Second thoughts about an online presence

Blogging has not landed me back on a payroll. Nor has social/professional networking, a YouTube page or a Twitter account helped me find a job. As the jobless months drag on, I wonder whether all of this online stuff has actually prevented me from being hired.

The drill for most laid-off journalists is this:

Day one: Join LinkedIn.com
Day two: Get on Facebook
Day three: Start blogging

Then let it all simmer a bit and wait for the phone to ring.

Actually, there is more to it than that, but you get my drift. We're becoming a cliche and the results are the same. The phone rarely rings. The e-mail replies from employers are scarce. The job sites, like LinkedIn.com or CareerBuilder.com, yield tons of spam but no job offers. Employers who want to hire me can't. Just not enough pennies in the pot. The new online-revenue streams aren't very deep and advertising remains flat. Hiring, particularly for newspaper companies, is spotty at best. I sense some editors and publishers wanting to capitalize on my experience by bringing me on board, but there just aren't any positions available.

There is some evidence, more so in my gut than in any scientific poll, that suggests that life on the Internet isn't a cure-all and can actually do more harm than good when searching for work. Yes, all the media and some career experts say modern-day journalists need to be tweeting up a storm and posting text, photos and video on their blogs regularly to show they are progressive and tech savvy. I can do all of that with relative ease, but it's never set well with me. I feel it's self indulgent. I think it reveals portions of myself that may not come across the way I intended. It's too easy to be misunderstood here.

For instance, I am politically independent. Yet, someone reading this blog, particularly lately, might think I am leaning towards the radical left. If that someone is in a hiring position, I am potentially screwed, depending on their political views. One edgy post in a blog of well over 200 could lead to a snap judgment. The only snap judgment I want to hear at this point is "you're hired."

Is it better to put yourself out there and run the risk of being misread? Or is it safer to remain relatively anonymous and not interact in cyberspace? These are questions job seekers wonder about.

There is no foul language or bikini-clad women in this blog. But there are opinions. As a native-New Yorker, I believe debating issues is a good and natural thing. As a one-time newspaper columnist and editorial writer, I guess this stuff is in my blood. I would think that would be a positive quality to project, especially to media companies, but I can also see how one's image could be skewed through a simple Google search.

After many months of being relatively well connected online, I've never felt so disconnected from the working world. Unemployed journalists need to find a delicate balance between being engaged online while not blogging or tweeting themselves right out of a job interview. My blog posts, LinkedIn.com and Facebook profiles, rock 'n' roll YouTube pages or anything else that comes up in a "Mick Calvacca" Google search are not the total summation of who I am. In fact, my professional personality and sensibilities are considerably different than my online persona might indicate.

There is a lot to mull over about the value of blogging and other online activities. I blog to keep my brain working and because that's what unemployed journalists do, I guess. It helps me keep up with the news and I have learned a few technical tricks along the way that might come in useful at some point. Those are good things. With that said, there is very little evidence that there are any job-finding benefits to having an online presence. What I need to figure out now is whether I am doing more harm than good by sharing some of my thoughts and interacting in such a public fashion.

Are we almost there?

The road to landing a job these days will mostly likely begin online.

As I sat in Starbucks today, a young man came in and asked a couple employees if they were hiring. Knocking on doors was a proven way of finding a job, particularly in retail or the service industry, in the not-so-distant past. I expected the Starbucks workers to give the young man an application, maybe sit down with him for a chat, but I was wrong.

I should have guessed it. They directed him to the company web site. Told him he can get information and apply online. He nodded sort of knowingly and departed. I know the look.

I have called human resource departments at universities and major companies a couple times to get information on hiring. I was quickly rerouted to their career web sites. I've also called top hiring managers at smaller firms. Same results.

Most help-wanted ads these days instruct job seekers not to call. Some are pretty darn hostile about it. And god forbid you show up in person with a resume in hand. You could find yourself escorted from the building by security guards.

It seems the web is the perfect method for employers to screen the many unemployed people looking for work in this recession. Just navigating through some company career sites serves as a way of making sure one has the technical skills needed in today's job market. If you can't do that you obviously won't be hired. Fortunately, I haven't had any difficulties creating PDFs of my resume or directing employees to web sites that feature my work or references. I am good at that stuff, but not so good at getting positive replies.

Most employers warn in their ads that they probably won't contact applicants unless they want to hire you. Just not feasible, I guess, with all the applications they receive. The lack of a human touch in this process is sometimes difficult to cope with. Some employers, I have found out after applying, withdrew the position for budgetary reasons.

I remember looking at Guitar Center's web site several months ago when I was considering finding a "fun" part-time job with a retailer just to get out of the house and bring in a few extra dollars. The music store went the extra mile on the Internet highway, actually having a mechanism for conducting the initial interview online. I didn't want to try selling myself to an electronic interviewer, so I passed.

No wonder it's so difficult to find work. Along with the high unemployment rate, the efficiency of web-based job applications is only efficient for employers who don't want to look beyond a few keywords that their computers identify in resumes. For employees, it's easy to get lost in all the traffic on the job-site expressway.

Yet, I offer a warning to those who seek back-road shortcuts or alternative routes. Proceed at your own risk. Most employers frown upon people trying to circumvent the process. You won't get any initiative points for not following the rules of the road in most cases. I've tried it and found myself right back on the Internet entrance ramp, trying to merge into oncoming traffic.

I suppose the best way to find a job is to know someone in a hiring position -- or at least it was a decade or two ago. I do know a few of those types of people in those types of positions. In fact, at one time, I hired some of them. In one or two cases I actually saved their jobs. Another story for another day. But now they tell me there just aren't any openings. No opportunity to return the favor, sort of speak. I believe them but still can't help feeling disappointed that we're now in an era where people who want to help can't. I am sure it's not a good feeling for them, and I know it's a rotten reality for those seeking work.

So it's back on the Internet freeway for me, trying to get noticed amongst all the other electronic applications and professional networking colleagues, hoping that one of these exits is the right one. Hoping the traffic subsides soon before my fuel gauge hits empty or the kids in the back seat ask yet again whether we're almost there.

Reconnecting more important than ever

I have spent a lot of time in the last 10 months reaching out to old friends and colleagues. And some have reached out to me, which is always nice.

One of the silver-lining results of the dismal unemployment situation is that folks are trying to stay connected or are reconnecting. These online reunions are bringing people together who haven't been in touch in a decade or longer. People are either out of work or fear they or someone they know will be jobless very soon, so they are networking online. Trying to stay in the game. As one columnist friend from The Washington Post wrote to me today, "We have to watch out for each other."

Surprisingly, some of the folks who are now in touch the most frequently are people I haven't worked with or seen in many years.

There are many ways to reconnect. Of course, there is always e-mail and phone calls. Receiving personal notes from old friends and colleagues improves my spirits much more than a one-line message on Facebook. But even the social-networking messages serve a purpose in this highly connected world, particularly for those of us who are out of the workplace loop.

Electronic reunions also take place on professional-networking sites like LinkedIn.com. Just today I wrote a recommendation of a fellow who I worked with 15 years ago. He returned the favor by posting some nice words about me, his former boss, on the LinkedIn.com site.

These reunions remind me of where I have been, who I have touched and help me continue to fight the good fight. It's not so much the practical benefits of these reunions that are important. After all, I am still looking for work. The reconnecting has not solved that major problem. But these reunions do provide a sense of what I have accomplished in the past, even if current circumstances aren't yielding positive results. It's important to feel something other than rejection and hopelessness in this recession.

Jury is out on online networking

As Labor Day weekend winds down, I was wondering how many people actually find jobs via online social or professional networking. The first thing I was told to do when I was laid off was to get involved as much as possible with various networking sites. I joined everything I could and have participated in professional online discussions on a regular basis. Recently, I started this blog just to step things up a bit. Short, meaningless blurbs on Twitter just isn't my style. But I am truly immersed in this stuff.

Has it been worth it? Am I more likely to be hired or do I appear more tech savvy because of saturation networking? I think the jury is still out, but a verdict is nearing.

I am wondering whether online networking actually produces results for job seekers. Nine months into this and all I get for all my online interactions is the occasional "hang in there" or generic advice about seeking out freelance jobs. I also get a ton of junk mail now, mostly from insurance companies trying to get me to sell policies on commission. Even less reputable scams have filled my inbox since I have thrown my hat into sites like CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com. Those are job sites and not networking sites, per se, but they still seem as ineffective as the interactive, social sites. Even targeted job databases, like journalismjobs.com, seem fairly ineffective.

Yes, sites like LinkedIn are interesting and sort of provide a way to stay in the conversation through smart interactive options, but does anyone have any data on how many people are hired through networking on LinkedIn or any other site or database? Perhaps it depends on the field one is in. As a journalist, I haven't had any luck, but that could be because journalism is hurting right now. Yet, every media company nowadays demands that reporters and editors have web-savvy knowledge and skills. Having those things, however, is no guarantee that you will find or keep your job. You can seemingly get fired just as easily for spending too much time on Facebook as too little time on it. I often find myself wishing we could go back to judging potential job candidates on their work ethics, abilities, talents, intelligence and not on whether they know how to type with their thumbs or make smiley faces in messages sent from their iPhones.

You can Google my name and find out almost anything about me, from my musical interests to my vast professional experiences. You can find videos of my bands on YouTube. You can read my old newspaper clips and see which states I've lived in. You can view pages that I have helped design or read numerous professional recommendations of me written by my former colleagues. Yet, despite this significant online presence, I have not always felt that plastering myself all over the Internet has been time well spent.

Are social and professional networking sites truly benefiting anyone other than the people who profit from these things? Are some employers placing too much weight on whether you actively blog or have a MySpace profile? I guess as I continue to blog and interact on other sites, I will discover whether there are practical benefits to spending so much time online.