Following my recent article, How blogging can help you change careers, I’ve noticed a couple of people writing about how a person’s blog may work against them, especially while they are job hunting.

Most of us have probably heard the Dooce story. An American web developer, Heather B. Armstrong, lost her job several years ago after her employers discovered her blog, and took exception to some of the things she had posted about them.

While her writings were apparently satirical in nature, her boss however was unimpressed, and sent her packing.

Since then a number of similar incidents have come to light, and it makes you wonder just how far you can go with what you write in your blog, particularly in regards to your job, or employer.

In fact Heather’s experience gave rise to the term “dooced”, a reference to the title of her blog, and is a way of saying you’ve been sacked because of what you wrote about your boss, or workplace, in your blog.

Now it seems employers are actively searching the web in an effort to locate any blogs a job applicant may have, as a way of gathering further “background” information about them, over and above what they have already learned during the application, and interview, process.

Some people are calling blogs the new resumes, and by looking at what a person writes, and how they write, employers are able to gain a “fuller picture” of a prospective employee.

This is not an entirely new “phenomenon” though. I remember a recruiter telling me back in 1997 how she used the web to gather information on applicants, though at that time she, and other recruiters, would not been able to find a great many blogs, let alone, most likely, any written by her candidates.

It is nevertheless something to be mindful of, and prompted Anthony Baggett at Antbag to suggest we consider taking a more serious approach to our blogging.

It would be unfortunate though were employers to make recruiting decisions based to any great degree on what they read, and possibly didn’t like, in someone’s blog.

It has to be remembered blogs, particularly of those of a personal nature, as verbose and detailed as they may be, still do not paint the full picture of the writer.

People have ups and downs in life, blog accounts are not always complete, and will be presented with varying degrees of candour and colour. Not all stories will have “follow ups”, or posts detailing the resolution of problems someone may have articulated at an earlier time.

My earlier article outlined the benefits that a blog presenting your professional knowledge could have while looking for work, and I would hope that is most employers are really interested in.

Everyone has a “story”, and will at times have upheaval in their personal life, and while we can argue that there is no such thing as a complete separation of our work and our personal life, a lot of workers are able to discharge their professional duties without allowing the conflicts, or otherwise, of their personal lives to interfere.

As a quick follow up to yesterday’s article, Tips for fine tuning your CV, I thought I would point out a few examples of what a little creativity can do to spice up a resume.

While the CVs I have featured are mostly those of web or graphic designers, if you study them closely you may find one or two simple ideas you could apply to your own resume.

You don’t need any design expertise, or even the ability to produce graphics, but see if you can simply draw some inspiration from the layout of the information, or the way the headings are styled, for example.

• Michael Efford is Perth based a multimedia and graphic designer, and uses a combination of two font colours and a two column layout to produce a CV that is very simple, yet very striking.
• Lee Stephens an Australian web designer currently based in Europe, has an elegant, classically styled resume, which also features images of some of his work.
• Lily Feng is a New York based photographer and designer, whose CV is just one page in length! I know she’s only been working a couple of years, but this is a great example of how less is more.
• Adrian Redman also uses a two column layout. Notice how the spacing of the information and the truncated headings create a document that is eye catching without really trying to be.
• Tony Cormack uses a splash of colour to make his CV stand out in the crowd! Another example of a one page CV.

A CV that just stands out that little bit more could prove a valuable asset for career changers, especially if it catches the eye of the right person.

Think of it as being an attention creating gimmick that isn’t trying to be such!