The Google (Ads) Job Experiment | Hacker News Reader

The Google (Ads) Job Experiment

alecbrownstein.com

186 pointschaostheory33 comments

If you'd rather see a graphic that explains it than watch a 1 minute video: http://alecbrownstein.com/united_way_files/Google_Ad_Layout....

Creative, but it could be done so much better. Improve the copy a bit and send them to a landing page which functions as a combination pitch and portfolio.

(Psst -- if you're on the job market, have one of those. And since most of you here can program, have a way to quickly spin up ones targeted to the interests of a particular decisionmaker. )

Given the results he got, it doesn't seem like he needed to do so much better. (Of course, perhaps he was just lucky.)

According to other info downthread, the link did go to his portfolio.

I agree that the copy could have been done better, but he did get the results he wanted. :)

I have to say, that's pretty bloody brilliant. If you were the one performing the search, how could you not click on that link?

I'm used to seeing people search results there when I search for names, so I'd probably skip over it. There's got to be something more attention grabbing than "Hey, $NAME".

Still, this is cool.

But his target was people from the ad industry, and they pay more attention to ads than you.

Adblock. :-p

This is brilliant.

I'm the guy who came up with the idea of using Facebook Ads to target companies that you want to work for.

http://www.onedayonejob.com/blog/use-facebook-ads-to-make-em...

I toyed around with the idea of using Google AdWords, but couldn't quite figure out how to get the targeting right. This just made me smack my forehead. For most job seekers this idea is a lot harder to implement than the Facebook idea just because you often don't know whom you want to talk to about landing a job with a given company.

Still, this has me thinking of all kind of ways that you can use AdWords to target really niche keywords. The clicks probably cost a nickel, but the attention derived from that click could be way more.

How often do these guys google themselves? My mean time between self-googling's can be months... seems like there would be the potential for months to pass before hearing anything.

you can set up google alerts that notify you of changes to the results of a search. And people in some industries care very much about what's said about them.

I doubt that Google Alerts tells you about new ads that match your keywords.

ah, that's right. ads wouldn't show up in that. my bad.

but maybe there's a way to see what's run against a set of key words. any SEO people in da house?

Presumably creative directors are a particularly vain sort, and likely given the type of self-promotion required to be successful in that sort of job, the most successful are likely the most vain.

Consider that a friend, acquaintance or employee might have seen the ad and mentioned it to them. That'd reduce the waiting time.

That's even better, because you've just leaped up the trust totem pole from "A nobody on the Internet" to "a warm introduction from a trusted associate."

great phrase you had there: "mean time between self-googling"

I propose that as a new measure of narcissism in the Age of the Web.

A: So what's your MTBSG?

B: 5 minutes.

A: Dude get some sunlight.

Given they're top names within their industry, they might have staff checking the search results quite frequently to ensure that competitors aren't showing ads against their names. Something like this then gets flagged up as something for the boss to see.

Given his target market, I think this was a great way to get an interview.

And what do people look for when they google themselves? What do you find that's interesting? I have the same name as a celebrity, so I can't have this feature. (it's not Michael Bolton).

Excellent example of thinking outside of the box.

And the copy-cats will pay much more than the 6$.

Why? I don't think it is going to be wide spread and people aren't all going to be going after the same people for jobs.

Good question. I just assumed this would get popular, like the million-dollar homepage.

Cool idea, but why would you use a video with cheesy promo music to explain it, instead of a paragraph of text with a screenshot or two?

Because that's appropriate for your intended audience?

I've tried hiring using Google Ads with keywords relevant to some advanced techs we use and if you are in my country, you get an ad. It didn't help much with our immediate hiring needs but it worked better as brand advertisement - it generated some discussions and I believe it did help us hiring later.

Heh. There used to be a job ad on my name. By a former employer. Now there's just one from my current employer.

That'd be a great answer to YC's application question "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage."

Granted it still involved a computer, but I'm sure they'd agree it was a great example.

So this is a cool idea, but since the video was just some text and two screenshots, couldn't he have made a blog post instead of making me load a video?

Hmm ... wondering how frequently do people google themselves "as compared to other people googling for them". The ratio will be even smaller for famous people.

It can be debated that the others will not click on the link. Or that people actually google themselves more often than I think. Just a thought.

Pedantic point: that's the first ad at the top, not the first search result (which is not clear in the video).

This was just on the channel 4 national TV news in U.K.

amazing. the opportunities are all around us

Reply on news.ycombinator.com