Career 2.0
Over the last few weeks, I noticed the following:
- The Wall Street Journal had an article on 45+ year-old middle managers who were having trouble competing against younger people for jobs.
The Journal suggested that these people work hard to demonstrate that they had kept up with technology.
- On June 18th, rockstar blogger Robert Scoble had a post about a Yahoo! recruiter wanting a copy of his resume. Days before, even the BBC had covered Robert’s announcement that he was to leave Microsoft. Robert said I just wrote him back and said “I just took a job that didn’t require a resume, sorry.”.
- After the CTC 2006 conference, I wrote a post about the people I had met. I didn’t write about a few people, because I couldn’t find a link to them. Their cards were on my desk, but on the Grid, they didn’t exist.
Career 2.0 is probably going to be much the same as Career 1.0; except, now, the bar is higher. Running your own blog, and making a public name for yourself is part of achieving those new heights.
Running a good blog will expand your personal network, demonstrate your expertise in an area you are keenly interested in, and expose you to a lot of new people with challenging new ideas.
The result is a living breathing extended application letter. Tangible proof of what you are capable of. And a very obvious demonstration that you are up to date on the latest technology.
Or…. you can just apply with an old-school resume.
Rod: While I agree with your assessment of Career 2.0 vs Career 1.0, not everyone can have a “blogger as brand” approach to career development - whether it is their industry they’ve chosen (those highly regulated ones in professional services, for example) or the role they play within that industry (not “approved” for public consumption) - everyone doesn’t get the opportunity to take the mike (nor do they necessarily want to). (You should take a look at several of my early entries b/c you were the one person who encouraged me to “get on the bus” and start making a name for myself. I’ve taken that first step but just haven’t put my name there…yet…) Thanks for your support and encouragement and continued conversations.
Recruiting 2.0
Rod Boothby at Innovation Creators makes some excellent points about careers and recruiting in the digital age, suggesting that blogs can become replacements for resumes.
I’d like to add a few more items into the mix:
Multimedia: There’s…
Can we please… please… please… stop adding “2.0″ to every word, phrase and phoneme in the the language?
It’s been less than a 2.0 years since I first heard Web 2.0 and now Everything 2.0 is 2.0 . 2.0 and I don’t Know 2.0 about You2.0 but I2.0 am Really 2.0 worn out on it.
There is plenty about what you said in this post that is good and true. There’s no need to cludge it up with the “business-flog du jour.”