One Week In: What's Happened Since I Made My Job Search Social

A few people have pinged me to ask for an update on how the whole Social Media Campaign for my ideal job is going. So instead of just keeping it to a small circle of people, I thought I'd share it with the world.

It's the truly social thing to do, right? 

So first the statistics:

Video views: 8,111 - My average views per video on my channel is around 350. So, comparably, that's pretty decent. It went beyond my usual following. 

Article reads: 17,130 - This puts my article up there in relation to my other ones. My most read articles are the LinkedIN Influencer pieces (these are promoted through LinkedIN), but my usual articles get ~3,000 reads. So this also exceeded expectations.

"Offers": This is a harder number to really determine. I haven't received any solid offers as of yet. It's more "let's talk" or "we need someone like you" and some have had follow ups and some are still coming, but if I count all shows of interest, I'd say I've received around 60 messages of interest to date.

Interviews: I have 2 lined up and another 2 pending. All four are interesting to me.

My article was also syndicated by Thought Catalog and their stats indicate the article was shared 2.4k times. Job and the City also covered my campaign, and I've had a few other requests for interviews. 

Now the lessons:

Lesson #1: It's not about me, it's about humanizing the job search

I'm not sure if video resumés will ever become all the rage - they are a high barrier to entry - but something about video humanizes the job search again. You have to see me, listen to me, and hear me say real words. This is a huge contrast from the keyword scoring algorithms of much of the current HR software. It's completely unscalable, but I kind of like that.

Lesson #2: Lots of digital people are in the same boat as me

When I started this, I wasn't sure if it would work. I was nervous.

I had a feeling that I needed to do something pro-active and that, if I coupled it with strong statements about the state of marketing (and the lack of respect for digital), it would be more relatable. I think I have accomplished that.

I got dozens of messages and saw even more comments from people who were, like, "PREACH!" I even had a bunch of people send me messages saying, "I would have recommend my employer hire you, but then you'd be miserable like me."

Lesson #3: Patience is the hardest part of this

The rush of the initial outpouring of support and love and "offers" was amazing. I felt like it was working even better than I had imagined. A week later, however, I feel like the momentum has died down and that scares me a bit. 

My ultimate goal is still to find my long-term home and work family. I need to keep that in mind and stay patient.

So, There You Go...

Not much to really report, but I am pretty happy with the results thus far. In the meantime, I'm doing some consulting work, upgrading my skills (attended a podcasting workshop this week and am learning FinalCut Pro), and trying to get my new video series off of the ground. I'm really hoping that I get some more time for content production in the next few weeks. And, oh yeah, that job.