Most marketers, and many recruiters for that matter, know the name Seth Godin. The guy is a pied piper of permission marketing, preaching opt-in marketing and denouncing spam since the ’90s. He’s right up there with iconic marketers like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Guy Kawasaki, and others. By the way, if you don’t know these guys, do yourself a favor and buy a book or two this holiday season.
Where Godin stands apart from the others, and where this post starts to become relevant to you, the recruiting professional, is that he’s now helping people get jobs. In a blog post dated December 7 and titled “Where are the Linchpin jobs?,” Godin announced his intention to bring employers and job seekers together as maybe only he knows how, with LinchpinJobs.com.
Godin believes employment is going through a tectonic shift, where automation is taking over what he calls “cog-like” work. “Now, the most cog-like jobs are done by machines,” wrote Godin. “Now, cog-like work doesn’t create nearly as much value as truly human work. Now, if the opportunity is right, the pay is fair and the cause is a good one, it’s possible to create a culture where people choose to contribute as much as they can, not as little as they can.”
Godin says this new reality calls for both employers and employees to change, embracing what he calls “Linchpin work,” which was inspired by his 2010 book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? For employers, he wrote, “It means not only paying more compensation to capture the attention and focus of the people who are willing and able to do Linchpin work, it also means investing in a culture that supports that sort of work. Compliance isn’t as important as contribution. But it’s frightening, because turnover costs more when you’re dependent on people who bring special magic to work.”
And the employee? “It means caring enough to walk away from a cog job,” he added. “It means being brave enough to make assertions and to lead. It means telling the truth about your background and your future. And it means keeping your end of the bargain, even when the work feels scary.”
Godin’s solution? An email blast, of course.
In the form of a weekly newsletter, Godin will share one or two remarkable jobs to subscribers. That’s all. And even if a job isn’t right for you, Godin hopes you’ll forward an opportunity to a friend or colleague.
“When we started working on this project, we reached out to a few possible employers to get us started,” he said. “We specified that it had to be a special job for a special kind of work, and we insisted that the employer make a personal video, one that described what the job entailed. I knew we were on to something when one said, ‘oh, it’s not worth the effort, we just posted the job on a job board and got five people who were good enough.'”
Anyone interested in checking out the first job and/or signing up for the newsletter can click here. Like all things Godin does, there’s a specific promise that things won’t get spammy and your information won’t be shared or sold.
If you’d like to post a job, click here. Employers beware, however, that inclusion is no layup. You’ll have to provide a job description, “in passionate detail,” and provide a homemade video, around three minutes in length, talking about why your opportunity matters and what the job is.
“A Linchpin job is specific,” the site says. “It requires an attitude and a skillset that’s not easy to find. It relies on the passion and commitment of the person you hire, someone who will seek to do more, not less.”
There is currently no cost to submit a job. The initiative is sponsored by altMBA.