Blogging as a résumé booster
I waited a while to mention this because I had to let things flesh out a bit. I'm currently doing a bit of "consulting" for the Admissions Office in the Cornell School of Engineering (you might remember that I'm a student there right now). Specifically, I agreed to help them improve the student blogging project they started last semester. It's a funny story, really… I wrote an entry last semester at my other blog (the other other blog), I Have Senioritis, titled "Engineers do it too," and the last thing I said in that entry was:
I’d be happy to offer consulting on moving this [sic] blogs in-house on a better platform (like Wordpress) and improving the appearance and search engine visibility of these blogs… just let me know!
Well, it's worth mentioning that sometimes, when you say that you'd be happy to help, people actually do ask you to help. So I'm helping.
I sat in on the program's first meeting of the semester, and the admissions officer in-charge introduced me to some of the bloggers and shared with them what I'll be doing… but I digress. This isn't really about me. It's about this: while I was at this meeting, one of the things the admissions officer spoke about was that this whole "blogging" thing is very new for colleges. MIT was the first school to really take blogging seriously, and their student bloggers get paid to blog about life at MIT. Word on the street is that it's the best job on campus. Naturally, if MIT does something then every engineering school has to follow suit, but I can tell you from experience (and you'll have to take my word for it) that no matter how fast-paced the world of blogging and the Internet might be, academia is always slow to move.
What's intriguing, though, is that universities are beginning to show interest in making blogging a part of their public relations efforts. Even in one semester, the Engineering blogs at Cornell have proven to be a very useful part of the admissions process, and I can definitely see a day when a lot of universities will offer paid jobs for student blogging. Universities and businesses alike are seeing the value (and even the necessity) of taking blogging seriously, and for good reason.
At the same time, people are realizing something. If you grab a handful of people and hand them untouched, ready-to-use blogs and let them run off and blog as they please, you'll always discover that not everyone can blog well. There are some people who are natural bloggers, some who can learn to blog, and (maybe) some who just won't ever be good at it. Blogging is a little different from traditional writing, a little more involved than day-to-day talk, and a little more intense than formal communication. When it comes to one-person operations, there are people who seem to do very well and others who don't. This might be news for some, but writing a good blog is actually a skill.
Right now I can't tell potential employers about my blogging endeavors. They wouldn't care at all. Sure, I might be a "top blogger" in my niche and even in the entire blog-o-sphere, but to potential employers I'm still just "ECE student, 3.26." I'm convinced, however, that all that will change in due time. For the members of Cornell Engineering's blogging program, they can already put their experience as student bloggers on their résumés, and for something that has been associated in the past with losing jobs and raising controversy, that's quite a significant change. Maybe it's just a matter of time before people will start to look positively on those who can make a blog successful. I'm looking forward to that.
Oh my, Christian. Sponsored student blogging as a PR tool… how much I've written and read about that subject I can hardly begin to imagine. It's insane the way PR and higher ed marketers have tried to find ways to use blogging without really understanding its possible use or impact. Official blogging is a really perverse sort of issue as it faces suspicion from older people, support from the younger members of staffs, and then general misunderstanding all around much of the time. Yikes. I can link you to some very wacky, very bizarre sort of ideas that some institutions have about student blogging, if I can find them to dig them up. Just… kind of crazy.
When people really 'understood' the message I was giving about how to improve student blogging, though, they were apologetic and sad, since they knew that the best blogging wouldn't fly under the auspices of officialdom.
A lot of the time I tend to think this is because the consulting and marketing firms planting these ideas in people's heads (sometimes!) are leading schools astray and so it is my delight to see someone with the right perspective and attitude (student, realistic) like yourself come onto the scene to help out. I'm looking forward to seeing the fruits of your labor.