Let's Get Digital, Digital! (Part II)

A short while ago I explained how the internet has revolutionised the way we search for jobs. The job I have recently taken would not exist without the internet so in more ways than one, I am exceedingly grateful to it as without I would still be bumming around in a way that only unemployed bums can.

In this post, however, I want to discuss a different phenomenon that concerns the internet. I touched on this in my other digitally-inspired ramble, but I'm going to stray away for employment for a few brief moments so that I can ponder the wider effects of the internet in our day-to-day life.

I'm a big fan of George Orwell - I think he's brilliant, a top bloke; apart from being incredibly insightful, he's also pretty funny - in fact if he were still alive and kicking, I'd consider marriage. You may have got this from my 1984-inspired post on Room 101, but I think there are a few more ways we can bring ol' George crashing into the 21st century.

I'm talking about Big Brother - are you sceptical?

So Facebook knows where you are because it’s linked to your SmartPhone; it knows who you’re friends with; it knows who you socialise with; it even knows how often you use certain words.Google knows what I search for on the internet; my sat nav knows where I drive – even my camera has GPS.

The grocery app on your phone knows what shopping you buy; the online book store knows what you like to read; the music player knows which song you’re obsessing over this week; you save your documents on the internet in big CIA-style online vaults.

So my life is a digital footprint ready to be sold to the highest bidder. There is no need for ‘Thought Police’ because we vomit our lives into the world’s largest database for anyone and everyone to peruse at their leisure. We give them the nails for our coffin lids.

Ouch.

Now I hate scaremongering and let's face it, the CIA aren't really going to be interested in me, but the point is that the information is there for the taking: you don't need an A-level in hacking to come by it and you can certainly make a tasty buck by selling it on.

But then again if we didn't like it then we could all drop our iPhones in the river and look things up in encyclopaedias and not on Google, and that's not a decision anyone I know is willing to make. That said, there are some people that have the peculiar idea that the general public cares about them a lot - I'm talking about people who vomit their lives onto social networking sites. Ok so I blog, but if you're here and you're reading this, I take it that's because you want to be; we're not friends on Facebook so you are not privy to my amusing anecdotes about the Canadian man trying to sell me car insurance and flirt at the same time.

Now this is an amusing story and one I thought my friends would appreciate. This turned out to be true. There are some people - you'll all know the type I'm talking about - that like to share with their hundreds of Facebook friends what they ate for dinner or how many words of their essay they have left. Let's be honest, this isn't interesting information in anyone's books and I have no idea why people have a compulsion to share it.

This brings me back to jobs (and about time too). We have become a nation, a world even, of downloaders. We receive information and then we download it so that we can dismiss it and move on. When I get to work in the morning I tweet about the nightmare journey in; when I have lunch I tweet about what I did that morning; when I'm on my nightmare journey home I tweet about what I did that afternoon; and when I get home I tell everyone about the man on the bus with BO and the roadworks on the ring-road (speaking purely hypothetically).

We use sites like Facebook and Twitter as our personal iClouds so that we don't have to think about anything other than what's happening right at that particular moment: I don't have to think anymore about my nightmare commute because I've shared it with the world and got it off my chest - it's like having a portable psychiatrist. In fact if you want sympathy, just tell people on Facebook that you're single...

Nowadays we're so used to sharing every aspect of our life with people (some of whom we barely know) and I have two problems with this: we're no longer deep thinkers - we can't process more than a few ideas at once before we have to find somewhere to put them; secondly we overshare.

Both of these elements make you a pretty undesirable candidate for a job. Any prospective boss would like you to be able to think about more than one thing at once, and if they add you on Facebook, they don't want to see you hatin' on them because they caught you tweeting during office hours.

There's also one other phenomenon that bugs me about sharing on social network sites: it's only Facebook, I can spell words however I want, and grammar is reserved only for academic essays so I'm not going to use it. I want to share an example with you, one of my 'friends' updated a status a while ago telling the world that 'cock-tales from tesco have no boose in them'.

I tell no lie.

So what lessons can we draw from all of this? The internet is a wonderful thing and has opened so many doors but we have to be responsible with it - if you're going to be transparent (and tell everyone absolutely everything about your life) then you have to make sure your boss is gonna like it, or they might not be your boss for much longer...

Let's Get Digital, Digital!

I'm currently blogging on the internet. When I was growing up, the idea of 'blogging on the internet' made about as much sense of 'Garfunkeling on the sideboard'. Times change and have changed a lot even in the last ten years. This hasn't just changed how we socialise and how we buy our shopping, it has changed the way we look for jobs.

I was flung out into the jobs market after graduating this summer and I've been on the lookout for work ever since. I'll come clean - I don't know how people found jobs before the internet was used widely. Did they all buy Loot and circle the jobs they wanted to apply for? Just how did people find out about the positions that were on offer?

This question really flummoxes me and makes me realise another way I'm so dependent on the internet in my daily life. I don't have a smart phone and if I want to go on the internet, I'll do it on one of my two laptops (which are never too far from me). So when I log on in a morning I hit my top job sites and then I might find something I want to apply for and make an online application. If I don't understand something, I might drop someone an email. My job hunt would be dead in the water without the internet.

I don't know what I'd do without it. The internet has made me think big - I can apply to the big companies all over the world because I can hop over to their website and see what vacancies they have available. I can book a flight online and be ready for an interview the next day.

But it doesn't end there! If I apply for a job in PR and I have no idea what PR is, I wander over to Google and type in 'what is PR?' Assuming I like the sound of PR and apply for a job with a company, I can find out all about them on the internet. Then when I get an interview, I can search for likely questions and research the right kind of interview technique.

I may be able to find out everything about a job more easily, but with the internet they can find out more about me too.  I have a showreel online, I blog, and have profiles on some of the world's favourite social networking sights. If someone wanted to find out about me, then all they need to do is pop over to Google.

There are a few down-points to this. Traffic. Though employers may be able to reach more people, in doing that fifty CVs per job can very quickly become hundreds. There is so much dross to sift through that you often have to be really special to make yourself noticed. If you've managed to corner the market in quirky, alternative self-selling then you might just hit all the right notes - that said because the internet makes things so transparent, it's very easy to go from sublime to the ridiculous with an unwise Tweet and some questionable Facebook photos.

The internet has made me so much more ambitious. These days I stand a much better chance of getting my CV onto the desk of someone important. The only problem is that everyone else does too...

I've Been Googling...

Googling is the thief of time.

One Google search leads to another, to another, to another. Youtube is the worst for this: 'related videos' make us all like magpies searching for the next unsuspecting person to fall over. If we put all those hours together and collectively chose to employ them for useful jobs - we'd all, well I'd probably have a job for a start.

Anyway. I don't. I'm still unemployed. I'm still waiting to hear back about applications I've sent and so to kill a bit of time I do a lot of Googling. It's not mindless Googling. I don't sit there and type in 'how many people have face-planted on Youtube?' or 'how many carrots are there in Belgium?' - I use it to try and find jobs.

At this point I will inform the reader that my internet browser is Google Chrome and I downloaded it in Italian making everything about it Italian. 'Change it!' You may say. I could. But when a page doesn't load, I quite like the message that pops up and says 'Uffa!'.

So this design feature of my Googling means that it will prioritise Italian things - including job searches, so I have to write 'uk' at the end of everything and scroll through half a dozen pages before I find anything useful.

But I'm unemployed, so I have the time to do that.

Have these labours been fruitful? Have they furnished me with a job that I have applied for online?

No. I'm still unemployed - I've just said that. Do keep up.

What my Googling has done, however, is give me a couple of playlists. To be fair they're just lists, but like radio playlists, I have an A list and a B list. I check my A list every day; I check my B list every week or month.

In the interests of community spirit, I'm going to share some links with you...
First of all I'm going to show you my A list:
1. BBC Writersroom
I'm a keen script writer - it's one of the things I fill my time with during these long days of unemployment. BBC Writersroom post a list of opportunities for writers and updates it regularly.
2. Ideas Tap
Ideas Tap is essentially a magazine/website run by people passionate about arts. There are loads of interesting articles and loads of people who have got their foot in the door in the industry and willing to share some of their expertise. The page I look at most frequently is their jobs board. They list everything going in the creative sector and it's rarely boring and 'office-y'.
3. Not From Concentrate
If Ideas Tap gives you all the lower-end arts jobs, Not From Concentrate's job board gives you all the higher-end stuff. They show you the cream of the broadcating jobs - the ones that tend to look a bit more interesting.

My B list isn't really that extensive or comprehensive. It's constantly in flux, but the one I use most often on it is:
Grapevine Jobs - they list all the media jobs at the not-so-well-known production companies. To be honest I've never applied for anything I've seen there, but sometimes a flash of inspiration is all you need.

Before I hit Google once more, I'm going to say one last thing about Google searches and job sites.

They're rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrubbish.

If you're doing a Google search my advice is to search for sites that have done the searching for you. No matter what you put into the search tab on a job site, you always - WITHOUT FAIL - get jobs to work in marketing and/or a call centre. They're not specific enough to give you what you want in the time you have available. Realistically if you get 2,000 search options and most of them are call centre marketing jobs, then you're looking at one relevant job per page and even then you might not want to apply for it.

If there were a 'No Marketing or Call Centre' search option on these things, I'd use them every day. There isn't though. And so I don't use them.