I came across an article today that gave me one of those “I never thought of that, but OF COURSE!” moments. The article, entitled How Blogs Are Changing The Recruiting Landscape appeared on the CareerJournal.com site. The sentence that really struck me was “Corporate recruiters are surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from resumes and interviews.”

Let me just take a moment here and mention that I spend about 78% of my blogging time skewering most of the regular practices of HR people and hiring managers. Think I’m one of their favorite people? Oh, I don’t think so.

My personal liabilities aside, this blog thing could really be a boon for those of you who use it wisely. If you’re an IT person and you blog about technology products or the best ways to set up IT processes, that would be very attractive to prospective employers. In fact, the article says, “Most blog-related recruits are professionals in technology and media because jobs in these fields often require knowledge of the blogosphere.”

I have to admit that I’ve scouted writers for TechRepublic through blogs they’ve written. It’s one thing to hear someone tell you how qualified he is, but quite another to read about the practical manifestations of his knowledge.

I’ve actually discovered some writers for TechRepublic by reading their blogs.

Here are some tips from the article for making your blog “recruiter-friendly”:

  1. Clearly identify your specialty.
  2. Show you’re current on hot topics.
  3. Provide more information. (Include a resume or a link to a social networking site you use.)
  4. Exercise common sense–Don’t write anything negative about former employers. (Now I’m really starting to get paranoid.)
  5. Omit personal information.
  6. Keep it polished and current
  7. Contribute to other blogs. (This draws more traffic and boosts its search-engine rankings.)