Live data from Hacker News

My Seth Godin decline letter. Thoughts?

news.ycombinator.com

71–77 of 77 posts

Re: My Seth Godin decline letter. Thoughts?

#72
post #7

too nicey nicey. It doesn't sound sincere to me. When I was applying for jobs I used to get back all sorts of crap like this.. it's silly. One company got back to me within 24 hrs with a simple: "sorry your not for us because xyz" I reapplied instantly and in the "why are you applying" space put "because your the first company not to reject me with complete bull and just gave me a straight honest answer. I trust you.…

In a job situation (where you have fulltime HR folks and a relatively small pool of applicants), this works greak. But, I suspect he has the same problem PG has. Rejection doesn't mean that something went wrong. And, in a high-volume scenario like this, he sure as hell doesn't have time to give people thorough responses.

I have a hunch he could spend a day or two sending out personalized emails to each person, be it one paragraph or a page in length. He's in the business of building people to be stronger marketers; he's not doing much a service to them in telling them they are awesome but not awesome enough.

I think Godin could learn a bit from the devotion Gary Vaynerchuk shows to his audience.

Re: My Seth Godin decline letter. Thoughts?

#73

I applied and got an interview. I sent in my application as a PDF, but I also made this lens which Seth apparently liked: http://www.squidoo.com/Reading_Optional

I'm new to this term "lens". It seems like it's just a fancy word for "how-to" or "neat bit of information / call to take some sort of action".

you know, I've looked at squidoo a few times in the past, but never managed to figure out just what the heck it was for. I still don't know.

Re: My Seth Godin decline letter. Thoughts?

#74
post #8

This sounds a little like being dumped along the lines of "its not you, its me."

It's not you. It's not me either! Isn't that aweseome? I mean, it's completely stupendously awesome that we're both so amazingly awesomely cool but somehow this thing just isn't working. I mean, we're not working. Together, that is. OK, so I found some other super-cool kids who are even more awesome, but that doesn't mean you're not, and it doesn't mean that I'm not, just that we're not quite so amazingly awesomely a…

lol I love the cookie sentence.

Re: My Seth Godin decline letter. Thoughts?

#77
He really is starting to lose it. I don't think he practices what he preaches anymore. Yes, he'll answer an email, but ask for more than that and I can guarantee what the answer will be.... Maybe he should just be "Authentic" about it and do a blog post which says: "Look people, I am flattered at all the requests and X, Y and Z's I get. But you probably don't know that it amounts to many thousands of these a week and i just can't be now, what I was then. The good news for you is that my authentic method works.... up to a point... and that space is now open for you to take... Coz I'm just too big to do it now, to be authentic that is.... it was fun while it lasted..."

How about that Seth?

Steve Sammartino - www.startupblog.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN