Archives: December 2009

That’s how much time the average unemployed person spends jobseeking, according to a “fact” that can be traced back to Harper’s Bazaar.

Which means that all unemployed people are lazy shiftless welfare queens and we shouldn’t be extending their benefits because OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE NOT TRYING.

Sorry, we’re taking issue with this.

First of all, according to the American Time Use Survey tables that the Bureau of Labor Statistics sent us*, the average amount of time an unemployed person spends searching for work is .34 hours, or 20.4 minutes, not 18 minutes.

Second, that table averages the activities of every unemployed person, not just those actively searching. So if one million people are out of work, and 1 percent of those people spent the whole day looking for work, that’d average out to, uh, five minutes a day jobseeking for the population as a whole.

If you break it down into the people who actually looked for work on a given day, Americans spent an average of 2 hours and 12 minutes looking.

So listen. We think if you’re out of work you should be spending way more than eighteen minutes looking for a new job. You should probably be spending more than two and a quarter hours, but if that’s what “average” is, take heart! It’s not that hard to be above average.

So go out there and kick some butt with your two hours and thirteen minutes.

*We don’t know whether Harper’s used the ATUS to get their stats, but if they got their data from the DOL then we’re betting it came from the time-use survey.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Last job listings post of the year, guys! Now go home and drink or toast the new decade or what have you.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan needs a social media manager.
Howcast Media is looking for an editorial assistant.
Zondervan has an open position: a PHP developer.
The Press & Sun-Bulletin wants a watchdog reporter.
WPXI Pittsburgh wants a Web editor.

It feels like much more than ten months ago that we launched, doesn’t it? But really, it was just March of 2009 that MediaJobsDaily began providing news and tips for y’all.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone reading this, as we wouldn’t be where we are today without you: our traffic’s been growing steadily ever since launch, and we have you all to thank for that.

So without further ado, here’s the ten stories that garnered the most clicks in 2009.

Here’s to a great 2010.

Forbes Cuts 40-100: Who Is Left?
When Forbes decimated its editorial side, you needed to know who was looking for a job.

Man With Pen Is Actually A Woman? What? Blogging & The Glass Ceiling
A heated controversy erupted over the news that a popular online blogger had been using a pen name of the opposite gender.

Would You Hire These Dudes?
We chatted about “creative” unconventional resumes in this post.

‘Did You Get My Resume? I Really Want This Job’
Some common-sense advice about jobseekers and phone calls.

Blogger Loses Unemployment Benefits Over $238 In Adsense Pay
This may have been our most retweeted story (not sure), but when a blogger got the runaround from the New York State Department of Labor, when nobody was sure if blogging was considered “employment,” “self-employment,” or “residual income,” you talked.

Jobs Of The Day: Editors, Copywriters, More
We don’t pretend to understand it, but this post just listing a bunch of media jobs was our sixth most popular story of the year.

‘Why Did You Leave Your Last Job?’
In which we discuss polite ways to say that you left your last job because your boss was a monster and the company was deathspiraling toward irrelevance.

Job Title To Watch: ‘Twitter Correspondent’?
The first-ever mainstream Twitter Correspondent was announced back in March. As 2009 progressed, we haven’t seen more people get jobs with this exact title, but it’s clear that Twitter’s role in newsgathering has expanded hugely over the past twelve months.

Rock Your LinkedIn (And What Not To Do)
In which we share tips for optimizing your least-well-understood social media profile.

The Newspaper Revitalization Act
When Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin‘s newspaper act was on the table, our former co-writer Becki Heller penned a piece reacting to the issues.

The preceding word cloud is generated from the tweets you sent out from accounts following @MediaJobsDaily. Remember, you can follow us and we’ll talk at ya. (Especially if you send us an @ – then we’ll do our best to respond.) We don’t just repost links to our blog, so go see us on Twitter and join the conversation okay?

The 34-year-old guy who blogged his way to a six-month stint as “caretaker” of (really publicist of) a coral reef in Queensland has been stung by a tiny jellyfish. Irukandji jellyfish are so small they are almost impossible to see in the water, they fit through the nets designed to keep jellyfish out of popular swimming spots, and a sting from one, if it doesn’t kill you, can make you wish you’d died.

Ben Southall, the blogger/PR guy survived. It’s cool.

A few thoughts on this:

1. Southall was “just days away” from ending his very public PR campaign for the region. We think Queensland must be kicking themselves for this. (We notice the headlines are suddenly saying things like “Blogger Ignores Tourism Board’s Advice To Wear Anti-Jellyfish Suit” which may be entirely true, who knows.)

2. This is probably not going to make many people wary of this mode of publicity in the future, so if you have a yen for promotion and want to go live on a beach or something, don’t give up. According to this piece from earlier this year, the tourism board’s budget was AUD $1.7 million and BY LAST MAY had already generated more than AUD $110 million. So one little deadly jelly sting isn’t going to dissuade people, we think. Which could mean job opps for you.

3. However, if the winery winner gets cirrhosis we may rethink the previous statement.

(h/t AgencySpy)

Weekly jobless claims dropped by 22,000 last week to hit 432,000 initial claims, a seventeen month low, though the number of people collecting extended unemployment benefits climbed by almost 200,000. That may mean that fewer people are getting laid off but the ones who are already unemployed are finding it tougher and tougher to get work.

Jobless claims dropped in 10 states for the week ending Dec. 19, with most gains in the South and Midwest; claims increased in New York, New Jersey, California, and Michigan (as auto industry layoffs continue).

The Washington Times has begun cutting. So far:

The entire sports department was let go, as the rumors predicted.

Stephanie Green and Liz Glover have been cut.

Managing editor Jeff Birnbaum has resigned effective Friday.

A source told FishbowlDC that Managing Editor-Print David Jones, Deputy Managing Editor-News Geoff Etnyre, writer Barbara Slavin, and online anchor Jill Badanes have also been pink-slipped as well as the entire TWT photo department except for one editor/shooter and one desk editor.

• 24 Job Interview Questions You Don’t Want To Be Asked (via Silicon Alley Insider)

• Year-End Condé Nast News: Subpoenas, Ad Sales Concessions, New Project (via FishBowlNY)

• Lessons Learned from One Sourcer in 2009… (via Fistful of Talent)

• A Recruiter’s Hope for 2010 (via Fistful of Talent)

• Los Angeles Downtown News Shrinks Distrubution (via FishBowlLA)

• E&P Ships Final Issue – Still Hope? (via MinOnline)

Thirteen jobs today, ranging from supervising researchers for Jay Leno to sports reporting to selling ads for Bonnier. As always, more where these came from.

NBC Universal is seeking a researcher for The Leno Primetime Show.
Picador needs a publicist.
The Pekin Daily Times is looking for a city editor.
Kwittken & Co is hiring an account executive.
The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette, McClatchy papers is seeking a copy editor/page designer.
Cone needs an executive vice president.
WCPO has an open position: a production technician.
WFTS Tampa seeks a sports journalist/anchor.
Bonnier Corp has an open position: an account manager.
Hachette Filipacchi Media needs a director of integrated marketing.
Thomson Reuters wants a senior creative director.
ClearVision Optical seeks a senior designer.
Black&White Advertising is hiring an art director.

It’s not too late to take stock of your career and re-evaluate your goals. Karen Burns at US News & World Report provides some suggestions:

First, collect some “artifacts” from your year of work: your appointment calendar (like you have a physical one of these!), pay stubs, letters of complaint (or commendation), notes from presentations you made, etc. Then decide what you’ve learned from these artifacts: “write the first thing that occurs to you,” suggests Burns.

For example, next to “clients won or lost” you could write “learned that I should not have stopped giving free estimates.” Next to “appointment calendar,” you might write “learned that scheduling meetings for one hour before close of business kept the meetings on track.” You might have more than one lesson learned for an item. That’s OK.

That’s the hard part. Burns goes on, but it’s basically along the lines of identify the positives and negatives and try to fix the negatives and do more of the positives.

This is presented as something to do in case your company doesn’t do annual reviews, or if you’re self-employed or unemployed, but we think you could do this anyway.

Our “artifacts” are all digital, which makes for a less dramatic presentation, but so it goes. How about you?