Can blogging help you land a job?

Today a friend of mine let me know that he had lost his job, and he wanted some advice about finding a job in this market in Silicon Valley. I told him to read the KITList, KITList-Tech, and Craigslist, but I also told him to start a blog, and keep a copy of his resume online. I've had an online resume since I first put up a www page in 1994. It's has gotten me interviews for a number of jobs, but I didn't see it really take off until I started blogging on my site as well. The blog gives me google rank, and since I blog about areas that I work in, I show up in the top 10 for a lot of search terms that fit my resume. This leads to recruiters calling me, and sending me email almost every week. When I left Airgo, I just changed my resume to indicate that I wasn't working there anymore. The same day that I made that change I got 3 calls from recruiters. In fact, I got several calls a day until I changed my resume to indicate that I am now working at FireTide. So, If you are looking for a job, try blogging it might help. If you want to start a blog to help you find a job you should keep a couple of things in mind. First, don't blog much about your personal life. I don't think a recruiter or a hiring manager wants to read about your pets or your friends. I'm also pretty sure you don't want them to read about what you did last Friday night. Instead try blogging about something you are interested in professionally. If you are a perl hacker, blog about the new developments in perl 6. If you are interested in accounting or finance talk about the market. Second, you really need to post every day. If you don't, you won't be able to grow your audience. People like content that changes and a blog with no posts for a week looks like it's abandoned. Also, google likes content that changes routinely, and you may get a higher search ranking out of it. Third, enable an RSS feed for your blog. It could be that someone starts to read your site, but he doesn't have the resources to hire you right now. If he can put you in his news reader, then you have a good chance when that manager has the resources to hire another person. Finally, make sure to write well. This may seem like an obvious choice, but there are a lot of bad blogs out there. You need to separate yourself from the pack by writing well. Can blogging help you land a job? I believe it can, however, it's not a free ride. You have to be willing to put in the work, and create content other people want to read. If you can do that, then I'm sure you'll find a job.