The 5 Sucks of Craigslist
Apr 17th
Hey Team,
There’s no two ways around it. Staring at Craigslist ads all day trying to land a job sucks. Period. It’s not enough that it’s one of the ugliest sites on the entire webbernets either, it comes with a complete collector’s set of hurdles all expressly designed to make that nerve just behind your left eye start throbbing to the beat of heartbreak when all you really want is a paycheck. Here are a few things I tend to run into.
1. It’s Ugly.
We just went over this, but that’s no reason not to reiterate. After staring at pages and pages of blue and purple text sometimes I start crossing and uncrossing my eyes very slowly hoping that a Magic Eye picture of the Empire State Building surrounded by leaping dolphins will appear. (FYI: To date all that has appeared is a very painful headache.)
2. Location, Location, Location.
Craigslist is GREAT for some things. It’s always the first place I go whenever I need to buy something big that I’m happy to get used, but there’s a HUGE difference between Craigslist for San Francisco and Craigslist for Fresno, CA. This picture represents the sum total of open positions in Fresno for the “Art/Media/Design” category this Tuesday. I suppose this gripe is one part, “Why do I keep looking at Craigslist for jobs?” and one part, “Why do I still live in Fresno?”
3. No Pay.
I respect the heck out of internships. I did my time cutting matboard for other people’s projects and sweeping floors six hours a day, you’ve got to work your way into any industry however you can, right? The problem I’m seeing, and I totally don’t blame my BFF Craig for this one, is that lately there have been a lot of very complicated jobs out there listed as “internships.” It used to be that internship was just code for “free manual labor”…now it seems to be code for “I think our profit margins would be higher if we could find a way to do away with our entire labor budget.”
4. Scams.
If it’s necessary for me to click through this page every time I try to click on a category…something’s wrong. Period.
5. The Digital Drawbridge.
I’m not so young that I never got to experience dropping off my résumé at a place of business in a suit and tie. (I was in the suit and tie…not the business. Gotta love misplaced modifiers.) At least then you could chat up whoever happened to be (un)lucky enough to take your cover letter for you…and who knows, maybe you could earn a friend in the right spot by making a great first impression. Now, (and this is my least favorite part about job hunting) you could send a résumé through Craigslist to a hundred different companies and if you don’t have the right keywords in there for their search engines to latch onto then you’ll never even get a chance to hear an irritable secretary tell you that they’ll “keep your information on file” as she hands back your cover letter and you think to yourself, “Hey, waitaminute, you don’t even HAVE my information!”
Clearly these are not completely Craigslist’s fault. These are just some of the flaming hoops of unemployment 21 million Americans had to jump through in our brave new world last year. And yes, they suck. Sorry, gang…but I know we can get through this together.
Did I miss anything? What do you dislike about the job hunt? Head to the comments section and let me know!
I’m done.
Brett.
The Opposite of a Good Story is No Story
Apr 16th
The opposite of a good story is not a bad story. It’s no story. (A bad story is just a good story poorly told.)
And that is the fundamental problem with most corporate blogs.
Hey Team,
I spent a lot of time throughout the last few months trying to decide on the best way to approach this non-traditional employment contest and more importantly, whether or not it was even a good idea…
What finally sent me over the edge was the epiphany I had while perusing a few corporate blogs. Terrible, terrible corporate blogs. The seas of the internet are littered with the detritus of these listing ships. (How’s that for boat talk?)
I blame “social media gurus.”
For the last year and a half these guys (and ladies) have been popping up everywhere, spreading the gospel of company blogs, twitter accounts and facebook fan pages. It’s so easy to sit in front of a computer and read about squeezing every last drop of attention out of social media that I think people have started to lose track of what’s really important. Now everyone is using these tools and instead of creating an impact all most people are doing is adding to the clutter.
All ANY social media site gives you is a stage to shout from in frustration at rows and rows of empty seats. (Albeit a very large stage…with cheap rent. And fancy footlights. And heavy foot traffic out front, so sometimes people wander in just to see what’s going on. And every once in awhile one of those people that wanders in actually clicks with what you’re saying but they know full well that none of their friends would be into it so they don’t tell anyone else and now you’re just shouting at a couple of scattered people who are so embarrassed to admit that they’re interested in what you have to say that they wont even sit anywhere near each other in the theater or even make eye-contact in the lobby. This metaphor has gone too far…) The point is, you can scream about coupon codes and technical jargon until you’re blue in the face but that doesn’t mean anyone is listening. This is where I can help.
Sometimes companies just don’t have anything to say. It’s not always for lack of desire or for lack of stories to tell (There are always stories to tell…I still tell entirely too many tales about working at In-N-Out Burger.), sometimes it’s just about having the time or the ability to look at their own company from the outside. Things that you see everyday and have taken for granted may be incredibly interesting to the rest of the world but without the right perspective it just looks like an average Monday.
So, here I am. Ready to offer up a pre-built story with a pre-built buzz handled by an experienced storyteller, and I can’t wait to see whose stories I will be telling!
What do you think?
I’m done.
Brett.
Too Exciting
Apr 15th
I don’t think I can overstate how excited I am about this project. Amtrekker was a non-stop adventure of immense proportions that spanned almost a year and a half and gave me the opportunity to collect experiences like most people collect, well…paychecks. And at first glance even I’d be forced to admit that it would be pretty tough to top that kind of adventure.
But here’s what REALLY gets me excited: the unknown.
With Amtrekker I had a clearly defined set of goals, an unlimited amount of time and a video camera. In at least one respect I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was going to go hang gliding, I was going to milk a cow on an Amish farm and, somehow, I was going to tell Donald Trump he was fired. Not only that but I was going to get as much of it on tape as possible and I would do my best to make compelling videos despite my “office” often being a crowded seat on a greyhound bus in the middle of the night.
This time things are completely different. There are no boundaries, no limits. I could be landscaping a golf course in Scotland, going back to the design world in LA or cleaning giant rock heads with a toothbrush on Easter Island for all I know. And no matter where I go, or what I do, it will be a new experience in a new place where I can make an impact regardless of whether it’s in a corporate setting or in the great outdoors.
Equally exciting is the idea that I will be in one place for an extended length of time with enough dollars to do better than my best when it comes to making compelling video content. No more calling a project done because my laptop is about to run out of battery and I’m cruising down a forgotten one-lane highway in Montana with no hope of an outlet for another 24 hours. (Unless of course the winner of this little contest happens to be whatever Montana transportation authority is in charge of back roads.)
AND, although there are great stories everywhere and I’ve yet to have a job that wouldn’t have made for an interesting series of short documentary videos, I’ve hedged my bets by letting you guys have a say in which position wins out. The jobs YOU think will be most interesting to get an inside look at will be the ones that make up the final 10!
Too exciting.
So, here’s to the unknown and here goes nothing…
I’m done.
Brett.
