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

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?