Candyhog blog

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Several things!

1. As always, Gmail themes
2. Conversation view turned off
3. Priority Inbox

Other great Gmail things not seen in this image:

1. Labs: Undo send enabled
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Working hard and hardly working

Time to cry myself a river.

This has been an amazing — and I don't mean that in a good way — couple of years. For me, the recession has meant:

Too much work. Having to do a lot of side jobs even when I have full-time work, so that I have work when the full-time stuff dries up. Working with startups is fulfilling in some ways, but so insecure.

Too little work. Working with startups is fulfilling in some ways, but so insecure. Too many hours I could be working, when I am not working.

Too little predictability. Sometime too much work, sometimes too little, no ability to look ahead and plan accordingly.

Too little play. No money, no predictable time to set aside for play.

Sorry about the complaints. My cheerfulness will return.

Nobody obeys people who demand not to be worshipped or admired

[Prologue: This post is going to be about brand connection, bear with me.]

Remember Biden being asked if he'd take the VP spot on Obama's ticket? He told the journalist that he's specifically asked Obama NOT to ask him and let him know in no uncertain terms that he did not want to be VP. But he added that of course if the candidate asks you to be on the ticket you don't say no, so that's WHY he specifically asked NOT...etc.

Biden may or may not be sincere in his demands — he's on the short list of just a few possibilities this week, according to the media — but Craig Newmark most definitely is.

Craig Newmark of Craigslist has repeatedly over the years shown himself to be uninterested in pomp, grandeur, and hero/genius stature — but rather in positive change and citizen empowerment (sorry about that word, it just slipped out.). Much as others try to drag him into that realm, he gracefully and with humor just doesn't go there. If you're not familiar with Newmark's trademark self-deprecating and engaging style, and his especially kind progressive stance, read this Inman News story from a couple days ago and you'll get the picture.

So! When I joined Twitter, like, a few weeks ago I never thought a short but labyrinthine path would lead me to a prime example of Twitter as the ultimate embodiment and extender of brand identity. Someone I was following was following Newmark and I thought, Why not?

What a treat. First there was the awesome picture of him and Obama I posted a few days ago ("Hey, the best hope for real bottoms-up, participatory democracy is Obama, and if I gotta be Obama boy to help out, well, dignity does me no good"). 

Add to that the joy of learning that the gentle Newmark is a watcher of urban birds (One recent tweet was simply "Goldfinch!").

Here's the clincher. Maybe a glass of wine too many and too-deep engagament with my computer led me to @craignewmark a couple of times over the past couple of days. I know. The weird thing is that @craignewmark @candyhog'd me. I won't do it again unless I have really killer targeted content  he might be interested in (or at least I think I do) — he's got better things to do than kindly thank a schmoe with half a job for gushing about his portrait with Obama.

There is no better expression of Craigslist as a brand than my experience with Newmark via Twitter. He's everyman, he answers tweets. He cares about scrappy mutant urban birds. He is always willing to shed dignity for his principles. You can't fake that.

And for all the power of social media and the importance of forging emotional connections between a customer and a brand, faking it is just so wrong even marketing professionals can't take it. (Excellent industry insider post by Projectline principal Anika Lehde). It's wrong and demeaning, but also it will backfire.

Fakes don't tweet back to tipsy or misguided rabble like me.

– Abigail

Note: This has been cross-posted at SEO Shootout; hope that's not too annoying for anyone.

Visual Information Design

I just became aware of a really interesting new resource for job hunting (and, on the other side, for recruiting). Upload your resume to Jobfox  (Tag line: "be the hunted) and Jobfox automatically creates a questionnaire that walks you through defining all the functions and responsibilities you had at each of your previous jobs, as well as how many people you worked with and managed and what level you reported to. The site then makes you a profile page with its own URL (that's mine by the way :-), identifies jobs that are matches, and assigns a score representing how close a match it is.

That's all fairly standard (after all the folks behind Jobfox came from Career Builder) — though this site does it better and is incredibly user-friendly (I walked through the whole process for bout 40 minutes and didn't have to hit the back button once.)

What's not standard is the way the site creates a pie chart for each matching job showing which areas do and don't match the employer's requirements. And, the site creates a fabulous chart representing your skills and experience for employers to quickly understand you as a professional. It's no wonder this is especially impressive to me, since one of my favorite tools of all time is the Visual Thesaurus.

A few other innovative features that are pretty cool are some "have I been viewed?" status indicators for each job, and SMS messaging that will tell you in real time which job posters looked at your resume — whether you submitted your resume to them or not — and whether you were reviewed favorably for the position.

And every page comes with a handy boss-over-shoulder link that gives you a Google screen.

– Abigail