Blogs and Recruiting...seems to me there is some confusion

Workforce.com recently published an article on blogs and recruiting. I gotta say that posting jobs to a web site run by someone else that includes advertisements is not my idea of blogging. What makes a blog a blog? I think it's run by one person or a small number of people (that are visible) that generate their own opinions and link to other content. Because we blog as individuals, the idea of corporate sponsorship concerns me a little. Just because a website calls itself a blog doesn't mean it's a blog. <my opinion...read my disclaimer>.

The personal presence that is mentioned in the article as a benefit of blogging just doesn't come through in some of these advertiser sponsored “blogs” (the person should be central to the blog).

In the article, Steven Rothberg of collegerecruiter.com, asks how much more revenue is generated by the content relative to the cost of keeping the blogs up. Then he asks why we (Microsoft) are doing it. OK, so I'll answer that question. ..

First, this is not only not costing my group money to do, I see it as the best tool I have right now to do a major part of my job, which is to build community around marketing at Microsoft. Frankly, this is free to me and my organization and I am thankful that I work for a company that invests in tools and technologies that help us reach out to our customers directly. Second, we are a technology company and I feel it's our responsibility to use technology to do our jobs, whether it's our technology or our vendors'. I don't measure the value of blogging in revenues though (what can I say...HR is a cost center and blogging isn't “costing” me anything). The time I spend here blogging is time I would spend reaching out to the tech marketing community anyway, but would probably be doing less efficiently without a  blog presence (and also, it's fun and interesting...let's hear it for job satisfaction). I have great candidates in process that have resulted from blogging, I have had numerous opportunities to engage with professional organizations and industry leaders. I've received many positive comments from viewers of this blog and feel like I am helping drive a better understanding of the marketing discipline at Microsoft and our corporate culture. In my mind, that is priceless.

Personally, I think blogging is going to change the way companies recruit (with people at the company blogging and also recruiters seeking out bloggers). The Internet will be the new job posting and resume database. New models will have to be developed for some service oriented business in the staffing space. It's possible that job boards will have to create new value propositions. They biggest ones have done a good job of evolving with the times anyway. But the cost to produce and publish content (like job descriptions) through blogs will be so low that companies will embrace blogging and recruiters will be differentiated in the market place by the strength of their content, knowledge of industry and responsiveness. Just my prediction (and opinion). Feel free to come back here and check in months down the road if I am wrong.