Archive: work

Yesterday I looked at the dilemma facing a blogging job hunter (ie. me). Should I put my blog on my CV?

Rhys Wynne and Rich Minx think that blogging gives you lots of skills that employers find desirable. The Devil’s Kitchen has added his thoughts here and asks if there are any more skills that anyone can think of.

I can think of plenty. Not all of these are necessarily skills that employers may be looking for. Some of the items show how I have improved as a person as well. Warning: I have removed my modesty cloak.

Here is the list.

Twenty reasons why I will put my blogs on my CV

  1. Blogging has improved my writing skills

    When I started blogging at the age of 16, my writing was awful. Over time, I have learned how to better communicate my opinions. Not all of that is just down to me becoming smarter as I get older. While I like to think that I am now a fairly good writer, I am still not a very good speaker (in fact, I may have become a worse speaker — my speaking grades were always my best in English). My recent appearance on the radio shows this.

    Clearly, I have had a lot of practice at writing by now. But I have also learned from other bloggers’ bad writing. It is true that a lot of blogs are not very well written. As such, I have read a lot of bad writing. This has taught me the value of good writing. Reading bad writing teaches you how to write well much more than good writing does. So I have learned from the mistakes of others as well as my own.

  2. It has taught me to be less narcissistic

    Contrary to the stereotype of self-obsessed bloggers typing away to themselves in their LiveJournals, blogging has actually taught me to be less narcissistic. Over the years I have learned that if I write obsessively about myself, it is a massive turn-off for readers.

    If you were to trawl through the archives of this blog stretching back almost five years (I do not recommend doing this), you would find plenty of terrible, self-obsessed, introspective blog posts that are unreadably embarrassing. You don’t find me writing as much about my personal life these days because these posts were almost always ignored by my readers.

    This does not mean that writing about myself is a no-go area. This post, for instance, is all me me me. Writing about your personal life is necessarily bad. A lot of the time it can be really good; rewarding for both the reader and the writer. But this only happens if you have got an interesting story to tell and a deft way of telling it. I usually don’t have an interesting story to tell, and I have learned to accept this.

  3. It has taught me to think about my audience

    Related to the above point, blogging has taught me how to take others into account. Rather than using my blog as a place to let off steam, I now think to myself, “Will this be interesting to anyone else?” This is because my moody emotional rants were ignored by readers, and they usually looked embarrassing to me by the next day.

  4. It has helped me build relationships and “network”

    The blogosphere is essentially the world’s biggest social network. When I link to or leave a comment on another blog, and they do the same to my blog in return, essentially a relationship is being formed. As such, blogging has taught me how to cultivate important relationships better. (More on this below.)

  5. It has made me become tolerant of other people’s views

    While online communities are usually famous for their trolls, I think blogging has actually made me a more reasoned and civil debater. Reading blogs has also taught me much more about political ideologies and philosophy than three years of studying economics and politics at university. I now have a much better understanding and appreciation of political views that I do not agree with.

  6. It has made me more thick-skinned

    Even if I have become more civil, that doesn’t mean that others have. Anonymous trolls can say incredibly spiteful things, and even those who are not anonymous can be startlingly robust. Being the recipient of blunt comments and emails over the years has taught me how to deal with angry people when I am in the right and how to take it on the chin when I am in the wrong.

  7. It has made me a better researcher

    On a blog, if you are making a point you have to back it up with evidence for it to hold any sway. Over the years I have learned how to find what I am looking for. This might sound trivial. After all, anyone can use Google. But there is a knack to it. Plus, I have learned how to use various tools to keep track of interesting information. The number of long-lost articles that I have retrieved from my del.icio.us account is astonishing. In fact, I have done that very thing in the process of writing this post.

  8. It has made me knowledgeable on an eclectic range of subjects

    My blog covers a range of subjects. This can work against the blog, as it does not have a coherent purpose or unifying theme. But it has worked in my favour personally. Thinking about ways to blog about a day’s events or news or little random thoughts that pop into your head can get you thinking about a wide variety of topics in ways that you may otherwise not have.

  9. It shows commitment

    Despite the amazingly low barriers to entry, the blogosphere is still a tough place to thrive. Anyone who has started blogging knows this. In my first year or two of blogging, I was very close to completely giving up several times. It is a tough commitment for all kinds of reasons. Reading and responding to other blogs as well as promoting your blog are time consuming. Dealing with blogger’s block and those early days when nobody is reading can be demoralising. But I stuck at it and learned how to make blogging a routine activity.

  10. It shows that I am good at time management

    Again, blogging is difficult if you have several activities on the go at once. As my life has become busier in the past couple of years, I have also learned how to juggle activities and prioritise. If this means having to let go of the blog for a bit, then so be it.

    Sadly, being busier than I used to be means that I do not blog as much as I used to. Hopefully I make up for this by going more in-depth when I do post.

    I still aim to write at least a few posts per week. During busy periods of your life, it can be difficult to dedicate enough time to your blog to stop it from going dormant. Keeping this in mind has improved my time management skills.

  11. It has improved my self-discipline

    I don’t like to have draft posts sitting unpublished. If I have an idea, I want to get it out there. In essence, the deadline is now. This can mean blogging when I am not in the mood.

  12. It shows that I can meet deadlines

    This point does not apply so much to this blog, which has no strict deadlines (only deadlines in the vague sense of the two points above). But Scottish Roundup is a different matter.

    At Scottish Roundup, a post is due to appear every Sunday. When it is my turn to write the roundup, I like to stick to this deadline strictly. The only way to do this is to spend Saturday night writing the post. It’s not the most fun way to spend a Saturday night. But I have a deadline to meet, so I’ll meet it.

  13. It shows organisational skills

    Admittedly, I do not write every post at Scottish Roundup. I have brought on board other regular and guest writers. This means getting in contact with people and arranging who will be writing when, as well as discussing suggestions for improvements to the website.

  14. It shows enterprise

    I can hardly take full credit for the idea of Scottish Roundup. I took inspiration from the Britblog Roundup and the Scottish Political Blogs Review. But I took the initiative to tweak those previous ideas to create a new website. I also had to work to promote the blog and encourage other bloggers to participate.

    Also, it is one thing to write for a publication (be it physical, online or whatever else). But it is quite another to set up your own publication and for it to be moderately successful.

  15. $$$

    I have also learned how to make money from blogging. It is not a great deal of money, and nowhere near enough to even begin to dream of becoming a professional blogger. But it is surprising how much you can earn from doing something that you enjoy.

  16. Attention from the mainstream media

    As a direct result of this blog, I have appeared on Radio Scotland three times and this week Radio 5 Live was added to the list. (There have been a few other missed opportunities too due to me not checking my email often enough and not having reception on my phone.) This blog has also been mentioned on BBC News Online, The Guardian, Telegraph.co.uk, Slate and The Herald. (Details on the Best of page.)

  17. It has made me learn HTML and CSS

    I also had to design the theme for Scottish Roundup. I have designed several other themes and templates for my blogs over the years. The design of this page, as well as the writing on it, is all my own work.

  18. It demonstrates computer literacy

    For obvious reasons.

  19. It has taught me about search engine optimisation

    Search is mega important these days, and every company in the world wants to come at the top of relevant Google results. Over the years I have learned the various techniques that can help achieve this and I have gained a feel for the sort of things that Google likes about certain websites.

  20. It has improved my problem-solving skills

    Because when something (in the template, with a plugin, etc) goes wrong, I need to take a long hard look at it, work out what has gone wrong, why it has gone wrong and how I can fix it.

It is not all good news though. Obviously the good outweighs the bad, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. But I have to recognise the downsides.

Three reasons why I might not put my blogs on my CV

Besides the ones I wrote about in the previous post.

  1. For me, blogging hasn’t been social

    I mentioned above that blogging has helped me forge relationships. But these are all online relationships. Of all the great bloggers that I communicate with, I have not yet physically met a single one of them. The closest I have come is a few times when I was spotted by other people, but I didn’t realise until a comment was left on my blog! Also, I have never attended a blogmeet.

    On the bright side, this is not the case for everyone. Otherwise, blogmeets would not exist. Perhaps this is more a reflection of my personality rather than the fact that I am a blogger. I am a natural introvert. Plus, it is surely only a matter of time before I meet another blogger.

  2. Am I getting enough fresh air?

    Okay, this is another unfair stereotype about bloggers. But I do mean this half-seriously. I mentioned above how difficult it can be to juggle various activities when you have a blog. So say you enter a busy period of your life. You have a number of extracurricular activities, but because you are busier one of them has to go.

    Maybe you like going on walks, occasionally visiting the pub with your friends and reading books. You also like blogging, and you are keeping in mind that readers may desert a dormant blog. So, which of these spare-time activities will get dropped? Sadly, it is natural that other mind-expanding and important activities get squeezed because you are prioritising your blog.

  3. It only shows how I operate on my own terms

    Okay, so I can meet my own deadlines. But what about a deadline that someone else sets me? I can write about my own opinions. But would this necessarily make me good at, say, copy writing or journalism?

    In essence, being a good blogger demonstrates that I am a good blogger. But does it necessarily demonstrate that I would be good at doing similar work for other people? Possibly not.

So, what do you think about all of this? Is some of it a bit pie-in-the-sky? Are there any other pros and cons of putting blogging on your CV?

I should point out that several suggestions have already been posted on my previous post on this issue.

Here is something that I’ve been pondering about quite a bit recently. A few years ago it was all bad news for bloggers who have jobs. Getting sacked because of your blog stuck fear into so many that it the concept even spawned its own word: dooce.

People who have been dooced are not in short supply. There was Joe Gordon who wrote unflattering things about his employers. Rather more unfairly there was Petite Anglaise, who was seemingly sacked for merely existing. Or something. And of course there is Heather Armstrong.

Because of all this, there is a bit of a fear about employers discovering your blog. I guess that is a bit old-fashioned now. More salient is the issue of MySpace and Facebook accounts being discovered. Blogs must seem relatively benign compared to some MySpace profiles.

Nevertheless, there is still a bit of a dilemma. What do you do if you are a blogger who is hunting for a job? I am getting to the stage where I am starting to think seriously about this issue. By this time next year I am supposed to have graduated and be doing a proper job. I now have to contend with the fact that large swathes of my personal life and opinions are out there in the open.

I’m not upset or angry about that. I was always aware that it would be the case. But it’s an interesting problem to tackle. It is pretty much accepted that nowadays employers will Google job candidates as a basic check.

True, you could blog anonymously. But I let that cat out of the bag years ago. Anyone searching for my name will find my website, this blog and my accounts for Bebo, Jaiku and Twitter — all on the first page of results.

Thankfully, while the general advice to blogging workers a few years ago was to keep it under your hat, nowadays I am seeing more and more people saying that having a blog is actually a boost to your career prospects. I am still not entirely convinced. Sitting in a Web 2.0 bubble, it is easy to say that blogging is great. But in my day-to-day life I still feel as though blogging is something that many people scoff at.

I mean, it is probably fair to say that blogging is a hobby for me. And hobbies are generally spoddy, right? Trainspotting, stamp collecting, fishing. It’s okay to be a nerd if it’s a hobby. Yet I would probably still be more comfortable listing ‘philately’ as a hobby than ‘blogging’. If somebody asks me what I did last night I will usually say, “Oh, nothing really. Just relaxed a bit.” But in reality I probably spent three hours blogging.

That is not because I am ashamed of my blog. Far from it. But the fact is that if I was to say to somebody that one of my biggest achievements was my blog, people would think I was the most utterly lame person alive. “Oh, you’ve got a blog? I had one of them once. So, who reads your blog? Your mum?”

The unfortunate fact is that for most people out there, a blogger is at best a wannabe writer who is not talented enough to be a professional. At worst, a blogger is a rambling, incoherent, narcissistic teenager.

The crux of the matter is this. You and I know that blogging can be a pretty worthwhile activity. But what does the person reading my CV think?

It could go either way I guess. I am in a hairy situation because my CV is rather bare. And as excellent as my current workplace is, I am guessing that it will take a bit more than filling shelves to impress potential employers.

The truth is that blogging probably is one of my better achievements. It has certainly been my main extracurricular activity over the past few years. So I think I will throw caution to the wind and stick it on my CV. After all, chances are that they will find it via Google anyway. I am also convinced that my years of blogging has given me lots of skills. That is actual skills, not M4D 5K1LL5.

Rhys Wynne has blogged about the skills that he has gained from blogging. And, via Rhys Wynne, I have also found this list of useful skills that bloggers have.

I mostly agree with them. I will explain why tomorrow.

Update: I have now posted the list here.

It was quite appropriate that when I was invited to appear on Radio 5 Live’s excellent Pods and Blogs segment it would be along with Mr Eugenides. Pods and Blogs is part of Up All Night, a radio programme that both Mr Eugenides and I are big fans of.

That’s not the only thing we have in common. It’s probably fair to say that neither of our pseudonyms lend themselves nicely to radio. At one point it was suggested that we could be referred to as Mr E and Dr V, but we wisely settled on using our real names.

I was on to talk about this week’s Scottish Blogging Roundup, and Mr Eugenides was this week’s editor of the Britblog Roundup, which has become a regular feature of Pods and Blogs in the past couple of months. If you’re interested in listening to it, the podcast is here (the relevant bit is around 27 minutes in, but I recommend listening to the whole thing) and show notes are here.

(Update: Matt Wardman has now uploaded the relevant bit on its own.)

Unfortunately, I was not on very good form, so I’m not sure if I did the Scottish Roundup justice. I had literally just got in from a tiring day at work and I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare (excuses, excuses! I know). Then I couldn’t work out how to use Skype, so that was even more last-minute rushing around. So I wasn’t very relaxed and to be honest I wasn’t really in the mood to talk much (which is why you hear a lot more of Mr Eugenides than you hear of me in the interview!).

When I did talk it was pretty nervy and rambling. I had to keep in mind that I was supposed to be brief and concise. At one point I was asked if I had an opinion on the story about the BBC, the media and bias. This is a bit like asking a fat drunkard to be sick, but just a little bit, and try to aim it in this cup. The result was a mess.

I even forgot to mention the name of the important blog that had the video of Brian Ashcroft! So many apologies to Pat Kane and Scottish Futures.

Also, in hindsight it might have been interesting to mention the time that I was kind of shot at by a kid with an airgun. I spent so long talking about airguns without remembering how close I was to the story in a way. But there you go.

Do you ever find yourself in awe of people who would normally be mundane? Today I found myself in the unhappy position of having to take the train into Edinburgh (every time I enter the city it just reminds me of university dread).

For some reason that I can’t really fathom, the train was absolutely mobbed today. The station was busy enough — on both platforms. When I got on the train it was already standing room only, before any passengers from Kirkcaldy boarded. It was not as if it was a particularly nice morning or anything. Yet the train was heaving with tourists.

Anyway, the poor train guard had a mountain to climb just to get tickets out to everyone. He had to barge his way past the dozen or so people standing in the “vestibule area”. Once he emerged he was confronted with a large group of people from Cupar who had only gone and bought the wrong tickets. Their tickets were for Dundee, not Edinburgh.

Most guards obviously can’t be arsed with their job. My guess is that some might have pretended not to notice that the tickets were for the wrong destination. After all, this was a group of daytrippers who were, to be fair, of advanced age. Having to shell out for new tickets would put a considerable dampener on their day and, dare I say, edged them a couple of hours closer to death. Other guards might just lose their patience over the matter.

But this guard knew what was what. The passengers seemed pretty upset when they realised what had happened, but the conductor kept the whole situation under control. Most would have mumbled and grunted. Some others might have rolled their eyes and tutted. This one? “It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s all under control. Keep your tickets. You can get a refund at the station.”

Of course, this is just him doing his job. But the unusually high number of passengers made the journey feel a bit chaotic as it was already, and there must have been several passengers on the train who did not yet have a ticket for those all important barriers in Edinburgh. And by the time the whole tangle was sorted out, we were almost halfway to Edinburgh already. I’m not sure how calm I would have stayed.

In time to reach the Forth Bridge, he made an announcement on the loudspeaker system. This is another point where you can usually tell whether the guard’s heart is in it. Sometimes they start with a heavy sigh, making you wonder if the guard is accidentally broadcasting to the entire train when he actually meant to dial 0898 50 50 50. Then they might grumpily plod through the script, as if to signify, “Look here, I really can’t be arsed, so don’t give me shit today, okay?”

Incidentally, I am certain that some members of staff have a bet on to see who can say “Cupar, Leuchars” the quickest. So the next time you’re on the East Coast Main Line around Fife, listen out for the announcement. “Edinburgh *sigh* Waverley… Haaymarket… err, Inverkeithing, gah, Kirkcaldy… Markinch… *cough* Ladybank… Cuparleuchars… Dundee…”

I am also sometimes amused (and this is where I reveal my snobby side) at the way guards try to speak formally and politely but are just incapable of doing so. Many long words are inventerised, causating me to arise my head from my book in amusementation.

There was none of that sort of thing from today’s masterful guard. He was a fine speaker with an authoritative yet friendly voice. In fact, with his distinctive, formal Scottish accent I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with late night radio hero Rhod Sharp.

Yet again, the guard was the calm amid the storm. “Those of you who still do not have tickets, I will endeavour to see you before we arrive at Haymarket and Edinburgh Waverley.” Not only this, but he seemed to be getting into the spirit of the day for many passengers, who were mostly tourists, as I have already noted. Acting as part tour guide, he appended his announcement: “To the group that joined us at Leuchars, you will see the painters hanging off the side of the bridge; I was not jesting about that.”

It was that last comment that made me think, “Wow.” In a hectic situation he managed to find the time to make a frivolous but heart warming comment for the benefit of the daytrippers, and provide on update on it over the loudspeaker system.

I quickly realised that it was silly to be so impressed, because he was only doing his job. But so many people don’t do that. Most guards grumpily check your tickets then sod off to their cabin for the remainder of the journey.

By contrast, here was a person who knew what he was doing. He kept control of a busy train with some upset passengers and still found the time to have a bit of fun with the passengers as well. I found myself appreciative of the fact that the guard put in so much effort and that, horror of horrors, he looked as if he might even enjoy his job — one that most would find unfulfilling.

I think now I understand why lollipop men are sometimes on the honours list.

Recently I found myself spending a large part of two weeks working in Cumbernauld. Nothing very exciting; I was there as an extra pair of hands to help out at the newly-opened Woolworths store. (This, incidentally, explains why I have been a bit quiet here for the past couple of weeks.)

Cumbernauld is probably famous for two things (excluding Gregory’s Girl). The first is its slogan. How many towns boast such a well-known slogan? “What’s it called? Cumbernauld.”

Unfortunately, the town is also famous for the fact that it is utterly undeserving of the slogan. It won the Carbuncle Award (awarded to the bleakest town in Scotland) in 2001 and 2005. And a couple of years back producers on the Channel 4 programme Demolition were inundated with requests to demolish the entire town.

The new Woolworths is part of a new shopping centre which has been built in a belated attempt to restore the town’s “carbuncle” image. The locals seem pretty excited to finally have some decent shops again. Once the units fill up, the new Antonine Centre has the potential to work fairly well.

The new shopping centre contains a couple of murals which seem to be an attempt to big up the town. One has “comar-nan-allt” (the Gaelic origin of the town’s name) proudly written in Celtic-style writing. On the opposite wall is a celebration of Cumbernauld’s 50th anniversary. Yet, sadly, civic pride is not very high in Cumbernauld.

It is not difficult to see why. On my occasional wanders around during my lunch, I felt as though I was in a promising world while I was within the confines of the Antonine Centre. But as soon as I left, I entered a bleak world which hasn’t been touched since the 1960s.

Cumbernauld Shopping Centre, which is joined onto the new Antonine Centre, is the famous “rabbit warren on stilts”. But while it looks mildly offensive on the outside, it is downright depressing on the inside. The place is dimly lit, with dirty and drab décor.

The only real big name shops left there are Argos and Boots — and Boots is due to move to the Antonine Centre in a year anyway (they wanted to move straight away, but apparently messed up the lease!). The rest is just full of independent pound shops and amusement arcades — much the sort of thing you would find in an “indoor market” type environment. Hardly the stuff of a world-beating town centre. You would never guess that Cumbernauld was Scotland’s eighth-largest town.

What little I saw of the rest of the town was pretty much as I had expected. I had visited Cumbernauld before, but I could not remember any details about it. But my time there this time around has confirmed my general suspicion that Cumbernauld is not unlike Glenrothes really. Of course it is nothing special — but you never see Glenrothes being awarded a “Plook on a Plinth”, do you?

Here is the thing that has confused me greatly about Cumbernauld, though. It is a really boring town. Most think it is downright ugly. So why did they spend so much money advertising it on the television?

All Cumbernauld had was an ugly indoor shopping centre that had made a bad name for itself. While the indoor shopping centre might have been a new and exciting idea fifty years ago, today it would be strange if a town didn’t have one.

Did they really think that people would flock to Cumbernauld as a tourist destination, or a place to set up a small business? All it really had to its name was this drab, anonymous shopping centre — the likes of which you would find in just about any town in the country — and a lot of roundabouts.

I am a bit too young to remember any of the famous adverts well enough. I might be wrong about this, but I seem to recollect one that contained a badly-animated monster (presumably supposed to be Nessie) swimming along while a voice-over parroted the catchphrase.

Can anybody confirm this? If it was real, and not just something I imagined, it seems to sum up the level of realism that Cumbernauld’s officials possessed. Why use Nessie to represent a town that is scores of miles away from Loch Ness? And actually, why bother advertising in the first place?

A search on YouTube has proved fruitless. I cannot find any of the famous adverts for Cumbernauld. Instead, what comes up is video after video of people pointing out how bleak their town is. Ironically and self-deprecatingly, the videos feature the “What’s it called?” catchphrase. The optimistic meaning of the catchphrase has disappeared without a trace.

The overriding impression I have of Cumbernauld is that it is a town that was plonked up there in the 1950s and 1960s amid great optimism. But this optimism bred complacency which led to the town remaining pretty much untouched since then.

In short, practically every building there looks like it has been untouched since the 1960s. Given the backlash against modernist and brutalist architecture which has taken place since then, it should not be surprising that the place should be seen as depressing. I thought Cumbernauld Shopping Centre could have been improved a great deal if it was just given a good lick of brightly-coloured paint.

Yet, any attempts there might have been to rejuvenate the town were seemingly half-hearted and invisible. This is how Cumbernauld ended up being a town with a large population, above-average income, below-average unemployment and yet no decent shops.

Above I said that civic pride ran low in Cumbernauld. That is probably not quite true. I think residents of Cumbernauld would love to love their town, but can’t.

They were let down by Cumbernauld’s local officials and politicians, who buried their heads in the sand. Any criticism of the town was batted away (you can see this on the BBC News articles I linked to above). Seemingly, they hoped that if they just claimed often enough that Cumbernauld was a great town then people would start to actually believe it.

Of course, they never did. And by promoting the town so much, they seemingly created a rod for their own back. It generated false expectations that were surely never going to be reached. This is how Cumbernauld can be awarded the Plook on a Plinth while somewhere like Glenrothes can carry on anonymously.

So Cumbernauld’s officials eventually capitulated and the new Antonine Shopping Centre was built. It remains to be seen if it will be a success. Clearly, residents are very excited about having shops like Woolworths, Next and TK Maxx on their doorstep. It was obvious from my time there that Cumbernauld was just screaming out for this to happen.

And even though the shopping centre’s units are still mostly empty, what shops are there are very busy (with the sad exception of Dunnes, who paid off a lot of their staff just a couple of weeks after opening). But obviously this is due to the initial excitement and will eventually die down. So it’s difficult to tell whether or not the Antonine Centre will be a success or a failure.

Some say that it is too little too late. They are probably right, in at least one sense. A new shopping centre is hardly enough to resuscitate such a terminally ill town. The YouTube video that I embedded above was posted less than two months ago, when the Antonine Centre had almost opened.

Cumbernauld might now get some nice shops. But it is fair to say that it will never be the great tourism and business centre that officials and residents alike seemed to believe it would be.