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About Andrew Hudson's Jobs List
OK, here's the story. But first, let's get this something out of the way.
I'm an actual person. Yes, I've actually had people email me thinking I'm an avatar, or a made-up person that is part of a bigger corporate scheme. When they get an email response from me, they are a little taken aback. I'm real. I'm 43 years old, I live and work in Denver's Sloan Lake neighborhood. Andrew Hudson's Jobs List is my full-time gig, although I am a semi-professional jazz musician on the side. But I really get a kick out of playing matchmaker to job seekers and employers. I also love speaking to job seekers and motivating them.
So what's the history behind the website?
In reality, the idea of a centralized job source came to me more than 15 years ago when I was faced with finding a real job for the first time in my life.
It was 1993 and I had just moved back to my hometown of Denver from Washington, D.C. I'd graduated from the University of Colorado in 1989 and began an internship with Colorado Senator Tim Wirth and gradually worked my way up to where I moved to Washington, D.C. and became his Press Secretary. Unfortunately for me, he decided not to seek reelection and I was out of a job and moved back to Denver.
So here I was, 27 years old for the first time ever, I was forced to look for a real job.
I began looking for a job in public relations and did all the typical things a job seeker did, which, at the time, meant scanning the help-wanted ads in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News (this was before the Internet). What I found was that many of the best jobs weren't advertised in the newspapers which meant job searching also meant a lot of cold calling to companies and agencies and trying network with friends, contacts and business leaders whom I could call for an "informational interview." I also would go to my local county workforce center which had big thick notebooks full of job listings from organizations throughout the city.
It was at that time that I thought to myself that a really cool idea would be to develop a centralized job-seeking resource for specific careers; so, instead of having to search high and low for the opportunities, they could be found under one umbrella.
Fast forward a couple of years. The Internet boom began and with it, several websites were created that did exactly that! Monster.com, hotjobs.com, careerbuilder.com - global job websites that were in effect, turbo-charged accessible data bases that sorted jobs by location, career, salary, etc.. To many job seekers and employers, this was a perfect solution that created tremendous efficiencies for both sides!
But as these websites grew - and grew - and grew, those initial efficiencies became too overwhelming! Job seekers were now competing with thousands of other job seekers from all over the globe. Employers were being overwhelmed with thousands of resumes and applications and the amount of time and resources required to sift through these job seekers was seemingly unbearable.
And as this was going on, a small revolution was percolating in the form of niche websites and email lists targeted at local professionals and employers in specific career sectors.
In my case, I'd been enjoying my life serving as the Press Secretary to Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and had developed an email list of local community and business leaders to whom I'd send press releases, articles and other news of interest to on a regular basis. As this list grew to a few hundred folks, it became somewhat of a viral phenomenon. If you wanted to know what was going on at City Hall, you needed to be on "Andrew's List."
As my email list became more and more well known, subscribers to the list started sending me jobs to post. To me it seemed like a great community service and I didn't hesitate and soon, more and more local jobs started appearing on my list. These jobs were primarily in the areas public relations, public affairs, marketing and nonprofit jobs.
In 2003, Mayor Webb was unable to run for reelection due to term limits and as a political appointee, I was also out of a job. But my list of subscribers, now 1,000 strong, still encouraged me to continue the email broadcasts, particularly as it related to the listing of new jobs. I complied, and over the next two years, the list grew to 3,000 subscribers! At this point, employers would simply send me a job listing, and I would simply cut and paste the text of the job listings to Word document and attach it to an email. I'd format the list every Sunday morning. Between creating the weekly list and managing the subscriber list, it was taking about 3-4 hours of my time.
However, in 2005, Comcast, my Internet service provider, began implementing restrictive anti-spam policies which prohibited the number of emails you could send out at any one time and during any one day; in other words, I could only send out 100 emails at one time and only 1,000 emails per day! This became a logistical nightmare and in 2005, I was about to throw in the towel and stop providing this service.
At this point, a small miracle happened. Carol Miller, a friend of a subscriber to my list who also runs an online newsletter service called NetNewsdesk.com contacted me and said she wanted to assist by providing access to her online newsletter and website development tools. Her service also included the ability to manage a massive automated email subscriber list. As a result, in November, 2005, my first website, www.prjobslist.com was born and made the job listings available online, as well as via email, to subscribers.
The popularity of the site is completely viral; the site has had no formal marketing or advertising but has succeeded on complete word of mouth. Since 2005, more than 15,000 subscribers have signed on to receive the weekly updates and recent surveys show that 99% of subscribers subscribed to the site after hearing about it from a friend. Currently, the website lists more than 2,000 jobs per year. Recent surveys have shown that Andrew Hudson's Jobs List has become one of the most effective job-seeking websites for job seekers; and employers looking for qualified candidates have come to rely on the list's vast pool of qualified applicants.
In 2008, www.prjobslist.com morphed into www.andrewhudsonsjobslist.com mainly to reflect the other job sectors that have been added on the site. Today, Andrew Hudson's Jobs List posts jobs in the following career sectors: public relations, marketing, advertising, graphics, copywriting, human resources, nonprofit. The site also posts out-of-state jobs, and also encourages employers to list internships.
The site provides access for job seekers to promote themselves. Job seekers are allowed 300 words to describe their backgrounds and the types of careers they are seeking.
In addition, I also hold regular networking events, job-seeking seminars and job fairs. Through these events, more than $75,000 has been raised for local charitable organizations including the Red Cross, the Denver Zoo, Volunteers of America, local Tsunami relief and the Samaritan House homeless shelter.
In the future, I hope to expand this site to other communities and to other job sectors.
I'm always looking for new ways to improve the site and welcome comments and advice on how to make the site even more helpful and effective for job seekers and employers alike.
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