Blogs as Key Component of Executive Employment Search Strategy

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Blogs are rapidly emerging as a key strategy for executives to increase visibility on the radar screens of executive search professionals including executive recruiters, venture capital firms, and internal corporate recruiters. They are a relatively easy way to build your personal online brand, increase your industry standing, and position yourself as an expert resource in your fields of expertise.

Blogging is a proactive activity. I strongly recommend that you establish and maintain your own blog. You will also want to visit blog sites and respond to the posts you find there, and use them to develop topics for your own blog entries. You can partially automate the review process by subscribing to an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) that will automatically download recent blog posts to your computer for review without the necessity to individually visit each of your favorite blogs every day. Some resources for RSS feeds include:

http://www.bloglines.com
http://www.feedreader.com
http://www.feedburner.com
http://www.feeddemon.com

Your executive blog can be a simple venue for your thoughts on relevant subjects, or it can be a full-fledged executive portfolio and platform for your online identity including your executive resume, your executive bio, white papers, etc. It is important to regularly post on your blog, and respond to comments and questions. Your posts need not be long, and it is far more important to regularly post than that those posts be highly polished, definitive statements on the subject!

There are various free and low-cost sites where you can create your blog, with no need to know about complex coding. Free sites include:

http://www.blogger.com

Sites that incur a small fee but do tend to have more flexibility in format, etc., include:

http://typepad.com

Once you have established your blog, be sure to submit it for inclusion on the major blog search engines, and include a list of these engines on your blog:

http://www.blogarama.com
http://www.blogsearchengine.com

Blogs are also a potent secret weapon in the competitive career intelligence area. Major companies often host blogs authored by key employees that can provide invaluable insights into the corporate culture and challenges the company is currently facing. If leveraged well, they can even serve as an access point to the inside track on internal opportunities.

Industry giants like Microsoft, Oracle, HP, and Lockheed host multiple blogs. Resources to find blogs of a company you are targeting and/or its CEO include:

http://www.blogarama.com

With the majority of executive recruiters Googling prospective candidates before making a selection, and many doing so before they will even contact you, it behooves you to use blogs to reassure them of your industry reputation and thought leadership in your field.