>Today, I read an article by David Zax on Fast Company, titled “The ‘Apply with LinkedIn’ Button will not disrupt HR Industry”. Here’s the gist of it: GigaOm posted an article the other day about a possible development for LinkedIn: a widget for companies to use that would allow them to put in a button for job applicants to submit, whaddya know, through LinkedIn. Granted, it’s still just an idea, but it does have merit.

In the article, “Branding Guru” (I can’t help but roll my eyes, even if this guy has credentials) Dan Schawbel sees it as the future of applications. But Zax doesn’t. What it comes down to is that Zax realizes the complications of the hiring process. It reminded me of the workshops I’ve attended with Krissi Geary-Bohem, the Internship Coordinator for SIUC that really helped me to clean up my resume/cover letter process. When looking at job applicants, HR departments and the hiring folks at smaller businesses are already bombarded with applications. Misspellings, poor/confusing layouts, and those that are too long (at least in the media biz) are tossed out immediately. We don’t have time for the crap. Even handling smaller interviews back when I was GM of WIDB, I felt the same issue, and I was only looking at maybe 3 applications at most for a position.

Zax has it on the head: it could (and in my opinion, likely would) actually make the whole process worse. For every decent LinkedIn profile, I see one that’s incomplete, poorly done, or full of bullshit that they couldn’t justify on a “real” resume. Multiply this with the effect of being able to tap a button and answer a few questions to apply for a job, and you have a nightmare. The key…

>Ok, so, here’s something that I don’t think many people consider. I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, but I still don’t quite know where I want to go with this thought. Perhaps you can lend me some ideas.

What runs the radio stations now? In ye olden days, it was Program Directors and DJs. Increasingly though, your stations nowadays are probably not really programming a lot of their own content unless they are independently owned. If you’re owned by one of the huge national conglomerates, I’m willing to be the majority of your programming is decided by a director many miles away, beamed into your rotation. In essence, the computer that rotates your tracks is really what decided what goes on when.

Of course, somebody has to tell the Automation how it rotates, but that piece of software really is essential to everything on air – music, sales, traffic… all of it. Choosing your automation software is a big deal – programming and engineering are making choices that often put you in a yearly contract cost simply for getting a license to run the software. Then you have to train your people how to use it and get everything to work with it – you may have to convert your audio files, and then set intro and outro cues, and so on – it’s a pretty laborious process.

Do you know what one of the biggest radio automation services out there is? Radio Computing Services. They make a series of software parts that interlock – schedulers, players, traffic, rippers, the list goes on. And do you know who owns RCS? Clear Channel. No wonder they are the “Worlds Largest Broadcast Software Company”. When your parent company is the biggest radio conglomerate in the…

>Apparently we’re having a “Inauguration Week” here at SIU. It celebrates our culture of excellence here at SIU. Events include some school of music performances, the Ag College’s honors week, and some nice little forums and such on some of the Research going on at the University.

Apparently, it’s rubbed some people the wrong way. I’ve heard that some students plan on doing some protests around Chancellor Rita Cheng’s Installation Ceremony. Honestly, I’m just trying to figure out what the ceremony is.

Cheng was selected to be Chancellor of SIUC back in June of 2010. Why is there a ceremony now? Of course, there’s going to be silly political pomp and staging whenever a new person is brought into office, but it has been nearly a year since her selection, it just seems a little late. And with the looming budgetary crisis on everybody’s mind, it just seems in poor taste to me. My personal bet is that this event in and of itself is not that expensive – but it still seems to be a bad choice to be holding this kind of thing while we have Unions fighting for every penny they can.

The celebration of our Research and students – yes, is a good thing. It’s practically a promotion of the successes of the University. But a ceremony for our Chancellor that we’ve had for a year? Not so much. No offense, Rita, but I don’t feel as if you, or the upper echelons of SIUC’s management, can be praised as responsible for the successes of the College. The amount of criticism over the last few years for the immensely unpopular Saluki Way, conflicts with the Faculty over furlough days, plagiarism in our plagiarism policy (which, let it be known if this kind of ‘mistake’ were made by a student, they’d be kicked…

>Last semester, I designed a proposal for a Master’s research project for a class. In truth, it’ll probably be what I end up doing for my degree… or at least something similar. I did a ton of research into college radio and radio education.

The most interesting thing I came across was a series of pieces where the researchers interviewed or surveyed professional media managers on what they were looking for in new graduates. If you’re interested in the specific studies, I’ve listed the APA citation at the bottom of this post. In fact, I’ll include my cites as I go.

Over the last thirty years, multiple studies have shown that colleges need to work on their radio programs. (Oliver 1977, Dorman 1989, Bailey 1993, Weiss 2000) Most colleges lump in their radio courses with journalism or general media – ignoring the special qualities that keep radio relevant, both commercially and culturally (Weiss 2000)

Now, to cut it down really short, you can easily see a trend happening over the 30 years of study. In the late 70s, TV and Radio managers stated the colleges needed to teach practical skills rather than mass com theory. That wanted people who had business, sales, and production skills. Knowledge of equipment and use was seen as a must, though they didn’t want anybody tinkering with it unless they were an engineer.

Roughly a decade later, a similar study with corporate communicators and broadcasters had slightly different results. This time, there was more emphasis on english, journalism, speech, and of course, business skills. Equipment skills were not seen as such a necessity.  A study of commercial station managers in 1993…

>I wrote this for a class recently. It’s not super-groundbreaking, but I thought it was worth sharing.

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