Stop
So my previously announced plan to write a book about ‘hopeful hiring’ has been scrapped. I’ve been poking at it over the last few weeks while I’ve been off work but unfortunately I just don’t think it has legs (and neither does the publisher I was talking to!). I suspect I have just about enough useful thoughts to pull together a ‘playbook’ of some kind but – there is always a but – it does all feel a little bit ‘Old Man Yells at Cloud’ already so I can’t even imagine what it would like like by the time it was fit for public consumption.
Things around hiring are changing so fast – driven by AI for sure but also shifting demographics, working patterns, expectations and the mess that is ‘hybrid’ – and making sense of all of that is probably a worthwhile endeavor but also something I am just not equipped to do.
Really I was never as attached to the idea of it as a book as I was with the whole ‘working in the open’ stuff so if I was able to let that dream go I’m not going to mourn this too long.
Go
On the other hand – somewhat driven by the time ‘poking’ at the book idea – I have decided to keep the ‘Internet of Public Service Jobs’ newsletter going for 2027 at least. The current schedule looks like I will hit 500 editions late November / early December (which also coincides with 10 years of it being an email newsletter proper). At that point I am going to take a break until the new year.
In 2027 I will relaunch/refresh/reboot it. Starting with a new number one – comic book style. I’m going to definitely do fewer editions in future. No more than 20 – so probably a switch from weekly-ish to fortnightly-ish. I think this will (a) make it feel a bit less of a burden which it has become and (b) make it easier to provide a decent mix of interesting jobs and links each email.
I am actively looking for a sponsor though as it has become pretty darn expensive. That has not changed! So I’m hoping there is a company willing to pay £500 to be THE sponsor for the year and I’ll also actively promote the Ghost ‘tip jar’ again. I don’t expect to make any money but it would be nice to get close to breaking even!
