Since when Did "Open to Work" Require a Marketing Team?
I've been looking for work for a few months now. I think I've sent hundreds of resumes, even had an interview or two. But still... silence.
To be honest, I was pretty hurt. It made me feel like I must've lost every marketable skill I ever had. The fact is, the rules changed and no one told me.
Remember how things used to be?
Back in the day he says, settling into his rocking chair when you needed a job you would flip that flag on LinkedIn and call your favorite, trusted recruiter. Your job search mostly consisted of hitting up people in your network.
The New Reality
That's not how the job search works anymore and I am just figuring that out. Today's job search is all about personal brand marketing. Yeah, makes me wanna throw up in my mouth a bit, too. What I realized is that when I applied for jobs, they ALWAYS wanted my LinkedIn URL. But I rarely post on LinkedIn. Maybe I should post more on LinkedIn... and the light-bulb went off: You should post more... everywhere. And more regularly. If they're looking at your LinkedIn, no way they're not checking your Twitter, looking at Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc. If for no other reason, than to see if you seem like a decent person in your personal life.
This sounds utterly exhausting
Now, we have to keep the content marketing engine going for our personal brands while we work jobs, too. That way you're not left with a content deficit if/when you need to find work. Plus, you never know when some hiring manager is going to see your post and want to offer you a billion-dollar salary, based on that content alone! hint... ahem... please sir, may I have some more.
Keeping a full-time job has the added challenge of keeping a personal brand alive. Documenting everything and presenting it in a compelling and professional manner, at least to your chosen profession's standards. I assume bartenders and priests probably have very different standards. Posting about your work on Business Social Networks, posting about your personal life on Personal Social Networks. You have to remain relevant... and posting.
Great. So They Can Watch Everything I Do?
Man! There is a dark side there, right? Being able to track pretty much all your movements by your own social media posts, makes surveillance cameras damn near obsolete. Privacy, if that word still has meaning, evaporates the moment you post those pics of your vacation. The fact that the algorithm is designed to keep us consuming and all of it can be mimicked or fabricated with AI, makes the whole thing feel a little... dystopian.
Thanks for bumming me out! Is there anything good about it?
Heck yeah! Insert clip from The Sandlot, where James Earl Jones' character says, "I got a lot of good stuff. Look at that stuff."
We can all become masters of our own destinies. Avengers Assemble!...no? I was going to do X-Men, but you do NOT want to see me in a unitard. We can build Agents to automate the 'drudge' work, leaving us with just the parts we love.
- If we are creatives, AI does all the logical/math/business-y work.
- If we love math and logic, then AI can generate visuals or execute a content marketing plan.
You can “program” now by describing what you want. Not with C# or Python... but with clear instructions.
Let's do it together! We'll hold hands, sing songs, and get matching tattoos!
I’ve been deep in agentic workflows lately (Cursor && Composer 1, VSCode with Claude Sonnet). It’s wild how fast this stuff moves once you start speaking the machine’s language.
I would love to see more people doing this; especially people my age (mid-fifties). I'm starting a YouTube Channel. Start one of your own and subscribe to it. I'll subscribe to your channel and we'll watch each other try this. We'll give good, constructive feedback in the comments. We'll encourage each other when we screw up.
I'm serious. Really.
And Don't Forget Your Towel!
If an agent ever says, "It's inevitable." unplug it... or yourself... I'm not sure actually...
[horrified look]
[slow zoom]
[cut to black]