A long time back I set up some job alerts at different career sites like Dice and Monster.com for Social Media positions.¬† I hadn’t received an email alert from Monster.com in a while, and I’d almost entirely forgotten I had it still active.
Until this week.
Monster.com is either drunk out of their minds, or there is a deep change coming in the Social Media landscape.¬† The same alert that once returned positions like “Community Manager” and “Wiki Administrator” in just Arizona have now returned:
- Emergency Medical Science Instructor in Kinston, NC
- 911 Dispatcher in Yuma, AZ
- Lawn Tech in Ocala, FL
- Triad Associate Dentist in Winston/Salem
- Assistant Thai Cook in Destin, FL
- Special Ops Personnel (Military Combat) in (No location given)
- Manager at House of China Restaurant in (No location given)
The message is clear. Social Media has moved beyond trying to drive authentic, dynamic conversations and is now a critical component of every facet of our lives.  Where once you needed to just know how to set up WordPress, now you must know CPR. Where once you just had to know how to use Friendfeed, now you have to be able to carve shrubbery into funny animal shapes.  Where once you just had to know how to filter Scoble out from every damned Internet tool on Earth, you now must be able to infiltrate enemy governments while cooking Asian gourmet food AT THE SAME TIME.
I, for one, welcome the challenge.  And if you happen to be looking for a job yourself, I think there may be a Web Developer position opening up really soon over at Monster.com
This is great. WTF Monster? I seriously hope this was an error. It can’t possibly correct.
Well, some of them make sense when you look at how Twitter has become an every day tool for the Scottsdale fire and police departments. The military isn’t a big leap from that. I’m just surprised that you don’t have a lot of apartment complex management positions. And maybe “Arizona” is a new generic term for a hot climate, that would explain the Florida and perhaps the kitchen positions.
One of my own Monster alerts focuses on the name of a software tool (Adobe Captivate) and always includes odd positions, like day care workers who must “captivate the imagination of pre-school minds” — which is very close to the corporate environments I expected it to find.
But yours, my friend, gets the coolest results. You found the magic words that gave you access to the secret level of Monsterdom. Congratulations! You broke Monster.com. The unemployed and underemployed and unhappily employed of the known world hate you.