A young SF/Fantasy writer is looking for pre-readers for a story he plans to publish, and wants to get feedback from outside of his usual social circle. You can visit his blog and contact him here:http://glarkly.blogspot.
Media Awareness 9/3/2012 – Everywhere And You No Longer Care
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m doing an experiment on better understanding how I consume media – something important in a high-tech media-saturated age, and relevant as I often speak and write on geeky careers, which are quite media/technical.
The basic technique is simple – keep a journal and write down when you game, watch TV, or something similar and why you do it. Just asking “why” is pretty informative.
However, one of the things I noticed quickly is that those of us in America are in a very media-saturated society. I’m sure many others live in similar societies, but I’m focusing on my current situation. My current situation is very loud, noisy, and distracting to say the least.
Televisions running in bars and oil change shops. Advertising everywhere. Celebreties famous for being famous hawking perfume when I go to buy a shirt. Giant media events with film releases or book releases making news. New shows to watch, new DVDs, etc. This is even before we get to the internet.
Then there’s the tie-ins. Products and promotionals. Branded candy. Games based on the movie of the book. We are surrounded by media, by information, by things that go into our brain or tie into things already there.
This of course is understandable: we’re human, we’re creatures of information. But media is everywhere, all the time. Culture is not something we carry or act on, but something being poured into us.
When you start monitoring your media habits, you start realizing very quickly how much is coming in, at times involuntarily.
A few takeaways:
- I think the love of “media” jobs – writer, actor, etc. is so popular as such careers are so visible. If you see actors, hear about writers, etc. all the time then people will want to be them.
- Media competition is competition for attention, and at high saturation points that can get pretty intense. Just look at concerns over ad hit rates on web pages.
- Control of your own media consumption is a way to prevent dilution of time and knowledge. I’d love to see media-use strategies of successful people analyzed.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.
The Recruiting Nightmare #9 – Spamming Speed!
OK all your hard work as a recruiter, all that effort, all that time . . . and then you find a lot of potential recruits are getting spammed by bodyshop agencies or less-than considerate recruiters. So of course your responses can get lost in the mail, and you’re competing with these bozos.
It’s gotten ridiculous and it’s getting more ridiculous over time.
I get spam in my inbox for things I haven’t done for years – like programming and engineering.
I get spam from people for geographic areas I told them I’m not interested in.
Lately I get spam on jobs that are so unrelated to what I do, I think someone twigged onto one keyword in my resume.
I’m not alone. A lot of my friends get strange things, and if you did a wide-ranging job search, chances are your resume ended up a lot of databases. A lot of databases poorly matching you to jobs.
Recruiters have to compete with this. They can be made to look bad. They can get real requests lost among the BS. They have to just plain go up against the spammers.
It’s almost a joke in a way, because of the way people dump resumes left and right. Now they’re getting spammed as well.
It’s not the worst thing recruiters face, but it’s annoying.
JOB SEEKER TIPS:
- Make an effort to get “spam recruiters” to back off. It’ll clear your inbox.
- Learn to recognize recruiters you trust.
HELP OUT RECRUITERS:
- Helping recruiters find people via networking is a good way to dodge spam-recruiting snatching people.
- Also help recruiters craft good response letters so they don’t get written off.
- Try not to use less ethical agencies where you work.
GEEK EXTRA:
- I’d like to see a list out there of spammy recruiting companies that people could pass around.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.