In my Modern Resume presentation I have a few slides on blogging, a couple of which are hints and tips on "how to blog." The second one starts out like this:
I know that repeating something three times is supposed to be a way to get people to remember something. This is one of those things that I think is really important to stress to people, especially after a few incidents in the SQL world lately.
Joe Webb recently wrote "The theft of ideas and content" after some of his content was plagiarized. I've seen a few other professionals in this the SQL Server world respond to similar issues of their own content. A couple professionals, Brent Ozar and Tom LaRock did a short presentation on how to deal with this.
You can't build a brand of your own if you don't do the work. It sounds cliche, it sounds like the advice you'd get from your parents. Do the right thing no matter what. Lots of people think that everyone lies on their resume, and I'm sure many do, but it can come by to bite you later. Here are six examples of people who lied on their resume and got caught.
In today's world, it's getting easier and easier to check up on plagiarism. I strongly urge you to do your own work.
Your blog is a part of your resume. It's a part of what people will look at before they call you for an interview. Even after you have the job, this survey said you might get fired if they discover you lied on your resume.
I don't know that I'd fire someone for lying on their resume, but I certainly would if I found you copying someone's blog and claiming it as your own.
In my Modern Resume presentation, I tried to structure it to go from easy to hard things to do in terms of branding yourself. So the order has been:
Actually I added research later, so that is at the end when it really is the easiest (I think) for people to do. Or maybe not. It requires some confidence in yourself to admit mistakes and ignorance, so maybe it’s not easy.
At a recent presentation I was discussing this with Andy Warren and he disagreed. He said blogging was hard for most people, that they can’t maintain it and my bias as a writer has me spending too much time on it.
I think I agree after some thought on the matter. Writing is hard for many people, and even though they recognize that it’s a skill they need to IT (writing, communicating), most people won’t do it any more than they have to.
So what is the correct order? How should I focus on them in my presentation? I think for the average guy/gal, the easiest things are likely :
I’ll play with the order, but I am interested to see what others think. My view is that speaking and authoring, trying to put out a message, is still hard, but volunteering your time and knowledge, either in IT or outside, is probably easier than blogging. Even leadership, being a team lead or project lead, is probably easier for most IT people.
One of the pieces of advice that I give in my talk "The Modern Resume" is that you should review, and likely touch, your resume once a quarter. It was a habit I got into when I worked in the corporate world after having a startup company that I worked for fail.
That experienced bothered me, I didn't like the instability near the end of that company's life, and so I decided that I didn't want to get caught in that situation again. When I went to JD Edwards, there was a feeling of instability at times before they were purchased by Peoplesoft, and it seemed I was reviewing my resume on a regular basis then.
My simple advice:
These simple steps should take you 5 minutes a quarter, and it's worth it for managing your career.
And if you have nothing to add, think about that as well. Perhaps you should be looking to grow your career a little and undertake something worth adding to your resume.
