Is this a recruiting blog or what?

I remember talking about the lack of recruiting blogs a while back; wondering when more folks in recruiting were going to start blogging. Since then, especially recently, more recruiters have joined the blogging ranks. That's a good thing.

I've also gotten heat from from some "recruiting bloggers" because I don't link to their site(s). Yeah, some people have dropped some pretty heavy hints ; ) Yeah, I got it! Really, you weren't that subtle ; )

My reason for the limited recruiting blog links in my blogroll actually has to do with the relevance to my target audience (I know, here we go again) and the segmentation of recruiting blogs. You can call my blog a "recruiting blog", because I work in recruiting and talk about the recruiting process here at Microsoft, but ultimately, I am not being paid to talk to recruiters, I am being paid to network with marketing and finance people. Don't get me wrong, I like talking to recruiters, but it's not the main reason I am here. Consider that more of a hobby than my day job. Many of the other "recruiting blogs" out there are written by recruiters for recruiters. 

Shortly after I started blogging, I recognized the increased interest in blogging in the recruiting community. If people weren't yet doing it, they were at least talking about it. As my blog developed over time, I've continued to be mindful of who my audience is and why they come here. And because of this, I've really tried to keep my blog focused outside the recruiter community, on the business (mktg and finance) community. I realize that recruiters like to see what other recruiters are doing (I know I do) so I welcome recruiters here and I occasionally post things that I think are interesting to other recruiters, but the value to those recruiters is seeing  how I use the blog to build community in the marketing and finance space, not getting recruiting specific info from me directly here.  I really didn't want this to become a community where recruiters came in to talk about recruiting.There are better blogs for that. What I share about recruiting has more to do with giving my target audience a peek behind the recruiting curtain.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I participate in the discussions on many by-and-for-recruiters blogs, because that is a community I am associated with by profession. And I hope that marketing and finance folks come here because it's part of their community (mine too...I'm multi-faceted...whee!). I'm not out to tick anyone off by not linking to them, just trying to stay on track here. There's some great recruiting content out there that I am reading via bloglines...just don't think it's as relevant to my audience.  So most of the recruiting blogs you see me link to speak to an audience outside of just recruiters. Not sure if we should differentiate between recruiters' blogs and recruiting blogs.

I think that the most important thing to think about when you blog is who your target audience is and what they want from you (notice, it's not a rule). I've seen so many blogs that seem a little unfocused and I want to avoid that as much as possible. I'm always open to suggestions on topics (I prefer suggestions along the lines of "please blog about" versus "I hate it when you blog about"...there is a person sitting in front of this computer after all). So feel free to ping me anytime and let me know what else I can share with you. I hope to spend some time developing some interesting finance info for you too...feel like I'm lagging a little there. Marketing and finance folks out there, what do you want to know?