I keep an eye on the Tuesday Push. The aim of the Tuesday Push is to get the bloggers of Ireland, usually the business bloggers or the blog of a business, to promote an other Irish company.
Those getting a push need to be offering a unique product or service, and should be taking part in the push themselves. Think of it as co-operative support. Creating a business community, one where ideas can be shared and have ideas bounce off each other freely. Or in internet terms, a meme gone sensible. Of course making the Irish technology community an actual community isn’t easy, but this helps.
That said, the key word is unique. Another template tweaked, off the shelf package generated on-line store, not for the push. I think new thinking might count, but you may have to explain what makes it innovative.
If you’re an Irish technology company that’s offering something new and have a blog (or other means to promote yourself and others), contributing to the promotional effort and putting your name forward for a Push of your own is worthwhile (just take a look at the feedback of some of those that have had a push). Or just join in, as some day you may be in the position of needing a push. By pushing now, you’re helping others, and may help yourself.
“Shareholder value has quickly become the best excuse for companies to stop thinking ahead and stick their heads into the sand. Shareholders must be complete idiots if their short term value is maximized to a level that it endangers the long term sustainability of the company. And yet we see this pattern recurring time after time.” — Alexander van Elsas on shareholder value and the current recession.
Image via Wikipedia
Alexander’s work is all about creating passion in a workforce and making people more creative, productive and (that dirty little business word) happy at work.
The above quote hightlights some illogical thought processes in a business. Short term profit making over long term survival and production of innovative products or services. Of course the easy way, in theory, to do this is have different groups peaking at different times, but the words “in theory” show that plans don’t always survive their first brush with reality.
Or have a group that will generate huge revenues in a longer term that a quarter, and ask for patience, but reward those patient ones.
Robin Blandord came up with the idea to run his CV through Wordle.net to see what it would look like as a tag cloud. It’s been repeated by Ellybabes, Sinéad Cochrane and Paul Browne. Sorry that it’s in simple black & white and not visually pleasing as the others; I thought about adding it to my physical CV or embed it in the files to see if there was a change in uptake. Given that most (if not all) recruitment agencies parse the résumés they recieve through something similar, it might make sense. Wordle is a Java application which parses text, ignores common words, and creates a tag cloud. The size of the word is proportional to the how often it occurs in the CV.
Putting something like a résumé through it might take a bit of tweaking. Plurals are (currently) counted separately, and other common phrases show up. I needed to tweak my CV to stop my address showing up in the tag cloud for instance.
The other thing is how “management” looms large over both “software” and “database” (with “sql” peeking in there). I didn’t expect that, nor expect to see something similar on the other technical people’s clouds.
Does it give an accurate picture which should be used as a reflection or consideration for employment, or is it really easy to “game” the results to create an artificial profile?
And given the full social media treatment, does a tag cloud of a persons delicious account cast a different reflection than their résumé?
There seems to be an alternative, Seth Godin brought it up (pictured right), and it seems to be one that Aaron Strout of mZinga is looking at. Namely don’t send in a CV or Résumé (either in the post or as an attachment). Since they ale looking for a community-centric person person, contact them via Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn or what ever social network they both use (its not clear if he willing to join a new social network just to look at a job applicant. I really should do more in making one). Then (or beforehand), blog about why you should get the job. I presume that they have media monitoring in position (or at the very least, Google Alerts).
Unfortunately for me, the job is in Burlington, MA, USA. But it is an interesting way to pick someone. Essentially it is a try before you decide exercise, which ends up benefiting both parties.
However there is a downside to all this. As Virginia Miracle explains, it is very time consuming. I suspect that if the person’s profile and blog is interesting, you could stay there far too long.
But is anyone trying this technique on this side of the Atlantic. Did anyone try this in Europe let alone Ireland? And how did it work out?
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m currently looking for work (and keeping my own fingers in my own projects) so I’m interested in companies and people that do things differently.
First off there is the CV. Yes I have a few that get e-mailed out (and even, gulp, posted), and I have a LinkedIn.com profile (and feel free to recommended me) however I’ve noticed that some people go further. I know I could put a résumé on the blog here, but that isn’t my style.
It is now possible to create a multimedia CV (something no longer limited to portfolios) by using Visual CV. The idea is to update the CV from it’s (mostly) unchanged roots of 1902. There is some sense to it. You can embed examples of your work in the CV. You can show off your showcases. However, being selfish, I’m not involved in the media (pix.ie account aside that is) and given that all the programming work I did has “Confidential, Proprietary” slapped all over it, embedding anything is more of less impossible (and certainly not a good idea. I mean would you hire someone who won’t keep company secrets? I really hope you answered “no”).
Are there other ways to get jobs. As in headhunted. This is where a profile comes in. Be it Monster, IrishJobs or Recruitireland (and others), putting your details in a site like these mean that companies and recruiters can scan through your details and put you firmly in the “maybe” category. Simply put, it is a keyword search. The problem with such a keyword search is that a lot can be missed. Like the little thing called you.
I’ll stick to LinkedIn for now. But despite being recommended I don’t really pump my connections for prospects. But if someone in a company knows me I will be sure to mention it.
So in the meantime I’ll apply for jobs, and hope that they haven’t been filled, like this one.
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