We recently found out about 2 great contests for all of you Creative job seekers out there!

Red Bull Best Ad Contest

Redbullusa.com is currently holding a cool little contest where people can log onto their website and submit an idea for their very own Red Bull ad. The idea is to have your idea revolve around the now well known “Red Bull gives you wings” tag line.

The ads can be submitted right on the Red Bull website via storyboard, video, audio, or text (conventional script). It has to be :30 seconds in length and the deadline to submit your creation is December 12, 2011.

The contest will be judged by Red Bull marketing executives and advertising agency representatives. According to the Red Bull website, the winner will receive a chance to spend time in the world of Red Bull.

Head over to Redbullusa.com and submit your greatest idea!:  Red Bull Ad Contest


My Sports Club Submit You Best Ad Contest

East coast sports club chain My Sports Clubs with locations in the New York, Boston, Washington DC, and Philadelphia areas is also having its own ad contest for the public to enter their most creative print ad ideas.

The contest closes on November 20th, 2010 and ideas can be submitted via their website. This contest is strictly for a print ad and can be up to 70 characters long. Obviously the ad has to be about health and fitness and judging by their past ads, the winner will have to be quite witty.

The winner of this contest will receive a 7-night Jamaican vacation for two and will have their ad featured in the company’s January 2011 advertising. If a week long vacation in Jamaica sounds as good to you as it does to me, then head over to the My Sports Club website and flex your creative muscle:  My Sports Club Ad Contest

Don’t forget- even if you don’t win one of these contests, you can always visit our website and apply to one of our latest Creative job opportunities at: www.execu-search.com

Good luck!

  Michael Denny
  Interactive Resources

Some of you may have heard the term “The 99ers” being used to describe unemployed people who have used the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits the government allows per person in this country. The previous high for number of weeks allowed for unemployment benefits was 55 weeks in the early 1980’s.

Many Americans have exhausted the 99 weeks of benefits during this recession. Many of these same people are asking for more, claiming the economy is so bad that they are unable to find employment in this time frame. The obvious question is whether or not 99 weeks is enough. That is almost two years of unemployment benefits. Many jobless people claim that they aren’t being hired for jobs they are over-qualified for.

If you were an executive before the recession and were forced to work at Walmart, would you do it? This is a deep issue that can be argued from many different perspectives. Each person in this country has a different situation that they live in and deal with on a daily basis. We are in the worst recession since the great depression. There are roughly 15,000,000 unemployed people in this country, battling for about 3,000,000 open jobs. The odds are obviously leaning quite heavily towards people remaining unemployed.

What do you think? Is 99 weeks an adequate amount of time to find a job in this economy? Take the poll on our home page!

  Michael Denny
  Interactive Resources

You may or may have not heard about JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater losing his cool (to put it lightly) on a flight into JFK airport in New York from Pittsburgh, PA yesterday. As the plane was landing and the passengers were supposed to remain seated, Slater allegedly got into an argument with a passenger on the flight that was attempting to get a bag from an overhead compartment. At this point, Slater may have been struck in the head with either the passenger’s bag or the compartment door. This is the point in the story where things go a bit haywire for Slater, as he proceeded to curse out the passenger over the PA system, take off his tie and throw it at a group of passengers, grab a beer, and exit through the emergency shoot of the plane onto the runway. He then ran to his car and drove home. Police arrived at Slater’s home about a half hour later and arrested him for reckless endangerment and criminal mischief.

With the current state of the job market, one has to wonder what this man went through while working as a flight attendant to finally reach his boiling point. I believe most people would admit that we all have “those days” on the job, but is it worth reacting in such an extreme way? I say no, but that’s me.

Slater is currently facing charges in the court of law, but he is also facing a brand new life as a quasi celebrity via the worldwide web. You may remember my last post on this blog about marketing yourself on the internet. This is not the type of online marketing that I was referring to, although Slater just might find himself on a C list celebrity reality show soon. He is garnering a cult-like internet following, with a whole group of supporters claiming that he is their “hero,” and there have been a few Facebook support pages dedicated to Mr. Slater.

On the one hand, I can understand why people are happy Slater did what he did. Many people would like to do the same thing, but most people don’t go to such extremes. On the other hand, the media sensationalism of such unimportant things boggles my mind. Everyone has a bad day at work every now and then, but it is not on the front page of your local newspaper. Almost everyone will forget this story in a very short time and Steven Slater will most likely be left without a job for a while.

So in summary, since this is a blog about the job-search: JetBlue is probably accepting resumes and applications right now. Good luck and be happy.

  Michael Denny
  Interactive Resources

Believe it or not, we live in a time where having a working knowledge of the Internet and a handful of social networking sites can offer you a leg up on the competition in your search for employment. The internet provides an assortment of free digital property for you to put yourself out there for potential employers to observe. Some of these sites are more popular than others, yet almost all of them are very simple to sign up for. The internet is an extremely quick and easy way for people to check up on things you may have included on your resume. Sure you can put “internet savvy”, but why not also back it up?

It seems like every human being has a Facebook page so I won’t go too in depth with that site, although in my opinion there is absolutely nothing wrong with having one page for personal use and one specifically for professional use. There are no boundaries as to what you can and can’t use these free services for. You could start a blog at one of many free blog hosting sites such as: Blogger, Wordpress, or Tumblr, specifically for your resume. Some employers are so busy that they won’t even open an attachment, so posting a link to your resume that is available online not only shows your previous work history but shows your initiative to actually find the space on the internet to have your resume out there. It’s a bigger step than you would think. The word “blog” itself may intimidate some people to a degree, so they think “blogging” is something particularly specific. The truth of the matter is you can use these blog hosting sites for whatever you want.

Having a presence on the Internet is becoming rather essential and is growing by the day. Twitter, for example, has its positives and negatives as most sites do, but what’s important for someone that wants to actually make good use of these social networking sites is to find out the positives that can help you market yourself. It’s true, Twitter is used by many people to let their followers know what they ate for lunch on a given day, but it can also be used for marketing and research alike. Twitter is the closest thing we have to live media coverage. It’s all about who you choose to follow.

A couple of years ago there was a massive brush fire in California. The fire fighters were “tweeting” about their progress live from inside the blaze. Amazing stuff. There are astronauts that tweet live from space! What does this have to do with you finding a job? It’s simple. Once you realize how useful a tool such as Twitter can be, you can then use it to draw interest to yourself as well as stay abreast of jobs, opportunity and pretty much everything else.

General up to date knowledge is also useful within an interview setting.  At this point, virtually every blog has an option that will link your twitter to your blog or Facebook and vice versa. Again, having multiple accounts with any of these sites should never be looked down upon. The more digital space you occupy the better your chance of getting noticed and having a potential employer’s interest peaked by your “internet savvy”.

There are many other sites that are a must for job seekers. A staple for professional networking on the Internet is LinkedIn.com. As you can imagine in our recent economy, a lot of LinkedIn’s membership has become job seekers, but I can tell you from experience that many employers and recruiters faithfully sift through LinkedIn profiles and resumes for their next hire. If you are reading this and are a bit over-whelmed by starting up a new Facebook page, Blog, Twitter, or LinkedIn, don’t be. It is really quite simple and one very important factor in doing anything on the Internet is this: If there is something that you do not understand or cannot figure out: Google it. There is an answer for virtually every Internet and computer related question via the Google search engine. Good luck in your job hunt!

  Michael Denny
  Interactive Resources