Want a Dream Job? Blog, Tweet or YouTube It!

July 20, 2009 Social Influence 4 comments

Here’s a riddle.

What job allows you to drink endless quantities of fine wine, live in a Victorian mansion, and do all the blogging, Facebooking, Tweeting, and chatting that you want?

Give up?

Well, the answer was the ‘Really Goode Job’ provided by the Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County, Calif. And unfortunately, they already had 10 finalists in the running for the six-month stint which pays US$10,000 a month.

One of them was Hardy Wallace who ran a wine lovers blog and did this video to secure his job application.

He also created a Twitter account (with a modest 1,130 followers which I am sure will grow), a YouTube channel, and a Flickr photostream. The only thing he didn’t quite do yet is create a Facebook page, but I am sure that would be coming.

Of course, social media pitching for jobs isn’t new.

The best known example is that of Tourism Queensland which enjoyed phenomenal success in its global campaign for the “Best Job in the World”. It reaped some remarkable returns in terms of awareness, mindshare and tourism visitorship with an estimated 3 billion people around the world exposed to it.

The latest feathers on its cap was winning a few awards in the prestigious Cannes Lions Advertising Awards.

To win the coveted caretaker position, you simple have to submit a Youtube video and prove beyond a shadow of doubt that you are worth the sweet reward – a six-month stint as the caretaker of sun-kissed Hamilton Island off the Great Barrier Reef which pays a handsome A$150,000.

What they didn’t mention though was that the entire campaign costs A$1.7 million in total. Still pretty modest considering the mileage that they received.

Here’s the ad on YouTube for the coveted career.

Hotly contested with more than 34,000 people from 200 countries applying for the job (and you thought your job interviews were hard!), the dream career allowed you to feed the fishes, surf, dive, dine on fine cuisine, bring some visitors around, blog about it, take some photos, shoot a couple of YouTube videos and do other super cool stuff.

The winner, Ben Southall from UK, now runs the Island Caretaker blog, and is probably having a whale of a time even as I blogged about this.


Ben Southall delighted at his win! (courtesy of bestjobben)

Have a watch of the video which Ben Southall submitted to win this coveted job.

Would this be the future of destination (local or international) marketing? And job recruitment ads?

It would be interesting to see if other tourism authorities followed suit with a similar “caretaker” type vocation although the lack of novelty for the idea a second time running would probably mean considerably less international media interest.

I can imagine though that there would certainly be people keen to embrace six-month stints as Culinary Connoiseurs, Streetsmart city guides, or maybe even Animal Tamers (in the real sense!)

What’s more significant though is that the days of looking at a paper-based CV and conducting straight interviews for job applications are going to be over soon. Especially in positions which require creativity, innovation and perhaps the need to have a wee bit of fun.

Would you apply for a wacky job like these?

By Walter
Founder of Cooler Insights, I am a geek marketer with almost 24 years of senior management experience in marketing, public relations and strategic planning. Since becoming an entrepreneur 5 years ago, my team and I have helped 58 companies and over 2,200 trainees in digital marketing, focusing on content, social media and brand storytelling.

4 Comments

  1. Walter,

    Thanks for the plug-

    This has been a crazy ride so far.

    I do have a facebook page
    http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Goode-To-Be-First/73915318329?ref=ts

    But most of what I do is through the blog or twitter

    I also have Dirty South Wine (http://dirtysouthwine.com) and @dirtysouthwine (also dirtysouthwine on youtube)

    I tried to keep separate accounts so people had to opt in to my account for “A Really Goode Job”

    I have been cross posting lately on both blogs, but just to keep everyone up to date.

    I agree– Paper CV’s, and 1 on 1 interviews are going to be a thing of the past in social media, marketing, and creative positions.

    Beyond the tech, what is really important are the relationships and the strength of their influence…

    The world is changing fast and I’m just happy to be along for the ride!

    Cheers from Sonoma County!
    Hardy

  2. How nice if we can actually find our dream day without going through the traditional paper CV. I can only dream for that to happen … ha ha ha.

    By the way, my sister works in NTU and she told me that the students are submitted videos as part of their CVs. It is happening!

    (Of course I asked, “Eh, those eye candies will surely get all the nice jobs no?”).

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