a recruitment office to realise that nobody there has the time to go through personal blogs. A few successful stories do not quite a new trend create, at least for the moment. Ironically, I did get a nice job last year by exactly abandoning the resume-format and writing a more passionate and focused “life story” in relation to the job I was applying for.
I also do not like the explicit support for the scarcity illusion. The faster we drop that one, the faster our world will get out of the cul de sac it is in now.
The title made me read it but now I wish I had not wasted my time.
Great ideas… on my list this week is updating various profiles and my online resume. I started a ‘professional/personal’ blog several months ago for the purpose of promoting my new career as a freelance writer.
I have a resume page that is more standard than innovative. I use it in bidding on jobs and can quickly refer a perspective client there in a matter of seconds. But, I think it’s flat so your questions will help me, specially as i find it hard to write about myself in the same way I might write about others.
Something that works for me also is adding your blog/website and linkedin to your personal signature in email. The recepient can’t help but see it when you send them your resume!
Thanks for this article — be creative and original!
The world is changing as you’ve rightly pointed out. So why bother with a job at all? There are so many options now for ambitious people to virtually create their own income. Find out what people what, find the simplist solution to their problem, and offer it to them without costing yourself an arm and a leg.
I think jobs are an excuse in many instances. Most people freak out when presented with the possibility of being unemployed. But guess what? The world is bursting with opportunities for anyone with passion, creativity, determination, and willingness to do whatever-it-takes!
Whatever you do don’t sell yourself short.
@Anna,
You perfectly represent the school-bred factory worker mindset. You were trained to be 100% perfect and accurate. So because I didn’t use the correct accent on the word, I didn’t get an “A.”
Just like a typical teacher: pay no attention to content, pay all attention to accuracy in terminology and spelling.
Correcting spelling inaccuracies will never change the world. 100% perfection and accuracy isn’t as important as ideas and shipping.
Thanks for the comment.
While the content of this post is nice & useful, I’d say that the title is misleading. Most would assume that this post is speaking about direct jogging a blog income, or a comprehensive step by step guide to something substantial.
Making the titles powerful is important to attract visitors. But they shouldn’t be detached from the content. I think the term “personal blog” or “getting a job” ought to have been the part of the title here, in some way or the other.
If the title raises expectations, the content ought to deliver. If the film isn’t as nice as its promo, it’ll finally go down.
great post
this one is a new idea. I have been a regular reader of Problogger so I do know there’s plenty of entrepreneurs out there who have used their blogs as their extended resumes and inked a few profitable deals because of the weblog. Darren himself is a great example.
Extending the same logic for applying to jobs is lovely. However I don’t think the resume on paper would die a death so soon. At the most, you could mention the url of your weblog on the resume and the recruiter could come and check you out.
The post is fascinating & for definite the title is beautiful however I kind of disagree with the author in the sense that in case you have personal weblog, as proposed here, you will be focusing on you as your main topic & how lovely you are for A or B.
Everybody involved in the subject knows that people don’t care about you or what you do or what you have accomplished but the way you can benefit them with information or any other matter they need. This will be only applicable to jobs.
&, unless I misunderstood, you are guiding people to generate a weblog in order to receive a job which at the finish of the day is the less profitable journey to fortune.
I read the problogger book & I think Darrem struggled a lot to generate the powerhouse that they has now as an independent professional blogger with a powerful group of people behind him…
I tend to use the about page in my blogs to say what I am. It’s the most read page in my blog actually :D
We’re thinking of starting a blog for our business. I really love the colors and use of space on the template.
This is fine in as far as it goes. However, I am not interested in getting another job – it won’t be long before I am lining myself up for retirement! I am, however interested in using my blog to make a fortune which is what I thought the title of this posting was about. I was therefore disappointed. I agree that if you want a good job then either bend or break the normal rules to get yourself noticed. That is precisely how I got myself back into work after finding myself unemployed some years ago. But this is not about blogging.
Awesome post!!!!
I’ll definitely rethink my own strategies on how to get ahead ith my blog.
Thanks for sharing!
To all saying the title is misleading, I’d ask you to think about why you’ve come to that conclusion.
Can your blog produce an absolute fortune for you OFF-line? I believe Darren has talked about this before here and in his book.
The title is misleading if you were expecting a certain type of blog post and weren’t thinking about all the different ways a blog can produce income. This is one of the reasons the post is more relevant to you (it got you thinking on a different angle).
Yes?
That might work for some careers. Has no effect in the grocery business however. They’re too afraid to even know what a computer is! lol
just ask this question to yourself, why do you need to blog? That’s what will makes your problems solved.
The best bit of advice was the only real advice “just get started.”
I think the best thing to realize is that, from what I’ve seen, it’s a slow burn. You keep building on tiny victories. I’ve done a lot so far with my blog and I’m only excited to see how far it will be next week. Next month. Next year.
I think the resume of a person is important. But I find it to be the hardest part to write. It is hard to give a perspective on who you are.A special if the self confidence is low. That is what I hear mostly. /Anette Hultman
I think this is a nice post but I agree with Abhijeet Mukherjee who posted several posts back that the title is a bit misleading. I thought this was going to be about making money from my blog not “How your blog can land you your dream job.” I don’t know if this would work for me since I am an independent instructor and I teach classes…so I sort of own my own business….and I have a blog for this business and in that blog I tell a little about myself and my qualifications….So would a personal blog do me any good?
But, before my current job, I worked in HR and sifted through dozens of resumes as people applied for jobs…it’s true I would look for what people lacked and compare them to each other…if someone posted their blog address on their resume that would have stood out to me, I probably would have looked it up, and (depending on how they presented themselves in the blog) it quite possibly would have swayed my decision to recommend that person to my boss….or saved us some time calling the person in for an interview cause we would feel their personality wasn’t quite the right fit. So if you do do a personal blog, depending on your field…make sure your blog voice is coming through clear and your keeping it professional.
have a personal blog, that means not for a profit, the same domain name with our name. not using the domain niche keyword