Blogging To Advance Your HR Career: Part One
Interview with Andreea Boier-Jennings by Alan Collins
This is Part one of a two-part series where we’ll cover how to successfully brand yourself with your very own HR blog and use it to help you take your HR career to the next level.
Blogging is fast becoming an essential career tool for differentiating yourself as an HR professional.
You can be a newcomer just getting started in your first HR job. Or an experienced HR generalist or specialist. Or an HR consultant, coach or contract professional. Or a vice president of HR.
It just doesn’t matter.
Blogging can enhance your credibility, raise your visibility in the marketplace, generate positive buzz about you, distinguish you from the rest of the pack and attract favorable attention from those who can help advance your career.
To provide more perspective on blogging as a career tool, I recently interviewed Andreea Boier-Jennings (pictured left), who is HR Director of Mainstream Advertising, Inc., a privately-held technology company focusing on online media and located in Los Angeles. She recently started her own blog that you can find at http://andreeahr.blogspot.com. Here’s her perspective as a relatively new HR blogger.
1. Andreea, thank you for talking with me today. Before we discuss blogging, tell us a bit about you and your HR background?
I started my HR career in 1999, at a premiere executive search firm in New York , Rhodes Associates. It was my first job after university, and it was a focused search, as I knew I wanted to pursue a career in human resources.
I received the highest marks in the finance and accounting classes, but my fascination was with HR. This first job was an HR assistant job, which actually taught me the intricacies of this profession: researching extensively in order to compose a comprehensive job description, analyzing and breaking down the monthly bills for benefits, sitting in interviews conducted by Partners and Principals of the firm and observing the flow of the process, orienting new employees, etc.
After that I moved on in an HR Generalist role at a venture capital firm in New York , GlenRock Group. I was reporting to the CFO and was the only person in charge of human resources. The firm was relatively small, but the expectations were extremely high: top-shelf benefits, top-quality candidates, top-notch cultural ambiance.
Following the finance world was the technology world. I joined as a Senior HR Specialist a publicly-traded company headquartered in Silicon Valley , Keynote Systems, and that was a most meaningful experience. My recruiting diversified, my legal understanding of HR increased exponentially, and my exposure to compliance, immigration, and mergers & acquisitions issues maximized.
I am currently the HR Director of another technology company, called Mainstream Advertising, and located in Los Angeles .
2. As an HR professional, what’s prompted you to start-up your HR blog?
Simply and frankly put, more time on my hands. After a decade plus of studying continuously HR, I am taking some time now to actually think about issues, interpret them from the luxurious perspective of a larger picture that I can now see.
Don’t get me wrong, my plate is fuller than ever and the learning process is an ever-evolving one, but I am at the point where I enjoy bouncing ideas off other HR professionals and viewing a variety of issues through the prism of my experience in different companies and different industries.
3. What’s your vision for your blog and what is it that you’d like readers to gain most from reading it?
I think my greatest wish is to promote the HR field as a thinking career, rather than the purely rigid, boxed-in reputation that it oftentimes carries. But in order to repel unfair stigmas, one has to be constructive in approach and be willing to put in the necessary time and strategy it takes to deconstruct and reconstruct concepts.
In other words, as an HR professional, it is not sufficient to pout that the reputation of the field is not as glamorous and you would like it to be. Instead, try to be consistent in your approach and take the steps that bring on respect: deeply understand HR; have a thorough knowledge of the industry you are in; question the various interpretations and participate in HR discussions; commit yourself to becoming a meaningful contributor to the field.
So, I hope my blog will raise issues that will inspire others to agree with, disagree with, and overall to enjoy participating in lively conversations about HR issues, new and old, revealing and sometimes even controversial.
4. What are the 2-3 biggest benefits you’ve seen so far from blogging? What excites you the most about your blog?
The benefits have already been tremendous:
1. I can see my thoughts concretely on paper, and that helps a lot. They make me reflect more and consider a variety of intricacies.
2. it’s a reference point about who I am as an HR professional. A simple paper business card is no longer sufficient. A title alone is no longer impressive. A recognizable employer name is no longer opening doors automatically. Making your thoughts and expertise known to the HR community, however, does matter.
3. it motivates me. I find myself thinking more about issues and topics I wish to tackle. When I am in various HR forums, I can follow discussions and try to assess where there is a more acute need for knowledge, and then I take that topic and approach it on the blog.
5. What are the 2-3 biggest hurdles you’ve faced as a blogger? Biggest frustrations? How have your overcome them?
There have not really been any hurdles or frustrations, at least not thus far. Of course, having the web design knowledge would have helped, but I am not interested primarily in that external aspect of the issue.
Finding the time needed to consistently dedicate to the blog can also be a challenge at times, but nevertheless I enjoy making the time. Finally, promoting the blog throughout the various HR communities can be a time-consuming task.
6. What advice would you offer to others that are looking to start their own blogs in HR?
My advice is to simply go ahead and do it. It won’t cost you anything. Don’t think about lack of experience in putting a website together, or worry about who is going to read it, or wonder whether it’s a pointless undertaking.
Don’t have those external non-motivators, but rather start by simply writing your thoughts and interpretations, and organize them comprehensively. You would be a valuable contributor to a growing community of professionals thirsty for more knowledge and collaboration in this complex field.
7. What’s next for you, your career and your HR blog?
Like all my colleagues in this field, the future has some interesting projects in store for us. We are struggling to come out of a crippling recession, and companies will be confronted with some interesting questions:
-How lean should organizations become and how would recruiting therefore be affected by this?
-How do we retain the top talent?
-What are the components of an efficient HR department within an organization?
We are also no longer really talking about economy in “regional” terms, but rather within a global context, so the HR knowledge needs to be expanded to encompass international implications and legalities as well. So, I am looking forward to all these future challenges, which will be an natural part of my career progression, and some of which would also be talked about in my blog.
8. If readers would like to contact you, how can you best be reached?
I can be reached via email, at abj_hr@yahoo.com , or telephone, at 310.465.5797. My blog can be found at http://andreeahr.blogspot.com.
Andreea, thank you very much.
Andrea is a new HR blogger. And what I find most remarkable about her is the ONE SINGLE THING she shares with the best HR bloggers in the world….she’s TAKEN ACTION! This is the most important lesson you must understand if you want to leverage a blog to advance your HR career…you must get started!
I know this might sound simple and straightforward, but many HR folks get frozen dead in their tracks unable to deal with obstacles that keep them from launching their blog. Obstacles like:
-I don’t know what to blog about.
-I don’t know how to design a website.
-I don’t want my blog to look crummy compared to other HR blogs I’ve seen.
-I don’t have enough HR experience, skill or credibility.
-I might get fired if my company finds out I’m blogging.
-I’ve got a full-time HR day job and personal life…I don’t have enough time to blog.
-And there are 30 more obstacles I could add to this list.
Andreea is a great example of someone who hasn’t let these hurdles hold her back…and you shouldn’t either. Don’t procrastinate because you think you need to get “ready” before you can start. Listen to me – you’re already ready. You’re as ready as you’re going to be. If you can write an e-mail, you’re ready to post to your own blog. So get started already.
If you need help, I’ve put together some FREE INFORMATION that can guide you through many of the hurdles to starting up your own HR blog. It’s called “HR Blog Secrets: How to Blast Your Human Resources Career to the Next Level With Your Own HR Blog!” You can get all the details right now at http://HRBlogSecrets.com.
About the Author: Alan Collins was formerly Vice President – Human Resources at PepsiCo where he led HR initiatives for their Quaker Oats, Gatorade and Tropicana businesses. He is now President of Success in HR, Inc. and the author of “Unwritten HR Rules.”
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February 9th at 7:24 am
Its very useful article, what your advise for HR business partner,? what is important and should start with
April 7th at 3:29 pm
[...] on why HR professionals. leaders and consultants need their very own blog. The first one was here, the most recent one was [...]
June 5th at 5:36 pm
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July 1st at 2:19 pm
Extremely funny video with a social message. Ghuggi must get a national award for his efforts.
Ghuggi de barati – Gurpreet Ghuggi
December 28th at 8:46 am
Very useful points and motivating to start own blog. Thanks