LIAM CHAI

A few weeks ago I got a text from giffgaff, my mobile network provider.

Giffgaff cuts costs by having no headquarters – they are based completely online. All of their customer service is done via forums and their members. This job advert was sent only to giffgaff users. A few months earlier I received this from Khan Academy:

This is where the new jobs are at. You don’t get them by seeing an advert on a job site and then applying for it (although 80% of jobs never end up on job sites anyway).  The new jobs get given to you when you actually contribute to the world.

I am certain whoever fills the giffgaff role will have been an active volunteer on the forums already.  And while Khan Academy’s email wasn’t for a paid job, I’m certain that becoming a more formal volunteer would be key in getting a paid job with them later. What you do online is becoming very important. Are you a heavy reddit user? A potential employer might read all the posts you’ve made there. The CV is becoming obsolete. Show your value by actually creating value.  As more people come round to this the ones without an online presence will begin feeling the bite.

The Rise of Purpose-Driven Companies

More companies are created with purpose as their core driver and not profit. They might earn a profit but that profit goes back to funding their purpose.  These companies don’t care about formal qualifications. They care about whether you share the same purpose and passion.  And if you demonstrate this by using their service, helping other users with their products – they’ll take notice. They’d sooner hire you than a random graduate.  So in 2015, this is how you get a job you love in three steps:

1) Find a company you love

2) Start delivering value, don’t ask, just deliver value

3) Make yourself heard

A perfect example of this is Danielle Thé: Danielle loves Wattpad, an app for readers and writers to discover and share stories. To show how much she loved it, she wrote a fictional story that cleverly weaved in her resume at the same time.

She wrote two chapters and left a cliffhanger that said, “to read more bring me in for an interview.” She then followed all the founders of Wattpad on the app and shared her story with them. She’s now the Product Marketing Manager for Wattpad.

What did Danielle do?

1) She found a company she loved.

2) She showed the company she knew what they were about by using their product in a way they’d never thought about before. She showed that she had passion for the product and that she understood the company.

3) She let herself be heard.

It’s not hard to see why she was hired. In 2015, this is how you get a job you love.

Update 04/04/2015:

Here’s another story I found – Brett Kelly. Brett is a huge fan of Evernote. When it was released he saw a problem that the Evernote team was not solving. They didn’t have a user guide for the myriad of things users could do with Evernote. Users got a blank canvas and were left on their own. Brett decided this was a problem worth solving and wrote Evernote Essentials. The guide sold several thousand copies and caught Evernote’s attention. They got in touch and gave him a job.