I’ve been quiet on the blogs lately, focusing on job searches rather than ranting. I thought I’d take a little time off to talk about my little corner of the career market. I’ve been applying for a lot of web design and editing jobs but the most interesting ones have combined these together in creative ways. My qualifications for these jobs are more the independent sites I’ve put together — notably QuakerQuaker.org—than my paid work for Friends.
For example: one interesting job gets reposted every few weeks on Craigslist. It’s geared toward adding next-generation interactive content to the website of a consortium of suburban newspapers (applicants are asked to be “comfortable with terms like blog, vlog, CSS, YourHub, MySpace, YouTube…,” etc.). The qualifications and vision are right up my alley but I’m still waiting to hear anything about the application I sent by email and snail mail a week ago. Despite this, they’re continuing to post revised descriptions to Craigslist. Yesterday’s version dropped the “convergence” lingo and also dropped the projected salary by about ten grand.
About two months ago I actually got through to an interview for a fabulous job that consisted of putting together a blogging community site to feature the lesser-known and quirky businesses of Philadelphia. I had a great interview, thought I had a good chance at the job and then heard nothing. Days turned to weeks as my follow-up communications went unanswered. 11/30 Update: a friend just guessed the group I was talking about and emailed that the site did launch, just quietly. It looks good.
Corporate blogging is said to be the wave of the future and in only a few years political campaigns have come to consider bloggers as an essential tool in getting their message out. User-generated content has become essential feedback and publicity mechanisms. My experience from the Quaker world is that bloggers are constituting a new kind of leadership, one that’s both more outgoing but also thoughtful and visionary (I should post about this sometime soon). Blogs encourage openness and transparency and will surely affect organizational politics more and more in the near future. Smart companies and nonprofits that want to grow in size and influence will have to learn to play well with blogs.
But the future is little succor to the present. In the Philadelphia metropolitan area it seems that the rare employer that’s thinking in these terms have have a lot of back and forths trying to work out the job description. Well, I only need one enlightened employer! It’s time now to put the boys to bed, then check the job boards again. Keep us in your prayers.