get me a job - win $200!!

February 13, 2002 12:27 PM

get me a job - win $200!! marc needham, one of the chicagobloggers circle, is taking matters out of a recruiter's hands and turning them over to his network. it's simple: get him a contact or interview that leads to a position fitting his criteria and you get $200. what i find interesting here is not the publicity skew that could be put on the event, but that recruiting can become grass-roots again. especially in an industry that's become as over-formal as have interactive conent agencies.
posted by patricking (17 comments total)

Counteroffer: Marc, you find me a job that pays 50k and I'll give you US $400. That would allow you to double your bounty! Imagine -- you could start looking for jobs in the six figure range!

(trust me, I'm eminently qualified.)
posted by fishfucker at 12:46 PM on February 13, 2002

yeah, well, either of you finds me a job as a creative director (i'm qualified: i got nominated to the Smithsonian's National Design Awards last year, and i've got work in WIRED this month) that matches my pre-layoff salary of 80K and i'll cough up a grand.

(all because i'm too lazy to find a recruiter. hee.)
posted by patricking at 1:08 PM on February 13, 2002

I don't think it will ever be grassroots again. Companies have referral bonus for employees because it saves so much money. Unfortunately, this isn't process that fills positions. The grassroots idea suffers from the same problem...not enought people referring enough potential candidates.
posted by pedantic at 1:10 PM on February 13, 2002

<desperate>Fortune 200 e-com designer/developer needs new job as well -- I'll toss you $500-$1k for anything starting above 45k.</desperate>

Haughey, did you ever have positive results from having friends/MeFites assist with finding work? I know you're doing some writing now, but never heard how your own "grassroots" campaign was resulting.
posted by Hankins at 1:44 PM on February 13, 2002

$200? Not worth the trouble. If I were doing this I'd offer at least $1000, with a bonus if I stayed a year. I think I've heard of people making similar offers for introducing a mate/eventual spouse. Maybe I should make such an offer for VC or angel pairing. All instances of making the world your paid placement agency/matchmaker/schmoozer.
posted by mlinksva at 1:47 PM on February 13, 2002

It isn't worth $200 (plus whatever your company offers) to email someone's resume to your HR department?

Wish I was a millionaire.

And I would offer more if I could afford to. My bad for being unemployed and broke I guess :)
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 2:52 PM on February 13, 2002

In a twist to this, when my "dot com" company closed down, I got another job where I needed to hire a new employee. I drew up the job description and sent it, along with an offer of $1000 cash, to the folks I used to have working for me to help fill the role. Since most of them were having a hard time finding new jobs, I thought they'd be interested in receiving the cash by referring friends to me. I trusted their opinions and didn't want to pay a recruiter if I could give the money to someone I knew instead.

How many takers did I have? Zero. Know what the role was? Administrative Assistant! You'd think with that type of non-specialised role that I'd have been flooded with referrals. Needless to say, I was shocked that this "easy money" offer wasn't taken up. I think Mark is going to have a lot more trouble than he thinks...
posted by cyniczny at 3:23 PM on February 13, 2002

Sorry, that's Marc, not Mark!
posted by cyniczny at 3:25 PM on February 13, 2002

IMHO, this was a great idea because it shows great "think outside the box" skills. If I were looking to hire someone like that, and ran across this on a weblog somewhere, Tiger's phone would ring. Plus, this is jumping from weblog to weblog pretty quickly. (I saw it on BoingBoing yesterday). Creativity and publicity are coin of the realm. My response was "damn! Why didn't I think of that?". Good luck, Tiger.
posted by swell at 3:38 PM on February 13, 2002

I hate to be a naysayer, but I think Mr. Will Do Web Design for Food was more "outside the box" than "Do the dirty work for me and get $200!" Particularly because Marc is demanding a $50,000/year job in a shite tech economy, rather than taking what he can get now and hoping for an economic upswing.

I was unemployed for five months when I first moved to Seattle a year ago, and am now doing the work of two people for half the money I deserve. This is how things work nowadays, sadly.
posted by Danelope at 4:27 PM on February 13, 2002

T.T.T -- you can pay me on credit if you quadruple your bounty. Or even with food and lodging.

How about I get to crash on your couch for four weeks if I find you a job?

You do have cable, right?

yes. good luck though.
posted by fishfucker at 5:07 PM on February 13, 2002

Danelope: who is to say what you deserve? Do you deserve what you were being paid before in the over-inflated dotcom bubble days?
I'm not in a position where I have to "take what I can get" quite yet but when I get there you can be sure I will. Oh, and I wasn't trying to be the most outside the box guy around, I was just trying to up my chances of getting a job by doing something a little different. Nobody is being forced to "do my dirty work", I've tried to make it all as mutually beneficial as possible.
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 5:10 PM on February 13, 2002

Do the dirty work for me and get $200!

because it's bad to network and take referrals, you know.
posted by patricking at 5:13 PM on February 13, 2002

TTT: Sure it's worth $200 to email a resume to HR, but nobody's offering $200 for sending an email. The probability of payoff is pretty low. Sure I'm a millionaire, a Yen millionaire.
posted by mlinksva at 5:45 PM on February 13, 2002

Here's my problem with this: he spammed me from my website; and that's how I found out about this. Like I need to filter out yet another firk-ding-blasted email from someone I don't know!
posted by crankydoodle at 6:08 PM on February 13, 2002

TiggleTaggleTiger says: who is to say what you deserve? Do you deserve what you were being paid before in the over-inflated dotcom bubble days?

As I said, I'm doing two full-time jobs. At this company, I am the Webmaster (solely responsible for the design, development, and maintenance of our sites, servers, etc.) and the IT Manager (solely responsible for the maintenance and management of all of the computers, servers, internal network, etc.). Were I to leave the company, they would (most likely) have to hire two people to do the work that I do, and both of them would make equal or higher salary than I currently do. Hence, I am making less money than I deserve. QED.
posted by Danelope at 12:12 PM on February 14, 2002

I must make a retraction to my earlier comment... Marc emailed me after reading my comment, and I must admit that I jumped the gun. Someone else, not he, sent me an email IRT his site. I got the initials criss-crossed and posted too quickly.

So, Marc, I apologize profusely for my error! :)
posted by crankydoodle at 6:50 PM on February 14, 2002