Where Do New Jobs Come From?

Each position has its own origin story. Some roles existed when Viget first came to be, but many broke off from other positions as the internet industry evolved and specialization increased -- like Front-End Developers and UX Designers (whose responsibilities were, long ago, rolled up into the Designer role). Just recently, we started recruiting for the new-to-us Digital Content Producer position, not in response to the industry evolving as much as Viget evolving. I thought I’d share the background and context out of which this new role came to be.

The position arose from conversations about wanting to do more with our abundant treasure chest of awesome client work, admirable company traditions, beautiful office spaces, and talented employees. We have great content and fertile ground for more great content, but we needed to address some gaps and answer some questions. Here are some of the conversations we were having:

• For seven years, Zach has filled Viget flickr albums with such special gems and put together videos that make my heart ache with Viget pride. But as his career has flourished, he has focused more on business development. Who can take the photo and video baton from Zach, and keep it as their #1 priority?
• Ben is responsible for our publicity (which means we now have regular newsletters and occasional webinars!), but content creation isn’t his focus. With Ben thinking about marketing strategy and success metrics, who will generate the content he needs to execute the vision?
• We have always put a lot of energy and love into epic company events and traditions, most of us focused on being in the moment while they’re happening. Are we missing out on opportunities to capture content from these?

• Viget invests time and money into hosting industry events at our offices, sending people to conferences, doing experimental side projects, etc. Could we get more value from these efforts?

• The best job candidates are attracted to Viget not by the antics, but by the prospect of doing challenging, interesting work. How can we share the stories of our collaboration more effectively?

• The most exciting clients come to us because they are impressed with our track record for doing high quality, high value work. How can we share the stories of our clients’ success more effectively?

Like so many things at a small, fast-paced, privately-owned company, we ultimately said, “Let’s try something new. We’ll see what we learn. The right person would love this work and could be hugely valuable for the company.”

We wrote up the job description and talked about how this person will collaborate with our business development, marketing, recruiting, and internal events teams. We outlined an evaluation process for candidates and started promoting the position. While the role is brand new to us, a lot of the responsibilities are familiar -- we want to take what we’ve been doing and do it better.

I’m confident we can find someone with solid photo and video skills, familiarity with the right tools, the ability to learn quickly, and an interest in collaborating with our super-smart team. The core, burning-hot flame of talent we’ll be holding out for -- and the most critical part of evaluating candidates for this position -- is the ability to see what story is waiting to be told, and the initiative and hustle to get it done.