Interview with a blogger - Paul Harrison

Paul Harrison is managing partner of Carve Consulting.  Before launching Carve, Paul was head of interactive at MARKET, during which he set up and developed the new media division of the agency. Prior to that, he was sales and marketing director at acumen web, now JobsGoPublic.com. He has worked in the online recruitment space since joining early job board Taps.com in 1998. Paul started his career with Haymarket Publishing, having graduated with a degree in Mass Media Communications.  Paul's blog is at http://www.carveconsulting.com/blog

How long have  you been blogging?
We launched the blog back in April 2006, just after we’d launched Carve in fact.

Why did you start?
A number of reasons really. I’d just read Naked Conversations and wanted to put some of that theory into practice, and certainly we needed to have a deep understanding of the challenges of maintaining a blog before advising other organisations how to do it. We were also looking for a way to get our ideas out there and connect with like-minded people, and blogging is the best way to achieve that.

What do you do, work related, when you aren't blogging?
Carve primarily helps employers and recruiters to connect + engage with talent. That’s a pretty wide remit, so if not blogging we might be working on a corporate careers site, developing PR for HR strategies, managing search engine marketing campaigns, or designing a Facebook engagement programme.

Do you think blogging has helped your business?
Unquestionably. Putting aside the direct approaches we’ve had and the opportunity to get our name out there, it’s an elegant way of (hopefully) demonstrating to potential clients and partners that we know what we’re talking about. The other big benefit is in terms of search engine ranking, since Google rewards regularly updated, contextually rich content such as blogs. This is going to be even more important with the advent of Google’s Universal Search.

What do you feel is the biggest challenge about writing a blog?
When you start with no readers it can all feel a bit pointless, like you’re just posting into a void. Now the biggest challenge for us is putting the time aside to post, even though we recognise it’s crucial to what we do.   

What's another blog that you read and why do you recommend it?
Joel Cheesman’s blog is a good read. I also have to recommend Digital Recruiting - and not just because I contribute!

What do you want your reader’s to know about you?
That Carve is an innovative, creative, results-orientated consulting practice. But also that we don’t presume to have all the answers – the space moves way too fast for that, and brands need to find their own voice.

If you knew someone was thinking about starting a recruitment related blog, what advice would you want to give them?
Do it because you’re passionate about what you do.  Anything else is a waste of time and web space.

Is there a question you wished I asked you?
Um.. “What is your favourite website?”, to which I would reply “The Wayback machine on archive.org, where you can check out archived versions of just about any website you can think of. Not only is it amazing to look back at sites like Monster circa 1997 and see how far we’ve come, but it’s also a salutary lesson that employment brands need to listen to what’s said about them online and create a dialogue – because most of it will be there for a long, long time.”