Carolynn Duncan used an ingenious approach to convince me and Phil that she was the right person for our latest position at Provo Labs. After finding out about the opening from her friend Adam (who works at our online video company 10Speed Media), she started a blog called \”Why Provo Labs Wants to Hire Carolyn Duncan\” at blogspot.
She instantly won us over with her creativity and courage. She will be helping Phil get in front of dozens of executives at large companies, including Fortune 500 companies, as he takes Provo Labs Consulting (our web 2.0 consultancy and development company) on the road, so we need a smart communicator with a creative streak who can help Phil open doors wherever he goes.
Welcome aboard, Carolynn!
Has anyone else ever landed a job by creating a blog specifically to convince the hiring executives that they were the right person for the job?
With all the press coverage that comes when bloggers get fired for writing something they shouldn\’t have written, it\’s about time we see some press coverage about people actually getting a job because of their blog.
7 thoughts on “Blogging Just Landed Her a Job”
Hey Paul!
Thanks for your kind words. 🙂 To set the record straight, the blog was Adam’s recommendation… but the wit and charm were all mine. 😉
Also, I am so very excited to work with Phil and the Provo Labs team! I have loved everything I’ve heard and read about PL, so I’m definitely pumped.
Unbelievably cool.
I often scour a candidate’s resume, email address, website, etc. for anything resembling a blog.
The value to be gained there about a person –especially when there’s an archive dating back to before they were looking for work — is invaluable in a hiring situation… their opinions, their insights, the way they communicate, etc.
Many recruiters are using ZoomInfo.com to research things in the same way. It aggregates information about people/companies from the web and presents it in a usable fashion. Common names are tough to distinguish, but I think it gives a pretty good description of a person’s past when you nail it down.
Here’s your profile, Paul, for example:
http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=2083874
[…] Paul beat me to blogging about it, but I finally hired a new assistant – Carolynn Duncan – read Paul’s post about how she got our attention with a blog! She is doing an awesome job! She’s working hard on getting me organized and is really focussing on making me more effective. When I hired her, I asked her to listen to this great 3 part series from Manager-Tools (one of my favorite podcasts) on effective admins. It describes to a T what I’m hoping for in an Executive Assistant and she has made that her benchmark for her job description. In the past week she has lifted mountains of stress off my back with the hundreds of little things that I never seem to have time to get done. Her second and third assignment was to read Good to Great and Getting Things Done. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have Carolynn working with me! […]
I love Carolynn’s sel-promoting campaign! Very creative. I have to say that I actually did something like this earlier this year. While applying for the Director of Marketing position at Fathead, Inc. (www.Fathead.com), I created a now defunct website called http://www.BrianGardnerIsAFathead.com. I posted specific reasons why I would be a good fit at Fathead along with articles, news posts, mock interviews, etc. I got the job two weeks later. Sadly, the company was purchased by a huge investment firm in suburban Detroit and I’ll have to say goodbye to the Fathead folks soon…I doubt I’ll be relocating to Detroit. Hey, it was great while it lasted!
[…] If blogging for a job were considered ‘jogging’ I’d like to think I could get the same cardio workout I did on this morning’s run! Alright – just another example that I’m a tad on the crazy side today but does reference a nice find on the web that scores points for the arguement that blogging is great for recruiting. Check out the cute blog with the HYOOOOGH name, Why Provo Labs Wants To Hire Carolynn Duncan and you might find some merit to her new CEO’s comments about her: She instantly won us over with her creativity and courage. She will be helping Phil get in front of dozens of executives at large companies, including Fortune 500 companies, as he takes Provo Labs Consulting (our web 2.0 consultancy and development company) on the road, so we need a smart communicator with a creative streak who can help Phil open doors wherever he goes. Welcome aboard, Carolynn!
See more coverage of this in Las Vegas’s largest newspaper: If you write it, it will come: how a blog landed its author a job.
[…] for a specific job Utah blogger Carolynn Duncan had her eye on a position at Provo Labs. Provo Labs is a web 2.0 consulting company. Carolynn […]