Finding new positions and the perils of feeding the HR black hole database or we have reached the event horizon and only paid for a one way ticket

Posted on April 26, 2012 by John Wilkerson

Finding new positions and the perils of feeding the HR black hole database or we have reached the event horizon and only paid for a one way ticket

Social Media Recently I was in the process of looking for a new contract or staff position and have found some interesting acceptable behavior standards while searching. Granted I have not been on the job market for over 10 years and have always had a backlog of companies wanting to use my service. It has been an interesting adventure into the dark realms of Human Resources (play foreboding music now)

One of the positions I applied for advertised their submittal process as “quick and easy” I should have known not to be tempted by such a trusting sounding gimmick, but hey, I took the shot. What I came across was the standard upload of your resume. Correct the auto-populate fields and move forward.

Then I got to this section….

“Please take a few moments and answer the following questions related to the Web – Sr. Internet Marketer for XXXXXXX.com position which you are applying for. Answers to text only questions should be no longer than 500 characters. Your responses will be considered part of your application. “

Note: At the end of this post is the listing of items required to be completed for submittal of the form.

I really did put some effort into their answers but after the first two I pulled out the calculator and did a little math.

22 unique items to be answered

500 character per item max

11,000 characters total

@ 6 characters per word that yields about 1,800 words

This got me thinking, is it worth the effort to spend that amount of time writing 1800 words to submit to the HR black hole database or is it better to move on?

Granted, I could pull some of this info from my already existing master question sheet; but is it worth it to do the work? It seems to me that this organization has the belief that if they get all this information then they never have to speak with a live person. I am not sure I want to work with an organization that hides behind their website. Besides, the odds of them never contacting me and claiming that they are too busy are nearly 9:1. Once again, is it worth the effort?

Now how does this relate to my profession and SEO and SEM implementation? Instead of completing their questionnaire and creating content that personally promotes me to only one company, I could take what I learned from their submittal process and write this blog to promote my social media presence to the community at large.

It was not a hard decision, I used the experience to write this blog and hence promote my web presence by creating unique content. Plus,… all the fun backlinks that will come from other ecommerce marketers sharing my blog post.

Is this a risk? You bet. Many HR people will see this as just bashing and trashing. While in truth it brings to light that time management is important to all of us and we must make the decision to place our resources where they will do the most good.

Form Submittal Requirements

1. E-COMMERCE MANAGEMENT

2. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

3. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

4. AFFILIATE MARKETING

5. VIRAL/GRASS ROOTS MARKETING

6. SOCIAL/WEB 2.0 MARKETING

7. EMAIL MARKETING

8. OFFLINE MARKETING

9. WRITING WEB CONTENT

10. WRITING AD COPY

11. WRITING LANDING PAGES

12. WEB ANALYTICS

13. MARKETING PROJECT MANAGEMENT

14. TEAM LEADING

15. OVERSEEING OUTSOURCED PROJECTS

16. BASIC HTML SKILLS

17. GRAPHIC DESIGN

18. VIDEO PREPRODUCTION

19. If you have not already done so, please expound on some of your work/projects and provide sample documents or URLS or your work if available.

20. What are your salary requirements?

21. Why do you want to work for XXXXXXXXX?

22. Feel free to use this space to ask any questions that you have about the position:

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199

JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com

http://www.johnwilkerson.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/johndwilkerson

http://twitter.com/#!/johnwilkerson

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Wotsdoin review

Posted on March 19, 2012 by John Wilkerson

Wotsdoin review

I have recently been doing a review of the Wotsdoin.com social network. I will lead off by saying I am not a social network participation type guy. I like to get out and be active or if I am on the computer then it is for work or research. I do maintain some FaceBook profiles for work environments but I personally don’t live the social media platform lifestyle.

That being said, Wotsdoin is presenting an approach to counter FaceBook and the gripes power users are making concerning “Pay Us” we make FaceBook what it is and we want a piece of the money.

They are also touting their platform as one that is anti-bullying. In following their hosted anti-bullying link it takes you to a menu page that links to numerous national anti-bullying resource sites. When I first made contact with WD it was promoted heavily as an anti-bullying safe site. In looking at the anti-bully link I question how that decision has changed. If they are targeting the teen/tween market with an anti-bully safe platform it seems that a more prominent link location for reporting bullying would exist. In simplest terms how about a big red star that says “Report Bullies Here”

I spent some time poking around their site and actually read all the privacy and use policies. Not too much jumps out on their use conditions but you do need to be aware that if you have content, images, or anything else on your profile then they have the right to use that content for their own commercial gains. This is not necessarily a big issue but one that users need to be aware of and how it may impact their intellectual property. It would be nice if their policy limited their use of children’s images for Wotsdoin use if below a certain age limit. We as a society are still in the infancy of long term online privacy issues for underage children and what will float to the surface twenty years down the road.

Back to making money on WD – “Daily Deal Coupons -The Gist of it!” – They are offering a coupon earning option via participation. This has good potential for helping keep members happy and feeling empowered. As they launch and grow the site, getting mass market companies to participate in the coupon deals will be very important to the longevity of the program. It is great to see a social platform trying to keep its members happy and money always talks. What will be difficult is getting retailers to participate during the early months. With my background in contract negotiation their model has peeked my interest; I would love to be a fly on the wall for how they are setting up the retailers.

As for the mechanics of the site:

The first point that I took away is that there is no relationship status and the site is not driven by the teen mentality of BFF of boyfriend girlfriend. It is setup to be simple to use but is not focused on playing into the teen/tween social realities. This is fine but in my email conversations WD presented itself as anti-bullying. This led me to believe that it is focused on the teen/tween market. I am not sure what their target market is?

All the expected standard parts exist – friends, contacts, messages, events….. And I will say the site was fast. It is not uncommon for me to do initial reviews of sites and they just creep along. It nice to see that they are working for speed and meeting the short attention span for online users.

As an overall platform it functions but is not focused on a market segment. The coupon points has promise but without users is can’t drive the site. They need to focus on what their core business is and find a better way to meet their early needs and then add the coupons.

If I was to make one recommendation it would be – Make the site look and feel compelling to your target market “teen/tweens” and their families. The children’s lives and social activities drive the U.S. nuclear family. The site should visually and performance wise play into that.

Case in point – Farmville – It was originally designed for the youth market but mothers became its biggest users. How can Wotsdoin focus on the children and then have the mothers participate?

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199
JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com
http://www.johnwilkerson.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johndwilkerson
http://twitter.com/#!/johnwilkerson

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