ucantblamem

Since late 2006 I’ve been subscribed to RockStartup, an online reality tv-show that follows the development of a company known as PayPerPost (now IZEA). I’ve loved watching the show; seeing inside a well-provisioned web-based company and all the dot-com hilarity that ensues. However, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the company’s main product “PayPerPost”.

PPP, in a nutshell, allows advertisers to create “opps” which are opportunities to blog (essentially). Bloggers can accept an opp, write a story based on that opp (usually something about a new product) and get a cheque for the trouble. Generally the post doesn’t have to be positive and the post must have a disclaimer so the readers know it is essentially a payed ad.

As I sit here in Adelaide airport waiting for my boarding call I got to reading a Wired magazine article on PayPerPost which enlightened me to the fact that Google has now added a “Search and destroy” feature to it’s spiders so that any blog with a “backed” post awards the offending blog a big fat zero on the PageRank-o-meter.

Somehow this seems somewhat hypocritical considering that Google’s biggest revenue-raker is advertising and particularly ads in-a-page. As stated, I’m not 100% sold on the PPP thing and I’m certainly not a member, so to a degree I understand that ads disguised as posts is an issue. But, PPP requires their bloggers to disclose which posts are money makers and something about Google vetoing a websites’ PageRank in this circumstance just smells funny.

Imagine for a moment that you’ve just caught wind of an offer of $40 000 for the person who can most convincingly argue that they deserve it. How much effort would you put into proving yourself worthy of such a thing. And what if it wasn’t just $40 000, but that same amount year after year after year???

Every week at work we receive a couple of emails from people wanting web-related jobs and every week we immediately delete a couple of emails from people wanting web-related jobs, because there is so little effort put into their application. As employers, the amount of effort that someone is willing to put into their resume tends to reflect on how hard-working (and keen) we think the applicants actually are. In fact, I don’t think it’s fair to call them resume’s or applications. For the most part they are just simple text emails with a link to the persons dot-com.

Another type of email that we receive a lot at SM2 is from business owners who hired their brothers’ sisters’ aunts’ nephew to build their website (or application) which is either not doing their brand any justice or simply not working full-stop.

The first thing we do when we receive these types of emails is to call the person (on the telephone - remember those???), introduce ourselves and get further information about the company and what their requirements are. This helps us to:

1. understand the persons’ business and business objectives.
2. see through all their design suggestions and attempted tech-speak to what they really need their site to accomplish
3. make a more personal relationship with the (potential) client and form a level of trust.

I could very easily write a whole article on why that last point deserves to be bold, but the point I’m trying to make is that businesses put a lot of effort into gaining the confidence of their clients, so it should be no surprise that they expect as much from potential employees.

While the internet does make communication very quick and easy, it isn’t always efficient and it is quite difficult to get a message across through such a simple medium. You’re also going to get quite lost in the crowd if you rely solely on email to convince someone that you deserve a position at their company. Most web-workers’ inboxes are full to the brim and your email is going to get drowned out by the noise.

My suggestion? Give them a call. Have a look at the company’s website and determine who the most likely person to be managing staff is and introduce yourself over the phone. Don’t chat on forever about yourself; managers are generally very busy people, but make a point of introducing yourself, justifying the call and letting them know that a resume is in the (snail) mail. A few days (possibly a week) after they have likely received your resume, give them a follow up call and enquire whether they have received your resume. Ask if they have any questions for you or if there is any other information you can provide them with. Oh and remember to end the call with something like “great, I look forward to hearing from you”. Short and succinct is the key, unless they are in a chatty mood, in which case anything goes.

The only thing better than a telephone call is a meeting in person, but if you’re going to go down this route you have to be much more diplomatic. Already this year we’ve had someone walk in off the street and hand us their resume. Unfortunately, this person did not call us prior and make an appointment and they didn’t have especially good people skills, which didn’t reflect very well on them.

The in-person thing is pretty difficult and the success of this tactic depends very much on the personality of the manager. Generally, I would say smaller companies will do this well and bigger ones not so much. Of course, it also takes some guts and if you don’t have a big personality yourself, I’d stick to the phone.

Regardless of how you decide to apply for a web-related job, you need to put some effort into making some kind of connection with and impression on your potential employer - you are going to be working with these people for at least the next two years after all.

Now, go forth and be hired!