"Get mad, you sons of bitches!"

The last post (on Joshua Persky) reminded me of another unusual job searching tack that generated national publicity, Robin Stearns's website Hire My Husband. That's Robin, pictured above in front of the Golden Gate bridge. From her site:

This site was born out of frustration with the job market. My husband graduated in 2008 with an MBA from Georgetown. After Mike finished his MBA, we moved back to California to be closer to family. We both had high expectations for his career and our life after business school.

That was their first mistake, unfortunately. Georgetown apparently has a good business school -- a cursory glance at U.S. News & World Report's list of top programs has it ranked #20 (the FT ranks it 40^th globally) -- but MBA degrees from all but the most prestigious schools have never been a guarantee of financial success, even in better times than these, and Georgetown's business school isn't one of the most prestigious schools. Back to Robin, from her site:

However, those expectations quickly changed as we were faced with this horrible economy. After almost ten months of watching my wonderful husband work tirelessly to find a job, I decided to take matters into my own hands and help him stand out in a sea of unemployed.

Take a look around my site and get to know Mike. Learn more about him on the About Mike and Meet Mike pages. If you have any questions or would like the opportunity to meet my husband, you can email me on the Contact Mike page. Please pass this website along to friends, family, colleagues, and those who are hiring. I know each visitor to this site will think my husband is as great as I do.

That's sweet, Robin, but not realistic. You love your husband. The men you hope will hire him don't. Our opinions about those we love are rarely objective. That's completely natural, but it's naive to expect others to share our opinions about our loved ones. Here's a short video clip of Robin's husband Mike, from Robin's website:



I wish Robin and Mike the best of luck, but here are a few observations:

- What was the point of Mike's video, exactly? Put yourself in the shoes of a business owner. What about that nine second video clip would make you want to hire Mike Stearns? Nothing I can think of. Here's your shot Mike: a business owner clicks on that video. Does he see a confident elevator speech from an aggressive job seeker? Not at all. There's something missing here, Mike. On his blog The Nearby Pen, former commenter Daniel Wahl offers "art antidotes" -- an Edward Guest poem, or a short clip from the film "Amelie" to stir readers to action. Here's my "art antidote" for you, Mike Stearns -- Alec Baldwin's showstopper in "Glengary Glenn Ross":



If you watched the clip, now you know from whence the title of this post came. More observations:

- Is the novelty and publicity factor of your wife creating this sort of site for you outweighed by the negative implications of your wife's advocacy? Again, put yourself in the shoes of a business owner -- what would you think? You might not have heard about Mike Stearns otherwise, but now that you've heard of him, thanks to his wife's unorthodox efforts, you might wonder whether his wife isn't the one with more creativity and initiative.

- National publicity seems to be of limited utility in getting an unemployed person hired. Persky may have gotten a job through his efforts, but it was short-lived.

- National publicity might be of more use in other ways. Persky seems to have made more of an effort to explore this, having written a couple of quickie e-books which he sells on his site, and using his site to generate leads for speaking and other engagements. The Stearnses haven't done this; they have nothing to sell on their site. They should remedy that. Even if they don't have a product or service of their own to offer, the web is full of people who do, many of whom, I'm sure, would be willing to partner with the Stearnses in exchange for the added traffic.