Does it surprise you when I confess that there are lots of balancing acts behind the scenes of a successful company like Viget? As someone who helps with recruiting, I often find myself balancing priorities and expectations. I’ve written about our approach to recruiting before; we try to be creative in our efforts and we expect applicants to do the same, but we also prioritize some very traditional values like integrity and hard work.
Our colleagues at OnWired recently pulled back the curtain a little on their recruiting process. It’s interesting - and in this case fun - to see what other companies are doing and what their results are. They share snippets of responses from design applicants to their request for "The World’s Greatest Cover Letter." I love OnWired’s playful tone and it is clear that a lot of applicants love it, too. I know they do great work, so I assume OnWired’s recruiting strategies are paying off.
I’ll admit that at Viget I sometimes struggle to peel back the layers of "personality" from applicants’ cover letters and find their “real” professional identity. Out of this struggle comes my evolving expertise at balancing expectations for professionalism with expectations for enthusiasm and creative energy. With practice, I’ve honed a pretty nuanced sense of what “works” and what doesn’t when I review an applicant’s materials. I’ve also come to feel some camaraderie with candidates when I can tell he or she is walking the same careful line; just last week someone ended a very professional cover letter that may have otherwise been lacking personality with, “P.S. I didn’t think it was appropriate to add to my resume, but my Wii bowling skills are out of this world! Thanks again for your time.”
Viget really is what we describe it to be. My coworkers and I work hard to live up to the company’s reputation, maintain a good sense of humor, and achieve ambitious professional goals. But the truth is that all of those things are balanced by a lot of hours spent working very hard in a sort of quiet way. I encourage potential Viget applicants to write a strong cover letter, but I challenge you not just to be creative or to show some personality; I challenge you to be authentic and honest when you tell us about your skills, interests, and experience. Balance the description of your unbridled personal ambitions with some humility and plans for growth or improvement. Be confident, but above all, be real.
Viget is truly inspired by the positive responses we’ve received from so many friends and colleagues about the new site and blog designs. Nick La, shortly after posting the new Viget blog designs to Best Web Gallery, was kind enough to engage us in a dialog/interview that resulted in this featured post on Web Designer Wall. It was a great opportunity for us voice on our inspiration, reflect on the hard work, and share a behind-the-scenes look into our design process.
Thanks again to Nick and all of those who have been so complimentary and supportive of our efforts.
One perk at Viget is the opportunity to work closely with admirable clients from a wide range of industries. We’re a passionate group of people, so we tend to get really into our work. Depending on the client, we might find ourselves laughing, learning, or searching more than usual. Even when I’m not involved directly, I get inspired by my colleagues and the projects they are talking about. In every case, I’m enlightened; but, when it comes to the pro bono work we do for the National Foundation for Teaching Entreprenuership (NFTE), I am left feeling especially inspired.
Continue reading "Inspiration! Courtesy of Our Clients"
Five months ago I wrote about the very first Refresh the Triangle meeting, which we hosted in our Durham office. Last night was another “first” for Refresh, and I’m pleased to report that it was a smashing success.
Contrary to our previous four meetings, last night’s event was not planned around a designated speaker. Instead, we asked everyone to come ready to kick back and freshen up. It was our first social “show and tell” meeting. We weren’t sure how it would go over. Initial indicators were not promising – I heard from three people that open-ended meetings tend to be awkward. Nonetheless, it was well attended, energetic, and quite informative. Check out Peyton’s recap, complete with links to the great stuff shared by attendees.
Continue reading "Kick Back and Freshen Up"
Thanks to everyone who has been visiting the new viget.com and our blogs! We’re embarrassed to admit that we made a little mistake ... Shortly after re-launching (and thoroughly testing the live sites) we switched hosting providers to improve performance (and then didn’t test again—oops). Turns out the new host was configured differently, so email wasn’t being sent from the site correctly between March 7th and yesterday.
As a result, if you filled out this form or added your email at the bottom of the page during that time period, we probably didn’t get it. Could you please resubmit? Yes, we’ve tested it this time—works like a charm!
If you still don’t trust the forms or think we just might be ignoring you, you’re welcome to give us a call at 703.891.0670. If we don’t answer, leave a voicemail message—we’re quite certain those go through fine.
We last redesigned viget.com almost two years ago. As part of that effort, we launched the FourLabs blog, dedicated to sharing “insights and commentary reflecting the four key aspects of our work: strategic consulting, interactive design, application development, and online marketing.” We also noted that it was “ever-evolving” and today, “it” has evolved substantially. Multiplied might be more like it.
We found over the past 22 months that writing for the FourLabs was hard because of you, frankly. Who are you? A designer? Developer? Marketer? We found our readers to be each of these, but not all of them. That made blogging tough. A post about code couldn’t be too techie for fear of scaring off the design readers. A post about UX need to define what UX is if we expected the non-UX folks to keep reading. You get the idea. A good rule for blogs is to know your audience and stay focused. We were trying to be broad ... but no more!
Today, we’ve launched five blogs, one for each of the four labs (strategy, design, development, and marketing) and a newly focused FourLabs blog. FourLabs is all about us - our work, our clients, our team - and is written for those who care to follow what’s happening at Viget (and thank you for caring!).
Our niche blogs are all about you.
- VigetAdvance, our web strategy blog, will focus on web start-ups, new product launches, and how the web continues to transform every business.
- If you’re a designer, keep up with VigetInspire and the thoughts our design team have about stuff like user experience, web standards, and Flash as well as notable site launches and events like SXSW.
- If you’re a developer, we hope you’ll enjoy VigetExtend and our development team talking about open source, Ruby on Rails, test driven development, and events like RailsConf.
- Marketers should check out VigetEngage, where our marketing team will share tips and ideas on search, email, and social media marketing as well as analytics.
If you think you’d kinda like to follow all four of these, no problem—just keep keepin’ up with FourLabs, where we’ll have a week digest of what’s covered in each, or join our email list for a monthly update.
By launching these focused blogs, our growing team here at Viget can more effectively connect with their peer communities. We can share ideas and generally contribute to the vibrant and ever-expanding industry that we’re all in. And since each Lab here at Viget shares knowledge between them, we think our perspective will be a little unique. We hope you do too!
You’ll notice they each have a different look, and none really look much like Viget.com or even reflect our branding. That’s no accident! We’ll write most of the posts (though guest bloggers are welcome) but we want the content and discussion to be about you, not us. FourLabs will continue to cover all things Viget.
Will this plan work? One blog is hard enough to keep up on—will we be able to sustain five of them? The only thing we can promise is that we’ll give it our best shot. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions!
One more thing: kudos to Rob, Doug, and Steph, who led the charge here at Viget to get all this put together while juggling plenty of client work. Internal projects are notorious for slipping, but these guys were dedicated to getting this done in time for SXSW. Nicely done!
I have to admit that when the due date of my 3rd child was determined to be late February of this year, one of my first work-related thoughts was “I wonder if I’ll be able to make it to SXSW?" After last year’s trip to see Squidoo take home the Best Community award, SXSW became a must-attend conference in my book. I’m happy to report that my in-laws will provide plenty of love and support on the home front while I join Rob, Jim, Erik, Jackson, and Samantha from here at Viget to make the trip.
It just so happens that six of us from Viget make a perfect bowling team, so when our friends at nclud mentioned they’d be taking over the bowling event this year, we wanted to help. We’ll be a beer sponsor, which means that if you say hello we’ll buy you a beer. Pretty simple.
Right before bowling, we’ll be cheering loudly at the SXSW awards ceremony again this year. The newest member of the Viget design team, Samantha, is one of the finalists for her personal blog, Bad Ass Ideas. The Blog category recognizes “sites that revolutionize the power of publishing by providing regularly updated content of a personal or professional nature.”
As for the rest of the trip, we’ll be taking in as many of the panels and social events as we possibly can.
We’re all looking forward reconnecting with old friends and making some new ones. See you in Austin!
Another one of my favorite Viget traditions is our annual holiday gift. While we love getting cards from others, we’ve always felt that sending out a simple card is just too ordinary for us. And while creating e-cards is fun, we like to break out of our comfort zone as a team and do something creative that’s not "web."
So ... every year, everyone pitches in to help make about 300 gifts, and we send them to all the folks who helped make the year so fun and successful. We’ve made VigorBalm, Vigoroma, Vigelicous, and, last year, VigeTags.
This year, it’s VigetRocks. Blue and orange rock candy carefully delivered in difficult-to-open plastic containers. If you hold yours on it’s side and spin the balls around, you’ll notice the Viget logo in there somewhere. We had fun putting them all together (some more than others).
Since we couldn’t track down every address we wanted to, we have a few extras. If you didn’t get some Rocks but want a batch, comment below and we’ll send ‘em out right away (while supplies last.) Happy holidays!
Recruiting is part of my job here at Viget and as everyone knows, it’s hard to find great people. We know the traditional methods of recruiting often fall short and that hiring exceptional people may require exceptional methods. We recently started a recruiting experiment and the results were exciting. I thought a summary might be valuable to other employers who wrestle with recruiting challenges.
In September, we posted two different advertisements for an Office Manager job. They produced distinctly different responses from applicants. One job listing (see #1 here) was a replication of the standard job description on viget.com. The other was more creative – “A Letter to the Hard-Working-But-Currently-Uninspired Job Seekers” who are looking to work for a company “that values its employees and holds them to high standards.” See #2 here. We posted them about a week apart on the DC craigslist under the office/admin category.
The first thing that stuck out was our job title. Skimming the category (which has several listings each day) reveals a lot of repetition. Recently, the category listings included:
- Administrative Assistant/Office Manager (Fairfax)
- Executive Assistant/Office Manager (Arlington/Chevy Chase)
- Office Manager for Child Care Company (Montgomery County)
- Office Manager / Sr Executive Assistant (Mclean VA)
- Administrative Assistant (Washington, DC)
- Office Manager (McLean, VA)
Our first goal was to inspire someone really looking for something special to click and read our job description. Our unique title provided the hook. Our results looked something like this:
- 9/11/07 Straight job description: about 100 applicants in 1 week
- 75% gave standard response
- 25% gave less than standard response
- 9/19/07 Inspiring letter: about 80 applicants in 1 week
- 50% gave 2-5 paragraph personalized letter and resume
- about half of these made an additional creative gesture
- 40% gave standard response
- 10 % gave less than standard response
It’s worth noting that we received fewer responses to the “inspiring” post, which was both expected and appreciated. One of the big recruiting challenges for a small company is digging through all the noise. The hurdle of reading a more involved post successfully filtered out a lot of potential applicants that lacked the initative we were looking for.
The “standard response” from applicants was a 1-3 line email, a 1-3 paragraph cover letter, and a resume. In the second round of applicants, the standard response was perceived as sub-standard; we couldn’t believe anyone would read our letter, decide to apply, and not make any effort to be personal or creative.
Creative gestures from applicants included:
- a homemade post card sent by USPS
- a basket of brownies left at the front desk (highlighting a previous catering career and a tendency to over-achieve)
- extensive power point presentations
- several cleverly photoshopped photos depicting the applicant as a needle in a haystack
- a box of professionally printed cards which elegantly highlighted the candidate’s skills and experience with one line printed per card
We were reminded that lots of people want their jobs to be more than just a paycheck. Many wrote passionately about seeing the Office Manager position as a chance to make a powerful impact on Viget’s culture and well-being. The opportunity to contribute to a company in a meaningful way was one of the most often cited reasons for applying.
It was also informative to see what they felt was worth emphasizing. One candidate wrote that she was excited about the possibility of a job “where people have high expectations of me because they believe in my ability to work hard.” This comment was a positive contrast to the many applicants who emphasized wanting an opportunity to be better appreciated by their employer.
I felt much better equipped to assess the second batch of applicants fairly and I think on average they were more qualified and well-suited to the position. I also got a sense of how much energy and effort each person was willing to put forth to make an exceptionally good first impression. This quality was critical to our evaluation of candidates.
Lastly, it was a lot more enjoyable to review the second set of applicants. The brownies and packages were surprising - who doesn’t love brownies? - but the real pleasure was actually connecting with human beings. We had a deep need for an awesome office manager which we wrote about honestly. I received emails from people with a deep desire to work hard in such a role. I felt like we were connecting with the applicant pool in a much more meaningful and productive way.
Our experiment worked! Hilary, our new office manager, exceeds our (high) expectations on a daily basis. She’s happy to have found a great place to work and we are thrilled to have her. We have since used a similar job listing approach to find a new Internet Marketing Specialist who will be starting in January, and we’re trying another variation to attract the ever-elusive exceptional Ruby on Rails developer.
Whether it’s microsites like teamviget.com or creative job listings on Craigslist, we’re committed to trying new things to stay fresh and targeted. Will they continue to help us find the best and brightest? Only time will tell. Good thing this creative recruiting stuff is pretty fun!
You may have heard of the One Laptop per Child program that was co-founded by Nicholas Negroponte from MIT’s Media Lab. The goal of the organization is “to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.” Their approach to meeting this goal was to develop a rugged, low-cost laptop that could be provided to children in developing countries.
For a long time people referred to the computer as the $100 laptop - since the hope was to design and manufacture something that would cost that much. The machines, called the OLPC XO-1, are going into mass production now and the price is coming out closer to $200 than $100 per machine - but it sounds like they still have hopes of getting the price down in the coming year.
There are reports that initial commitments by some governments for large purchases haven’t been followed up by actual orders. At the same time, the organization has received a lot of interest from folks in developed countries who are interested in helping out, and getting their hands on one of the laptops. To get things jump started they have started a Give One, Get One program where people can purchase two laptops - one to keep and one to be donated to a child in need.
One of things Brian and I feel strongly about is supporting kids. We’ve done pro bono work for both the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship and the Medical Care for Children Partnership over the years. We’re also computer geeks and still have the original Apple II from our childhood on display at the Lab. When we saw the G1G1 program we couldn’t pass up the chance to help the kids and get our hands on one of those nifty little machines.
If you’re interested in supporting the OLPC program you should consider attending The Technoliday Party on December 6th in DC. Proceeds from the party will be used to purchase laptops from the OLPC program.
They say we should get our laptop before the end of the year. Next time you stop by the Lab feel free to take our XO-1 for a spin. Or, better yet, get your own so we can test out the built-in wireless mesh networking!
