Blogging your job search

When I first decided I wanted to land a job at Microsoft, I decided that I would blog my job search.  I knew that I was interested in knowing a) how to get a job at Microsoft, and 2) what the interview process was like.  I figured there were other people like me that would also want to know this information. 

With this in mind, I started blogging.  There was one problem: I didn't want my current employer to know that I was looking.  Therefore, I started my blog on a Linux server running under Virtual PC on my laptop at my former company.  I created lots of great posts (if I do say so myself) reflecting the whole ebb and flow of the job hunt process: hurried calls to get interviews scheduled followed by long periods of radio silence, etc.

Anyway, I exported all these posts to a text file with the intention of importing them into my new blog once I arrived at MS.  Well, that didn't work out so well.  I did move some of the posts over, but it was a painful manual process.  In addition, I had now way of manipulating the posting dates to match the originals.  Therefore, I limited the number of posts that I moved over, and just started blogging from there.  The rest, as they say, is history.

I bring this all up because I have become aware of someone doing exactly what I did, except publicly.  Christian Buckley is blogging his job search at https://my-microsoft-diary.blogspot.com/ .  Perhaps job seekers can get some good information from Christian.

BTW: Christian, good luck in your upcoming interviews.  Let me know if there's anything I can do to help...

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 22, 2004
  I would love to get a copy of the blog test file. I like your blog and would be interested in what you went through as I am looking at the same thing.
• Anonymous
  December 27, 2004
  Really enjoy your site - and the links to others. I'm so new to this blogging type of communications that at present my site and experience are really limited. My hope is that by communicating with folks who have been doing this for a while that they will give me some helpful tips (hint, hint<g>). It's one thing to be looking at and clicking around with the technology, it's another thing entirely to put it to use. Your concept of blogging to a job is very cool- sure beats the fire out of the results type impressions that folks are sharing with me from the large job engine houses like Monster...
  
  Thanks for the post... Dana
• Anonymous
  December 27, 2004
  Dana, hopefully you're not wasting too much time on the large job sites like Monster, Dice, and HotJobs. The reality is that the success rate of these sites is under 5%. You are much better off networking or cold calling a company that interests you.