Thursday, May 22, 2008

Using blogs to advertise for jobs?

I've got a question, oh readers. I've been asked to pass word of a job opening on to anyone who may be interested. It's open to people with an MS or a PhD, and it's field-oriented and teaching-oriented without the pressures of a tenure-track academic job. It's the kind of thing that I suspect many exhausted geology post-docs or disillusioned MS students might be looking for (assuming they wanted to live in the Bay Area). So my first inclination was to describe it on the blog, figuring that there may well be people reading who would love the job.

But, on the other hand... there are lots of organizations that fund their publications, in part, with job ads. I'm a member of some of them (AWG, GSA). I think the friend who sent me the ad expected me to pass it on to former thesis students, not to advertise it to the world at large. (I don't think she knows I have a blog.)

So. Are job ads appropriate for a blog? (I would only post ads that I thought were unusual - not typical ads for faculty positions, which are usually in EOS and Geotimes, or for industry positions. But if I saw something interesting and out-of-the-ordinary, I might pass it on.)

2 comments:

Garry Hayes said...

I don't see that as a problem. Blogs are directed to very specific readers who may very well be the best qualified for a particular position. I regularly announced CA and NV region openings to the membership of the NAGT in my e-mails to the members.

Kim said...

I've sent job ads to the Teaching Structure mailing list, as well, and to AWG. But blogs are much more open than mailing lists.

(But I did post it, because there may suddenly be a lot of industry jobs out there, but not so many academic-related jobs.)