Biz Stone, Genius, is tapping into the collective subconcious...

Last night I had a dream that Google launched a Personals service and this was the logo. Then I realized I could fly and started a whole new thing. But I remembered the Google part. Weird.

Seth Godin, has been thinking about online dating too.

In the last twenty-four hours, I've read about the big services launching huge ad campaigns, I've seen stickers on store windows and heard about people using services like Match.com. Must be a trend. [...]

What's this all about? And why should we care?

Well, if we add to this phenomenon the huge growth of monster.com (and the death of the newspaper classifieds) its seems as if personal marketing is now officially important.

You market yourself to get a job (not wait to find a classified for a job you're qualified for and actually want.) You market yourself to find a mate (not wait until someone finds you in a singles bar or adores your cute little dog in the park). What used to be the exclusive province of Coca Cola or Amway is now at the heart of just about everyone's life.

Marketing, after all, is about putting a product out there and finding an audience for it.

So...

When you market yourself, are you boring? Invisible? Easy to pass up?

Just as companies have no choice but to depend on the Purple Cow, on remarkable products and on word of mouth, I think the lesson of all this personal advertising is NOT that you can advertise yourself to a happy home and job, but that it's ultimately word of mouth that's going to make it work. It's word of mouth that points people to your singles page or word of mouth that forwards your resume to the right guy. The difference now is that this digital word of mouth (call it an ideavirus if you want) is aided by a personal web site with your religion and desires on it, or a hotjobs website with your Linux skills outlined. [more...]

So let me bring this back to a few of my themes:

1. Weblogs are handy for branding. For work. And for life. Casting your self upon the marketplace of ideas.  
2. A blog's links show, build, and exercise social networks. Google likes this.
3. Matching engines scoring compatibility of every combination in an n-n space. Zippy, where Oracle grinds to a halt. ELISE, iXmatch, NCorp, Triplehop, Burning Glass. But they need at least partially structured data.
4. RSS 2.0 supports adding structure. 
   • Personal profiles: I want [love, romance, security, walks in the park], I offer [conversation, laughs, cuddling].   
   • Professional profiles: I want [work near me, comp plan X, benefits Y], I offer [ability A, experience B, skills C, reputation D]. Traditionally packaged as résumés, CVs, and career profiles.

So if you want love and money, build tools that add structure to blogs, RSS, and RSS readers.

This is the tiny miniature edition of Job Hunting for Dummies. 125 3"x3" pages, 50 words per page. A quick, easy, pointed read. Only $5, fits in the change pocket of your jeans.

Your job hunting skills matter. More, when competing for work market like this. Process and packaging join pricing and positioning as your promote yourself as product. It's not enought to be good, you have to play the game to win.

Then again, it may be fruitless to try.

CIOs and CTOs squashed new software construction for two or three years. If the Bush recession continues, it may be four. They learned:

• to do without,
• to tweak the old stuff,
• to work on process and humanware,
• to buy off-the-shelf,
• to rent engineers from Russia, India, and Canada,
• to outsource.

Their behavior changed. Then their hiring behavior. Conditioning reinforced by a ruthless economy.

So when firms fill their IT budgets again, when customers demand new IT solutions, will companies even remember how to hire and run their own development teams? Can they afford the luxury?

Not like before. Fielding an in-house product engineering team will be the exception.

So try something else.

Your job hunting skills (tactics) matter less than career changing skills (strategy). Rebranding change neither your product nor the labor markets in which you swim. It may be time to migrate, to a new city, a new industry, a new occupation. If you can stomach risk, now may be the time for you to try free agency and entrepreneurship.

What's your purple cow? What makes you astounding? Compelling?

What would it take for a small team of 5 senior software engineers in Manhattan to compete with 50 senior software engineers working in a CMM environment in Bangalore? 100 call center professionals in St. Louis competing with 1000 workers in Bombay sporting midwest accents?  

Good luck.