CT Biz Blogs

Blogs are great ways to let people get to know you a little bit. Usually it’s done indirectly, as your interests, skills, and knowledge are revealed in what you write about.

One way you can let people know about you is by interviewing yourself. By this I don’t mean the “I-have-12-children-and-live-in-Podunk” kind of stuff. Although that’s a good bit for the “about” page. (I’d certainly like to know, because anyone with 12 kids and still sane has miraculous management techniques!)

One approach to telling us about yourself is to try writing more stories, maybe about a time when you accomplished something or learned something. That isn’t really telling — it’s showing.

This is the basis of a technique that’s become popular in job interviews, called “Behavioral Interviewing.” In a job interview (which a blog is, in part) the interviewer might say something like “Tell me about a time when you had to tell someone bad news. What did you do and what happened?”

The stories are best if they stick to things that happened at a job, or something not too personal. And certainly not confessional — a small business blog shouldn’t be a tell-all diary. If other people in the story are recognizable by those who know you, it’s best to get their OK. You don’t want the kids at school teasing your son because of something his daddy said on a blog.

To get you started, here are a few sample behavioral interview questions from the Quintessential Careers website:

• Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.

• Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.

• Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).

Katharine Hansen has some good interview answering tips on the Quintessential Careers site.

On your post, you don’t need to actually ask the question first, of course. You can start in with the answer. But you will need to have some introduction, some reason why you’re telling this story. It can be something as simple as a news item that reminds you of something that happened to you, or something that someone said, or even something as simple as, “You know, the life of a Waste Management Engineer isn’t all roses. Sometimes the compost heap can get piled pretty high. I remember a time when…” And you’re off.

See how easy it can be?

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