ICHC

Are you what you earn?

732 days

by Ben Huh in Business, Culture, ICHC

We posted 2 jobs recently: 1 for an office Admin, and 1 for a Jr. Designer. Both are contract positions (no benefits and short-term) at 40 hours per week. The candidate must send in a resume and fill out a detailed questionnaire to be considered.

To top it off, the postings clearly lists $8.55 to $10 per hour for these jobs. So far, I’ve received more than 4 applications, out of more than 180, suggesting that I kiss the candidate’s derriere. One applicant wrote: “I don’t even wipe my ass for $10 an hour” and then wrote about how great he’d be for the job.

We advertise lower wages for entry-level positions because the worst candidates focus on money the most. Believe it or not, advertising lower-than-market wages actually helped us yield better candidates. Higher advertised wages resulted in much higher level of noise from candidates who really didn’t care about the job. (FYI: Advertised pay and actual pay are two different things.)

It’s become clear to me that bad candidates focus on money like that’s the only thing they’ll get out of the job. The best candidates just want to do the job that’ll make them happy. In fact, for our entry-level positions, I believe that our biggest selling points as a company are our shared vision of making our users happy for 5 minutes a day and the huge opportunity for growth.

Every manager and CEO has a story about the lazy-ass, unqualified pisser who demanded a top salary and a raise every 3 months. But those same mangers and CEOs will also tell you about the butt-busting, entry-level employee who never complained and eventually rose to become the team lead or an executive. Guess which of the two they recruited away to their next company? And the next…

If you’re a hiring manager or CEO and you’re reading this, I encourage you to summarily reject a candidate if they bring up compensation (unless you prompt the topic) in the first interview. To me, it’s an indication of the following:

The candidate’s inability to control their personal expenses, which inevitably leads to drama and demands at work.
The candidate’s lack of belief in his or her ability to succeed and grow within the ranks.
The candidate’s inability control the diarrhea of the mouth, the leading symptom of the disease called poor judgment.

So what should a job seeker do?

If the economy has dealt you a bad hand, I am truly sorry to hear that. I know what it’s like because I’ve been there. If you have high financial requirements in order to absolutely survive, I don’t really know what to say than go get a job at a bank (you know what I mean). But if you really want to have a great career, don’t worry about how much you’ll be paid now. Instead, focus on finding a company you’d love to work for and a job you’ll enjoy doing, then find a way to live within your means. That’s the recipe for growth both financially and personally.

This is the advice I took when I shut down my first start-up at the age of 23 and found myself $40,000 in debt. I went from being a CEO to minimum wage “consultant” working for another start-up. It was less than a year before I found myself back on my feet.

I am not what I earn. I am not the balance in my bank account. I am not even my title. I am what I accomplish and that makes me happy.

If this makes you want to work with the like-minded, talented and passionate people at the Cheezburger Network, our jobs can be found at http://jobs.cheezburger.com

The Zappos Tour and Us

746 days

by Ben Huh in Business, ICHC, Personal, Technology

One of the fundamental changes that technology brings us is a change in the way we do business. One of the least-understood impact of such change is a change in culture.

When I went down to Las Vegas for CES, I was invited on a tour of Zappos by two Vegas social media starlets Bill Cody and Chris Rauschnot. I started the Zappos tour with a healthy dose of skepticism: “they can’t really love working there that much, could they?”

I’ll cut to the chase: I walked out a believer with a handful of business books from their free library and an appreciation for the blank slate technology has given entrepreneurs like us.

The most important thing I learned is that Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, had an opportunity to reinvent the way shoes are sold as a result of the Internet revolution. But rather than using technology to define the business, he used the technology to enable a new culture in customer service — by re-examining every little detail. (If you want to read more about the Zappos culture, I would recommend that you Google it. There’s been enough written about it to fill several books. Then go take a tour and see for yourself.)

The most direct reaction from my revelations at Zappos would have been to run to the airport, draft a long email on the flight and implement the practice by edict. Wouldn’t that have been easy and effective? But most importantly, it would have been a waste of time. Cultural changes don’t work that way.

Coincidentally, for weeks before visiting Zappos, I have been obsessed with finding The Cheezburger Way to do recruiting and hiring. It’s been priority #1 for me for weeks.

So, on the way home from Vegas, I took a deep breath and decided that culture was best built by the people who work here — so I started asking our team questions about what kind of a company we wanted Cheezburger to be and we started experimenting on our recruiting process, because that’s where it all starts.

It may be subtle and hard to notice, but this job listing for a “Supercharger” is the result of 6 weeks of interviews, research and soul-searching. Can you spot the difference?

How to get tossed from a job application

780 days

by Ben Huh in Business, ICHC

Last night, I posted an ad for the Managing Editor of Cute position at the Cheezburger Network in the SF Craigslist:

The Cheezburger Network (bringers of I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, There I Fixed it and like 30 more) are looking for a superstar editor to manage their new cute-oriented blogs:

Are you a content professional? Have you managed editorial teams and freelance writers? Have you grown consumer-focused communities? Negotiated content exchange and traffic development deals on the Web? ARE YOU AWESOME?

More info and application is here: Apply at http://cheezburger.simplicant.com/job/detail/4040-managing-editor-of-cute

The job DOES require relocation to Seattle.

I received several good candidates via our online job application management system. But I also received this webgem of a reply. While the email contained more professional information about this candidate, this was the very first line in the email:

From your ad copy, you sound like you have no money, and are goofy to work with…if you are (hopefully) a little more together than your copy would indicate, than maybe we should talk.

Let me count the wrongs…

1) No greeting. Hello. Hola, OHAI, or even YO! MTV RAPS would have been acceptable.
2) “you sound like you have no money” LOLWUT? Assuming makes an ass out of U. Not me. Maybe you’re saying that we’re poor as a compliment, but as a communicator you should know better than to lob ambiguous compliments.
3) “if you are (hopefully) a little more together” I assure you Mr. Jobseeking Professional Communicator, that this is potentially an explosive accusation. We are VERY much together and the use of a search engine would probably help. Also, RTFMing.
4) “than maybe we should talk”. Than? No Mr. Accomplished Communications Professional. The correct word to use in this case is “then” not “than”. Even, I, the runner of massibly misspellinged web network of kittens linguistics knows this.
5) You sent me an email. I provided a link to an online application site. As much as I enjoy a rule breaker now and “than”, but being a lazy jackass doesn’t win you any points.

Thanks for the consideration,
Ben Huh