Scott Magdalein

Apple announced and released a new product yesterday called Ping. It's a social network inside iTunes that is supposed to connect people around shared musical tastes, or help you find new music your friends like.

According to my Twitter friends, it's a pretty nasty flop. It turns out that Apple doesn't know people very well; they know design, product engineering, operating systems, and marketing, but they don't know people.

Apple's success to-date has been largely the result of building exactly what they want to build, and then convincing the world that it's what we need. That's not hard because they build beautiful products.

But when it comes to sharing ideas with people, beauty isn't what people expect. We've been conditioned by Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Linked In to expect a deeply personal and social experience without concern for award-winning design. So, when Apple thought that the path to hardware greatness (gorgeous product design) would lead them to social media greatness, they were wrong.

The Ellusive Silver Bullet
Native integration is constantly touted as the killer feature. Google put Buzz in Gmail expecting every Gmail user to swoon, leaving Twitter in droves for the warmth of tight integration, but Buzz is now just a relic gathering dust. Websites swarm to make Facebook and Twitter their native account sign-in instead of traditional user accounts and see a 75%-90% drop in new users signing up. And now Apple makes the same false assumption, that tight integration with iTunes will cause the masses to flock to Ping.

Right now, Apple should stick to what it knows: product design/engineering, innovative software, and excellent marketing/sales. Let someone else duke-it-out in the social space.

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I got an email from T-Mobile earlier this evening that highlighted their upcoming rollout of 4G to 100 metropolitan areas covering a total of 185 million people. That's pretty impressive considering they were the last to jump on the 3G bandwagon.

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Erica and I pay $85/month for Internet service in our home. That cost includes the basic TV channels (NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, Spike, & USA), but that's only because Comcast prices their packages to be cheaper if you add TV instead of only having Internet.

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This blog is dedicated to hiring and getting hired, but sometimes it's fun to look at the other end of the hiring process. In this case, we're looking at a big, bad quitter.

My dad always told me that quitters never win, which is pretty self-evident. However, sometimes quitters have a whole lot more fun than the rest of us. Take Jenny, for example. She decided that her boss didn't treat her right, she didn't like her job, and that she was worth more than she was being "appreciated" for.

So Jenny decided to quit, in a big way.*

What You Can Learn From Jenny
Getting the attention of every person (going viral) is a pipe dream. It takes being either massively unique or massively lucky. (Probably both.) Getting the attention of the right person (the hiring manager) is a piece of cake. It takes being a little more unique than the rest of the candidates, which is easy.

If the hardest part of getting hired is getting noticed in the sea of candidates for a given job, then why not use some creativity. Jenny's stunt is a great example of taking something simple and making it interesting. You get an idea of her sense of humor, her creativity, her playfulness, the fact that she has a clear idea of what she wants in a job, etc.

So, the next time you submit a resume or fill out an application, think to yourself, "What would Jenny do?"

*Jenny is actually Elyse, an actress.

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The short answer is yes, but the real answer is more nuanced than that. I think it will help you land a job because it helps thousands of people that have curated their personal brand carefully. But the hiring process still looks a lot like it did before personal brands were easily created, which means personal brands are still rising in influence and the effect they have on the decision-making process when hiring.

Personal brands are a bit of a trending topic on the internet. Some say a personal brand is worth more than a college degree. Others say you need a personal brand just to be considered for an open position. And no doubt about it, a strong personal brand can make you stand out in a crowd of black-and-white resumes.

What Your Personal Brand Needs

The "how-to" of creating a personal brand has been covered ad infinitum by thousands of bloggers, but the "what" is less clear. With all the talk about a personal brand, few are defining what that brand needs to be. To build a strong personal brand that will help you get the job you want, you'll need the following:

1. Be an expert. - Become known as someone who knows everything about one thing. A jack-of-all-trades is rarely hired for a job that requires a laser focused knowledge- or skill-set. Be an authority on the topic that defines the job you're looking for.
2. Write well. - Jason Fried (of 37Signals) says that excellent written communication skills are a highly regarded asset when he decides who to hire, whether he's hiring a web developer, customer service help, or anyone else. Your written voice will frame your personal brand as either intelligent or ignorant.
3. Write often. - When I'm considering a candidate, their cover letter only shows me a small snippet of their writing ability. Keep up a blog on the topic of your expertise and make sure the hiring manager has a clear path to read your best posts.
4. Pick a side. - Don't write commentary about other people's opinions unless you're looking for a job as a journalist at an old, stodgy newspaper. Have an opinion of your own, stick with that opinion, and defend it to the death with intelligent arguments and unwavering fortitude.
5. Hustle. - Okay, I stole this from Gary Vaynerchuk, but it's too good not to include in this list. It's cliche, but personal brands don't form themselves. It takes hard work; nights and weekends spent writing, building relationships with influential people in your industry, learning your industry, and making waves.
6. Create on your own. - If you only create value for your industry when you're working 9-5, you'll never build a valuable personal brand. People who contribute to their industry on their own time and of their own volition are the people that land interesting jobs with self-directed projects.

Also, you probably think your personal brand is stronger than it really is. Just because you have a few thousand Twitter followers and Facebook friends, a personal fan page with a couple hundred fans, and a blog with a few hundred subscribers, it doesn't mean you have a strong personal brand. In fact, those metrics are becoming less and less meaningful.

Think about it like this. If you have 10,000 Twitter followers, but none of them are in charge of hiring for the type of position you want, how does that metric help you land your dream job? But what if you have a blog that's read faithfully by only 100 people and one of those people is the decision-maker for the job you want? That seems like a better proposition to me.

Your personal brand is only as strong as the people who've been branded. Brand yourself into the mind of the person that can make your dreams come true and you might have a shot.

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I've spent the last few weeks doing some deep study on the shared characteristics of successful technology startups. I've studied the commentary, the facts, and the theories and the only trend I've seen is that no two winning startups are alike.

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When my pastor joined Twitter last week, I knew he would be sharing tons of great nuggets. So far, it's been almost 100% LifeChurch.tv culture and philosophy, which I love. Recently he tweeted this snippet.

We don’t recruit volunteers; we release leaders. Volunteers do good things, but leaders change the world.

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OS
Apple and Google are pushing mobile OS innovation forward faster than ever before. RIM and Palm are doing their best to keep up, and we'll see if HP can bring the hardware sweetness needed to make WebOS competitive. Microsoft, well, they need Gates back. All this competition in the OS space is going to keep mobile hardware manufacturers and software developers busy keeping up.

Hardware
Mobile hardware is lagging. It took Apple three years to decently iterate on its original iPhone design. That's fine, but I don't think it's because Apple can't dream up something more revolutionary. It's because manufacturing hasn't caught up. The Nexus One is still the best Android powered hardware on the market, but I think Samsung might bring some power through the end of this year. RIM still produces solid hardware, but that hasn't been challenged in years. Again, HP/Palm is the biggest wild card here, controlling hardware and OS. Microsoft is, well, going to try something different...again.

Software (Third Party)
Apple has the biggest community, but the size of the App Store and its current UX is becoming a liability. Too many apps and no good way to sift through the crap. Android is next, and while many apps do amazing things, most don't deliver on the "it just works" frontier. RIM can give developers a healthy boost, but building Blackberry apps is still a lost art. Microsoft is, well, waiting to see if the gaming developer community wants to build mobile apps.

Networks
It's no secret that they can't keep up. AT&T is doing their best, but you still need a microcell to get reception in your house. Verizon has luckily avoided the iPhone deluge of users/data-transfer, but if they land an iOS device they'll feel AT&T's pain, too. Sprint rolled out 4G, but that might have been premature. T-Mobile just joined the 3G world, four years late.

Conclusion
Competition is good for consumers and developers, but scary for device manufacturers and carriers. Thankfully, I'm part of the first two groups and not the latter two.

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We actually want you to be honest.

I see too many job applicants who approach the interview as if their only goal is to win a job offer, losing sight of the fact that this can land them in the wrong job. Think of it like dating. This means being honest about your strengths and weaknesses and giving the hiring manager a glimpse of the real you, so he or she can make an informed decision about how well you'd do in the job.

This is a timely article for me as we're going through the rigorous process of hiring 5 new people to join our team. My favorite points from the article:

• Your resume objective usually hurts you. (Especially if it implies that you intend to take my job one day.)
• You can gain an edge with your cover letter. (Or lose an edge without one.)
• We think a lot about personality. (Because you can improve your skills, but you can't become a better "fit" for the team.)

The hiring process is fairly new for me. I've hired dozens of contractors, but hiring someone to join your team and potentially influence your culture is a totally different story. The right person can take the entire team to the next level. The wrong person could halt any momentum that you had prior to their arrival.

Scary stuff.

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