Using Social Media to Build Your Brand – Quick Example

Blah-blah-blah: social media this, twitter that, zoominfo those.

What the hell, right?  Okay, so you’re reading a blog.  Whoopadeedoda!  What’s the big deal – just words on a screen, right?  I don’t know who’s reading this.  I don’t know where it’s going to wind up.  I make no money off of this.  Seriously, that’s weird to me.  The whole “if a tree falls in the forest, does anyone give a crap besides the squirrel it flattened?” has some sense of relevance here.

Ah.

Ah ha.

Wait.

I got an e-mail on Monday.  Nice person named Jackie Noblett asking a question (btw, I’m about to gleefully quote a journalist without their permission):

I just found your blog and saw it had a lot of interesting tips on how to use Web 2.0 in your job search. I am a reporter from the Boston Business Journal, and I was wondering if you would be willing to speak with me about how you are using your blog to attract talent to ZoomInfo.

The article came out today – here’s the link.

So here’s the lesson: build your brand online. Get random e-mails from cool journalists.  Win prizes (ie, job offers…).  Be a participant in the wholesale slaughter of the English language (see: “leet” “tweet” and “mismeeet”).  Be able to say “people know me”, and actually mean it.

You stay classy… planet earth.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I Got Distracted by a Shiny Object

CareerBuilder has a fun list of (apparently) real reasons people have given for coming in late to work – my favorite is #9 (“hey, gimme that Glock back – I’ve got a board meeting this morning, and I’m gonna need it!”)

Hilarious Interview Mistakes

Jennifer Tortorella’s one of the best agency recruiters I know (seriously – if you don’t believe me, just ask her   She’s good, and a great partner/ vendor to ZoomInfo.  Her latest post drew my attention to CareerBuilder’s annual interview mistakes survey – sad, but true stuff.  I’d add in the guy who, when I walked out to greet him, was on his laptop.  Not a big deal, but when I said “Hi [name removed to avoid lawyers], I’m Martin Burns, nice to meet you,” he glanced up, raised his finger to let me know he needed a minute, then went back to typing… When he was done playing Scrabulous (or whatever), I sat him in a conference room and went to grab the first interviewer – within those 2 minutes, he had plugged his network into a data line in the office, and gone on-line to do some surfing….

One more – that same day (honest), we had another candidate in for a QA role.  When the QA Manager asked her where she saw herself in a few years (standard softball question with a hidden edge), she answered “As a software engineer – I’m too cerebral for QA.”

Needless to say, not exactly people we chased after….

Cousin Willy Mason (aka: shameless use of my blog)

So, been a leetell busy lately, and – sadly – have been letting weeds and such grow in good to know.   Not here to do much pullin’ and sprayin’ today, but wanted to post this video – Willy’s the cousin of our own Abby Borden (graphic designer/ hand-coder extraordinaire, and a key part of our UX Team).  She’s justfiably proud of Willy – I think he’s 21 by now, but maybe not even there yet.  Good stuff.

Ha-ha-ha!

I’m sorry, but I absolutely have to post this.  One of the search terms somebody used to find my blog today was:

 ”fuck you job hunt”

Yay – I love people, I really, really do…