"Update blog" has been on my to-do list for the last couple of years.

I have had five jobs since starting work in 2018, the first I got through a careers fair at my university, but all of the others - in some way or another - I got through my blog. It has been over two years since I was looking for a new job, and even longer since I interviewed candidates. In that time, I have relentlessly recommended writing a blog to less experienced people in my field.

For me, having a few examples of work & thoughts jotted down has given me a great headstart in my career.

However, from talking to a couple of friends who are currently interviewing candidates, it sounds like every sucker now has a blog, and the effort to figure out what is LLM-generated and what is not makes screening candidates more taxing.

I write for four reasons, most important first:

1. For myself: So I can review later how I did something or what I was thinking.
2. To market myself: To have a portfolio of work and thoughts that attempts to demonstrate to potential employers that I am competent, thoughtful, and can communicate.
3. To improve myself: To get better at expressing ideas.
4. For you: if you are reading this, I hope this writing is worth your precious time.

I still keep "Update blog" on my to-do list. Three of the reasons above still stand. But it doesn't give you the edge it used to.

How to stand out in a room crowded by LLM-spam CVs/Resumes/Blogs/GitHubs/Portfolios?

Networking always was, and likely always will be, the best way of getting jobs. Reach out to people whose careers you would like to have in 5 years time, go to events, talk to as many people as possible, take the risk of asking people for their time to talk about what they do, ask for advice. But - do not do this thinking you will get a job from it overnight.

Aim to meet the people you will want to work with several years in the future. If people get the vibe that you are desperate to get a job tomorrow, that will likely put them off. If you are genuinely interested and polite, and manage to muster up a little confidence, you should get somewhere.

Other than that, blogging worked for me because it was something not everyone was doing. If you are starting out now, you will need some imagination. I have no clue if this would work, but you could send people letters (no-one gets letters anymore). Might seem like a weird thing to do in this day and age, but that is the point. If this works, it will have a window of exploitation before people catch-on. My point is not that this is a good idea, but that you will have to think up something other people haven't thought of, or don't want to do, or that requires too much human effort to fake quickly.

GitHub activity is even more trivially gamed

Not only is GitHub activity easily faked, but judging devs by GitHub activity/profiles is also unfair on those of us who use other services for Git (e.g. CodeBerg, Self-Hosted CGit), or who use other VCS's (which I have for more than half of my working life).

Having some kind of online presence is a positive signal, but far from evidence of ability.

Disclaimer

I have written the above without any automated tools.

I'm not a complete LLM-hater. They are great for certain tasks, but unfortunately one of these is producing plausible-looking but fake portfolio content.