The New Spam: Jam

Job + Spam = Jam.

A couple weeks back I was enjoying a cup of coffee with yet another unusually smart (but in this case nice) person – Guy Lundy.

I can’t remember how we got there but somewhere in the course of our convo Guy alluded to the fact that he is starting to experience South Africa’s skills shortage problem in the form of a flurry of emails offering him a job. Some, as he said, originated from his work history (albeit eons ago that he was involved in any capacity in some of the sectors that are being offered) and others most likely from his web presence.

In other words, it seems that employers and recruitment agents are sitting down at Google and typing in a search term, looking for any names that pop up in the results and simply sending off an email to the person in question requesting a CV.

Today I’ve received no less than 3 job offers in various industries, but all related to search terms that would produce my name as a result. A quick glance at my stats shows those search terms having sent readers to my site. Hmmm… Lazy bastards. Or clever bastards. Not sure which one.

Either way, it seems recruiters are turning to unconventional ways to source possible candidates. It confirms what Graeme Codrington has said for some time… “In the Connection Economy, if you don’t exist on Google, you don’t exist”.

Are your Google results the Connection Economy CV? ‘cos I couldn’t give a stuff about a Word doc anymore…

  • http://www.rafiq.za.net/blog/ rafiq

    Me thinks google is the best business card ever. Don’t you mean a Google doc?

    I posted my CV on one of those careers sites 4 years ago now, haven’t updated it & get calls >1 per month and have stopped coutning the emails.

    There is even a skills shortage when it comes to proper sign linguage ion SABC

  • http://cowboysengines.blogspot.com Andy Hadfield

    Interesting. Exploring the same theory… I sent you a site called ZoomInfo (.com I think). It’s basically a search spider which crawls the net looking for profiles off corporate website. Smacks them together and plonks you on a db. Of course, they try sell you premium membership to start getting job requests – but it all points to the bigger picture… your existence “on the grid” says a lot about who, what, why and where you are…

  • http://doodeesthailand.blogspot.com/ Doodee

    Thanks for sharing