If you follow me on Twitter, then you already know that I’m looking for a research assistant, a person whose primary job would be to help me dig up information for longer, in-depth blog posts. This position doesn’t require a special degree or even a permanent address in San Francisco. What it does require is the ability to quickly ferret out information from various public sources.
When I want to write about a certain trend, for example, I will want help tracking down all the companies in that sector, and to have a coherent dossier written on it that is both short and sweet. It would be a great learning opportunity for a student.
My research assistant will of course be paid a nominal hourly fee for their efforts and should expect to work between 30-40 hours a month. Clearly the part-time money isn’t going to help your retire, but if you make yourself indispensable, it might eventually lead to a full-time job.
So how do you apply? As I said in my tweet, I want you to find my personal email address (the GigaOM.com address doesn’t count.) Use it to send me an email outlining, in 250 words or less, why you are the best person for the job. To tilt the balance in your favor, include a list of five of my favorite brands. The final step would involve an assignment – if I like your work, you’re hired.
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2:04 PM PT
[...] His offer is here: [...]
5:17 PM PT
[...] taken their message to heart and have pruned their ranks. Thanks to hard work by Brendan Gahan, winner of my research assistant contest, and runner-up Susie Lin, we have compiled a scorecard using publicly traded [...]
7 comments so far
12:05 PM PT
I love the challenge of finding an email address.
Ignoring urge to spam Om or post the email address here.
12:07 PM PT
“To tilt the balance in your favor, include a list of five of my favorite brands” — wow, and I thought Mike Arrington had a huge ego.
12:17 PM PT
Joseph Fritzi
Clearly you are not applying :-).
To do research, you need to show some skills and figuring out my favorite brands is a small test that will tell me how good you will be. Considering that i don’t know any of these people and would be working with them, i need to get a sense of their basic abilities.
Of course, conflating a simple test with huge ego is easier. :-)
1:02 PM PT
How to find an email address or why Google doesn’t know what Information is.
Information is data in context
Now how can we resolve that without a link to Om’s email address.
The brain uses an any-to-any parallel algorithm. With GLIA providing randomization for bootstrapping and learning, blah blah …
Now Om has some preferences, which everybody knows about who reads his blog. Sorry Om but searching is only part of finding information. Defining context is more important.
Now we could find any data related to OM. But only a few path will provide a way to associate an email address with a given …..
This way we find an email address. Now is it really OM?
Use of this email address actually will resolve to his private address and phone number.
Give him a call, just for making it to easy.
Btw that’s how we resolve an unknown to true, without any Boolean logic.
Search time on Google less then 5 minutes, if Google would actually know what Information is. They should provide in less then 1 sec., no human input (links) required.
2:23 PM PT
Om: You’ve got to look deeper into it. Why did you pick that particular test?
3:19 PM PT
Funny! I still have your private email address. But I won’t tell. :)
The job description sounds great. But San Francisco is a little to far from Berlin, Germany.
6:32 AM PT
Om, you said “Considering that i don’t know any of these people” — well, why not use your network of contacts on LinkedIn to identify a short-list of known referrals.
Then, once you’ve turned your current “talent puddle” into a real talent pool of potential candidates, use the Google blog search tool for some of your current research projects (typical keyword phrases) — and see if any of the candidates personal posts come up in the results.
My point: use the power of the Web to find the best-fit talent that you seek.