I was reading an article on an American website during lunch about how 'smart blogging can help your career, but one flub can blow it.' This struck me as SO AMERICAN -- blogging just to advance your career, but then if a potential boss sees one thing out of place, you've just blown it.
I've worked in both countries, and I have observed how you can be yourself in British companies -- you can even get drunk at office parties and no one cares -- but do the same thing in America, and you can lose your job.
So if you are blogging privately and a would-be employer sees you take a strong stand on something, rather than dismiss it, they can rescind your offer. Here's the example:
"Blogging didn’t work out so great for Kelly Dunleavy of San Rafael, Calif.
The summer after she graduated from University of California, Berkeley, she started a blog that she described as “fun”. “As a writer,” she said, “I thought it would be helpful to show potential employers that
I could write.”
Dunleavy, who’s now a reporter for a newspaper in Marin County, was interning at the governor’s office when she was writing the blog and was considering accepting a full-time job there.
“I mused briefly on my
blog about the odd-flavor of the office, the lack of windows, the
24-hour news cycle, and about whether this was really the bizarro atmosphere for me. I did not write anything bad about anyone else or
about the governor or about, well, anything,” she said.
Unfortunately, her blog post was enough to get her future bosses up in arms, and they promptly rescinded the offer."
Maybe you took a political stance a hiring manager didn’t agree with or simply wrote something that made you sound dumb. Bloggers beware: There are few, if any, protections for workers if an employer fires you or refuses to hire you for something you wrote on a blog outside of work.
Eliz again: This seems pretty draconian but sounds like that's the way it is in America. I guess it's no wonder the guy who writes the Mississippi Atheist blog does so under a pseudonym.
3 comments:
How can you ever trust people that never show their real personalities?
And how can you ever trust people who are so naive as to think their online indiscretions won't be (potentially) read by anyone with access to a computer?
Sometimes I think all bloggers are secret Catholics at heart---what's with this irrepressible CONFESSIONAL urge to tell all?:):)
If you put it out there nekkid for the world to see, well, be prepared to accept the consequences. Employers have many applicants to choose from these days, so why take a risk on a blabbermouth? I'd have rescinded that offer, too.
Very Interesting!
Thank You!
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