Did I mention Penelope Trunk?

Here's a great post from Penelope from a couple years ago.


It's not just about the mechanics kids . . . It's about having good ideas and how much you care.

Specialty of the Pragmatic Alternative?

Career counseling and entrepreneurship for the 14 - 30 set.

Best of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to you and yours in 2009, and in years to come.

Hep

Benefit from blogging without spending tons of time

A few months ago, I was interviewing this guy, Ben Casnocha.

The first thing you need to know about Ben is that he started a company when he was fourteen. And it's still around today, four years later. Ben doesn't run it, but my point is that it's a real company.

But no, wait, that's not my point. This next paragraph isn't my point either, but I'm going to tell you anyway: Ben's company, Comcate, helps governments do stuff online. Nothing particularly notable about that except that it's exactly what my second startup did. So while my own governments-go-online startup was going bankrupt in the dot-com crash. Ben was in his sixth grade classroom making a success of that very business.

Ben does not know this. I nearly fell on the floor when I was on the phone with him, and it was all I could do to keep the interview going. But now, whenever you see me grandstanding about my three companies that I started, you can recall that I'm also the one who was outmaneuvered in my business by a kid in junior high school.

But anyway, I digress. Ben is a very humble and interesting guy, and he's hard to not like. So during the interview, I asked him how he meets people to mentor him. This is what he said, "Mostly face to face. Not through the more traditional ways like blogging."

TRADITIONAL? I had to pick myself up off the floor again.

But you know what? That was eight months ago. And I've been blogging for a while now, and Ben has a point. It is very, very easy to meet people through blogging. And it's very efficient — you never have to leave your computer.

Some of you are thinking you have no idea where to start. So look, here are the easiest instructions for starting a blog. Some are you are thinking it's too time intensive. But you can grow a useful network efficiently from a blog that you post to only once or twice a week.

I think the networking benefits should be enough reason for you to be posting twice a week. After all, if you can't afford two hours a week for networking, your career is in trouble. But here are three more benefits to blogging — these are goals you should have for your career anyway, and they're goals you can reach by blogging only a handful of times a month:

1. You will force yourself to specialize.
You can't really write a blog about everything. Well, you can, but it will suck. So you'll need to pick a topic and stick with it. And just the act of doing that is good for you because specializing is good for your career. After all, you can't be known for something if you are not specializing in something. And once you are known for something you have a lot more leverage to get the kind of work you want to be doing.

People who want flexible work schedule often think that being a generalist will give them a lot of wiggle room. In fact, it's the opposite. A generalist is easy to find, so no one needs to bother giving you a flexible work schedule to keep you. But if you specialize you are not so easily replaced, so you can ask for more flexibility at work.

2. You will let people know you have good ideas.
One of the biggest complaints people have about their work is that no one listens to their ideas. Everyone wants to be a creative thinker, but not everyone feels like that sort of work is open to them.

With a blog, though, you show people your creativity. Got a lot of ideas? Good, because there are a lot of days in the week for you to fill on that blog. And instead of you running around the office complaining to people about your stifled potential, you can show people your potential by broadcasting your ideas. The best way to get hired to spew ideas is to spew them and get people interested.

3. You will show passion and commitment.
There is a lot of evidence to show that, all things being mostly equal, we have a proclivity toward hiring people we want to have sex with. But we also have a proclivity toward hiring people we like. And after all the Ford Models are out of the interview cue, the most appealing people are those who have passion and commitment.

Of course, if you have read any how-to-interview advice, you know you should always say you have passion and commitment. But people who have it exude it. And if you are a blogger, and post at regular intervals, you don't need to tell people about your passion and commitment - it's right there on the page.