Blogging To Land A Job Step 4: Showcase Your Skills and Industry Knowledge

Pat yourself on the back.  You’ve identified your ten possible Professional Blog topics.  Awesome! Now we want to showcase your skills and industry knowledge.

It’s time to make your brag list:  that’s right, you’re going to make a list of your top mad job skills.

This is your chance to brag freely about yourself; go ahead, you know you want to…

What are you good at?  What do you enjoy doing?  What is that one thing that your friends always rely on you to help them with?

To help you get started, here’s what my list would look like:

1)  Writing skills

(Did you know that the Harvard Business Review identifies good writing as one of the most important skills of new hires?  Take a look at HBR’s Kyle Wiens’ article on why he won’t hire people who use poor grammar.)

2)   Blog platform skills

Dreamweaver?  When’s the last time you’ve seen that in a job ad’s “Proficiencies Wanted” list?  Content Management System platforms like WordPress and Drupal—yup, the very programs you’ll be writing your blog on—are the new coveted knowledge bases. 

Show a well-formatted blog to your future employer, and watch ‘em swoon.

3)  Social media skills

Surprise!  We no longer live in a vacuum.  ComeRecommended.com states that hiring millennials is preferred because they are “tech-savvy powerhouses.”  But you don’t need to be a millennial to demonstrate your social media know-how. 

A blog will do that for you. 

Through your blog, you can connect to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.  Used effectively–AKA no throwing-up-because-you-were-so-wasted-dude pictures allowed–you can SHOW your potential employer how well-versed you are in these social media outlets.

4)  Analytical skills

As part of your blog, you will be commenting on others’ blogs (including those of potential employers!).  This will show you to be a thoughtful, analytical contributor to your potential employer’s most relevant conversations. 

This is where the swooning starts…

Your thoughts and opinions will pop up on your potential employer’s blog and on the blogs they follows.  Your potential employer will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with you and your particular voice before they s/he even meets you.  You know what they call that in biz speak? 

“Leveling the playing field.” Or in other words, “a full swoon attack.”

These are your marketable skills.  And these are the skills that we want to highlight in your Passion Blog.  Other skills may include video and audio know-how, interviewing, reporting, podcasting, photography … whatever skills you have that you want to show off to a potential employer.

But, being totally awesome at flip cup or beruit doesn’t count; even though we all think it should…bummer…

Now that you have this list, the trick is to decide which passion blog topic will best show off those skills—and more important, which topic will allow you to demonstrate those skills to potential employers.  In the next step, we’ll do some market research into potential employers, and then combine all three lists—your passions, your skills, and your potential employers—to find you that one perfect Passion Blog topic.