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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Hiring in 2009

At the end of August, we sadly said goodbye to Aubrey Shermock, our writing teammate, who left us to attend graduate school in Cincinnati. We also set out to find our next writer, starting a hiring process that we take very seriously at Goff & Howard.

Following are a few of my observations on the process, which in 2009 is very different from the last time we did this.

• There was no need for a paid advertisement. By communicating through our employees’ networks and tools like Twitter and Facebook, as well as posting the job opening on a PR blog, we received more responses than I ever recall getting from an ad.

• There was also no need for a post office box (and therefore no paper waste). People e-mailed us their cover letters, resumes, and writing samples.

• The world is full of outstanding people looking for jobs in the communications world. The work experience of new college grads is particularly impressive. Many of them had multiple internship experiences and skills that they consider second-nature – like tweeting and blogging. Some even have Web sites devoted to their job search, so that we just went to a person’s site to find his or her resume, references, blogs, and other useful information.

Now, weeks later, we have selected our next writer. We are very excited to introduce her… soon, very soon.