SYP Says

E-Commerce Manager at ExerciseTV.tv

Tom Heymann who I know from A&E forwarded me this job description. If you know a qualified candidate, please email Kelly McSweeney at kmcsweeney@mac.com

Company: ExerciseTV: Comcast

Job Title: E-Commerce Store Manager

Description: ExerciseTV, a multi-platform, on-demand media company dedicated to motivating and inspiring people to live healthier lives by exercising is looking for a hardworking E-Commerce Store Manager to drive the company's online commerce initiatives. The ideal candidate will possess the ability to work independently running all aspects of the online store, but also take direction in a team-based environment. This position requires a utility player with strong user experience skills, marketing and merchandising savvy and proven expertise in maximizing online commerce revenue, including online lead generation, SEM, performance measurement and analytics. Demonstrated experience is essential.

 

The E-Commerce Manager will report to the General Manager and work closely with the Marketing and Finance teams. ExerciseTV can be found online at www.exercisetv.tv

Download ecommerce_mgr_exercise_tv_july_2008.docx

CEC1 Recommendations

I've been a member of the Customer Experience Executive Councils run by Creative Good for four or five years now. Lately, we've been starting our sessions with updates from each member and things to recommend to one another. The Councils are private, but because these are some of the smartest, most well-informed people I know, I thought I would share just the recommended list so you too can benefit. I suspect if you check out some of the items below, your IQ and taste bud sensitivity will go up at least 5 points.

Blogs/Sites

• 43Folders.com: Blog on time management
• BeFunky.com: Funky ways to express yourself
• Doodle: Site that helps people agree on date/time of something
• FreeRice.com: Feed the world, one grain at a time
• ffffound.com: Image bookmarking
• Future Perfect Blog and NYT Article
• MyHeritage.com: Fun facial recognition software
• Omnigraffle: A wire-framing tool for Macs
• PaidContent.org: The economics of content
• Pingg.com: Design invitations
• Smashing Magazine: Innovative tips for designers & web developers
• Stuff White People Like
• White Whine

Books

• Alexander Hamilton Biography
• Andrew Carnegie Biography
• The BinLadens by Steve Call
• Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)
• Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• How Doctors Think
• Liberty vs Democracy debates by James Bovard
• The Little Red Book of China Business
• Team of Rivals
• What Customers Want
• Wild Swans

Other Stuff

• Baby Charles, a funk band from Brighton
• Conference called "Interesting"
• Go to Africa and check out the non-profit project AsanteAfrica.org
• Go to the Grand Canyon with (or without!) your kids
• If you like really spicy food, ask for "gunpowder" in any South Indian restaurant
• Le Creuset "buffet" casserole
• Oberoi Hotel in Rajasthan, India
• Sonos Wireless Music System
• Visit Nova Scotia
• Wines from the Toro region of Spain

Restaurants Around the World

• Adelitas Taqueria in San Jose, CA
• Bazin's on Church Street in Falls Church, VA
• Bistro Elan in Palo Alto, CA
• Caduff's Wine Lofts in Zurich, Switzerland
• Corner Bistro in West Village (NYC)
• Figs in Charlestown, MA
• Fribourger Fondue-Stuebli in Zurich, Switzerland
• Heidi's in Minneapolis
• In-n-Out Burger (all over CA and a few other Western states)
• Keungama Tofu House (Korean) in Los Angeles, CA
• Liberty Cafe in San Francisco
• Napa Rose at Disneyland
• The Oceanaire in Baltimore
• Osha (Thai) in San Francisco, CA (the third street location is best)
• Ottolenghi: A healthy restaurant in London
• Panera: A location near you!
• Phuong Trang (Viet) in San Diego, CA
• Pizzeria Mozza, Mario Batali's new pizza place in Los Angeles, CA
• Pylos in NYC
• Slanted Door in San Francisco, CA
• St. John: A meat restaurant in London
• Tamarine in Palo Alto, CA
• Tiger Noodles in Princeton, NJ
• Tofoo Com Chay in San Jose, CA
• Uncle Bill's Pancake House in Manhattan Beach, CA
• Uncle Yu's in Livermore, CA
• Willie's in Shrewsbury, MA (Worcester area)
• Zenna Noodle Bar in Brookline, MA

Account Manager, Hitwise

My friend and intrepid late-night gnudi-eating companion, Keith Pepper, is the VP of Account Management at Hitwise, a competitive intelligence research company recently purchased by Experian. They are in growth mode and looking for smart Account Managers in their San Francisco and NYC locations. Download the pdf of the job description below.

Download hitwise_acct. Mgr. Job Description June 2007.pdf

Interested and qualified parties should contact Keith directly at keith.pepper@hitwise.com.

Internet Retailer & SYP

Hey--I'm in this month's Internet Retailer! The article is called "Good help is hard to find." Amen to that. 

Similar to the Wall Street Journal article my blog was in a couple of months ago, the article is about new ways recruiters and companies are trying to find and entice candidates. 

Here's the Internet Retailer bit that mentions SYPSays!

Special perks or tactics can help attract and retain skilled workers.

Catalog and web retailer L.L. Bean tries to turn its location in Maine, well off the beaten track for many Stanford or Princeton grads, into a plus by offering employees free use of seven company-owned cabins and access to camping, fishing and other outdoor gear. The company also paid 4,900 employees, including all full-time workers, a 7.5% bonus last year.

So Young Park, who moved from New York City to head up e-commerce at Musician’s Friend, an online retailer, began a blog to describe to friends and relatives her experiences in rural southern Oregon. Joiner says the blog helped him recruit two candidates to work for Park last fall.

“The blog really humanized her,” he says. “I would e-mail it to candidates and say, ‘There’s the person you’re going to be working with. Read the blog and you’ll see how smart and nice she is.’”

And, every now and then, fortune smiles on a retailer, even one in Cumberland, Md.

Butler of Dishes, Décor and More says she recently hired an I.T. professional who had been working for defense contractors in the Washington area and wanted to move back to Cumberland, where she had a home and could more easily commute to West Virginia University, 60 miles away, to work on her Ph.D.

“She had the experience we had been looking for for six months and hadn’t been able to hire,” Butler says. “I lucked out.”

Click here for the full Internet Retailer article.

Click here for the Wall Street Journal article.

Click here for job opportunities in the e-commerce/online marketing space on my blog and on MarketingHeadHunter.com.

BabyCenter Sr. Product Manager, E-Commerce

My council buddy, Sarah Bernard, VP of eCommerce at BabyCenter.com, is looking for a Sr. Product Manager. The job is based in lovely San Francisco. Interested parties should contact sarahb@babycenter.com.

UPDATE: Sarah is no longer at BabyCenter. If you want to reach her, email me at syp@jeffnet.org.

Company: BabyCenter, LLC
Job Title: Sr. Product Manager, eCommerce
Description: BabyCenter is seeking an individual to product manage the development of website features and functionality for the BabyCenter Store. This job involves managing an outsourced ecommerce vendor, formulating product strategy with business owners to deliver current business plans & build business for the future, driving projects, and day-to-day management of cross-functional project teams (merchandisers, marketers, salespeople, designers, software developers,producers, and vendors). The product manager also helps to identify new development initiatives and sets priorities according to customer and business objectives. The position reports to the VP of eCommerce for BabyCenter.com.

Candidates with the following preferred:
- MBA
- Experience with Omniture, A/B testing, agile development techniques (XP, Scrum, etc.), HTML, technical understanding, and/or user interface design.

Here is the full job description: Download sr_product_mgr_at_babycenter.doc

Please email Sarah if you know of any qualified candidates.

WSJ & SYP

Today was a big day for me! Thanks to Marketing Headhunter Extraordinaire, Harry Joiner, I was in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal, front cover of the Marketplace section in an article about How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job.

Sure, the whole article was interesting, but the part that really matters is here:

Some companies encourage employees to blog because they can use them to recruit others. When recruiter Harry Joiner was hired to fill two positions at Musician's Friend Inc. in November, he used an employee's personal blog to help sell his client's rural location of Medford, Ore., to job seekers. "Candidates were using Medford as a reason not to consider the jobs," he says. "As a marketer, I thought, if you can't change it, promote it."

The blog, by So Young Park, the company's director of e-commerce marketing and customer-relationship management, describes her move to the area a year ago from New York City. It includes details about her work, her experience owning a car for the first time, a bear sighting near her new home and related topics. While she started the blog to share information about her experiences with family and friends back East, she acknowledges that it has also been a good resource for attracting job hunters.

Mr. Joiner says he linked to the blog in ads he posted on job boards and in emails to potential candidates. He says it helped him get professionals to leave jobs in Los Angeles. "The blog made a ton of difference," he says. "It humanized [Ms. Park] to candidates and made the jobs more attractive."

Interested in a job at Musician's Friend? Click here for open positions at our corporate headquarters, as well as great jobs from friends of mine at other great companies.

Here's the full article or download wsj_syp_article_4.10.07.doc

This is, like, the coolest thing ever. :)

Database Marketing, Account Director

MBS, the Long Island database marketing company I used when I was at A&E (and a vendor I really enjoyed working with), is hiring an Account Director. The job reports to a great guy--Dave Braunstein, VP of Consultative Services--and if you're interested in the position, you can email him directly at braunstein.david@mbsinsight.com.

Position Background:
Dynamic database marketing company with great momentum seeks a high-energy marketing strategist with vision and a track record of success to lead the charge with a new Fortune 500 client.  As the account services leader for this high-profile retail client, you will develop database marketing and CRM strategies with the client and have ultimate responsibility for successful delivery of our database marketing and analytical services.  The successful candidate will be capable of bridging the gap between data-driven retail marketing strategies and the technology solutions that support those efforts.

Position Responsibilities:
• Sustained cultivation of the client relationship at a strategic level

• Proactively identifying opportunities to engage the client and satisfy needs in the areas of multi-channel marketing programs, customer-focused marketing analysis, strategic technology deployment, etc.

• Annual planning and forecasting of client activity and opportunities, projects and products (analytical, interactive, etc.), and relationship building efforts (quarterly business reviews, client visits, etc.)

• Cross-functional communication and project management relating to strategic projects and technology solutions, including analytical services deliverables, CRM technology enhancements, program management execution, etc.

Minimum Experience and Skill Set Requirements:
• 8+ years cosmetics, specialty retail and/or luxury goods industry experience
• 8+ years retail and interactive marketing experience
• Strategic thinker with leadership skills and vision
• Customer-focused, team player
• Exceptional written and verbal communication and presentation skills
• Proven project and program management experience
• B.S./B.A. required; MBA desirable

If you're interested in this position or know someone who might be right for it, please email Dave Braunstein.

Relationship Marketing Director, Orbitz Worldwide

This job comes to us from Aaron Cooper, VP of Online Marketing at Orbitz Worldwide which includes Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com. The position is located in Chicago. Please send resumes of qualified candidates to Tom Grace at tom.grace@orbitz.com .

The Director of Relationship Marketing will own and direct Orbitz Worldwide's primary proactive channel of customer communication: outbound email. Each month Orbitz Worldwide sends over 70M emails to our customers, spanning multiple brands. Reporting to the VP, Online Marketing, the Director of Relationship Marketing’s role will be largely cross-functional in ensuring all subscription-based communications are relevant to the consumer, brand-aligned and effective for the business.

Looking for a seasoned marketing professional with at least 8 to 12 years’ experience, and an outstanding track record of profitably developing and executing data-driven direct marketing strategies.

Download director_of_relationship_marketing_at_orbitz.doc

To recommend someone for this job, send inquiries to Tom Grace at tom.grace@orbitz.com.

User Experience Director: Avenue A | Razorfish

My first official Good Jobs posting comes from Dave Towers at Avenue A | Razorfish. I know Dave from his days running e-commerce at JCrew.com. He recently moved from NYC to LA--another East Coast transplant! (Although technically I think he's actually from the West Coast, but anyway...) Email Dave if you're interested in the job below or if you know someone who might be right for it.

Job Title: User Experience Director
Company: Avenue A | Razorfish

Description: Back in grade school, some people used to make fun of the smart kids. We hire them. We hire them because some challenges demand intellect. Some opportunities require curiosity. And some questions are so tired of being answered with the same trite cliches that they're begging for someone with brilliance and an offbeat sense of humor to wrestle with the answers. 

We're Avenue A | Razorfish, the world's largest interactive agency and a division of aQuantive, Inc. (NASDAQ: AQNT). We help forward-thinking companies transform their businesses online. We're more than 1,000 creative minds in 12 U.S. cities and Europe. Each office is filled with opportunities for people who want to invent the digital future. It's a big challenge, but it's a big Internet, and there's work to be done. 

Our Los Angeles office seeks a passionate, strong willed, pragmatic yet innovative leader who can see the forest, the trees, through the trees, through the forest and the little lady bug sitting on the leaf in front of your eyes. Strong research background and ability to boil up the pond (sometimes the ocean) to derive at strategies and insights that help lead to proprietary user centered experience design in the interactive and digital fields. Ability to absorb large amounts of business development, philosophy, process, methodology and be able to reorient, guide, recommend. Along with the trees and the forest comes a community of highly talented best in class individuals who need a shaman, mentor and leader to help drive vision and excellent day to day execution as needed. 

Responsibilities Summary: 

* Manage the Los Angeles User Experience practice including Experience Strategy, IA, Research and Insights.

* Serve as a cross-functional leader within the overall Los Angeles management team.

* Lead the UX team to deliver supeior quality work by establishing philosophies and methodologies for the practice.

* Participate in business development work.

Qualifications Summary:
 
* Degree in a related field, such as human-computer interaction, visual design, product design, interaction design, or technical communication 

* 7+ years experience developing interactive products 

* Demonstrated expertise in consumer or B2B eCommerce, software application interfaces, and/or interactive marketing - must include creating transaction-oriented interfaces 

* Demonstrated experience leading and/or observing user research and usability testing and in translating results into design decisions

* Demonstrated ability to document designs in scenarios, workflows, site architectures, interaction notes, and page template/wireframe formats. 
 
* Strong team collaboration and facilitation skills

* Proven ability to manage people 

* Superior oral and written communication and presentation skills

To find out more about this job or to recommend someone for it, click here to email Dave Towers.

Musician's Friend Open Jobs

I'm back with more great jobs at Musician's Friend! Some facts:

* Musician's Friend is the largest direct seller of musical instruments in the world. We just purchased one of our industry competitors (Music123.com and WWBW.com) and we are investing in infrastructure and people.

* Musician's Friend is one of the Top 50 Internet Retailers.

* MF is owned by Guitar Center, the largest retailer of musical instruments in the U.S. with 200 stores.  In 2006 we did over $2 billion in sales.

So, the company is awesome and growing and part of a very fun industry. What's cooler than music? (Check out my NAMM 2007 blog post for an inside look.)

Now I know you're asking yourself why in the world you would move to Southern Oregon. Well, first, it's beautiful. (This is right outside my door.) You'd be in the mountains and near one of the country's best rafting rivers and the Redwoods, but still only 2 hours from the Oregon coast and the beach. Portland and San Francisco are relatively close by car and there are short direct flights to a variety of surrounding cities, including LA, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas. Second, you can be part of an industry giant (our nearest competitor is half the revenue), but have a more relaxed lifestyle...take a break from the rat race. Third, it would be an adventure! Hey, if I can move here from NYC, anyone can do it. :)

Email me if you think you're right for one of these jobs or know someone who is.  All of these positions are in my department (E-commerce Marketing & CRM). Thanks.

Download affiliate_specialist_3.07.doc JOB FILLED!

Download associate_brand_mgr_3.07.doc JOB FILLED!

Download marketing_budget_analyst_job_description.doc JOB FILLED!

Download sem_specialist_2.07.doc JOB FILLED!

Download statistician_3.07.doc JOB FILLED!

Check out other jobs at Musician's Friend and Guitar Center. Click here for more of the inside scoop on Musician's Friend and Guitar Center!

Good Jobs: E-Commerce and Internet Marketing

I'm instituting a new benefit for SYP Says readers! The new Good Jobs blog category will include not just open positions from my employer, Musician's Friend and Guitar Center, but also hand-selected job openings from my personal network of friends and colleagues--mostly those in e-commerce and the general Internet industry. 

The rules are very simple:

1. I will only post job openings from people I know and like. If I don't know you yet, you can go to LinkedIn and see how we're connected. If I don't like you, well...try to be nicer and maybe I'll change my mind. :)


2. I will only post job openings from a representative of the hiring company. I won't post jobs given to me by a hiring agent or recruiter.


3. I won't accept payment for the postings.

Why am I doing this? Just consider it a public service--I know how hard it is to find good people and it's equally hard getting the word out about good jobs. In some small way, I want to be able to connect the two. I get calls and emails all the time from friends with job openings ("Hey, do you happen to know anyone who...?") and I thought this would be an efficient way to help.

If you're interested in having me post your job opening on my blog, email me.

P.S. I am not liable in any way for the postings themselves or the results of the postings. SO, if you actually get hired from a job posting that was on my blog, I won't benefit if it turns out great and, likewise, if you don't like the job or you get fired, etc. etc., don't blame me!

Working at Guitar Center

I've noticed that I get quite a bit of traffic from Google searches related to working at Guitar Center (GTRC). We had a relatively tough year in 2006, although we did still have our best year ever with total sales of over $2 billion. (That's $2B of an approximately $7B industry.)

Musician's Friend, the direct response division of Guitar Center, just successfully purchased the assets of one of its closest competitors on the direct-to-consumer side--Woodwind and Brasswind and Music 123. As of midnight last night those employees are now cohorts of mine.

I've been an employee at Guitar Center about 11 months. My 1-year anniversary as the Director of E-Commerce Marketing and CRM at Musician's Friend will be on March 6th. I'm not sure if it's gone by slow or fast, but I'm glad I made the move from A&E and The History Channel in NYC. I was happy there for a long time, but I needed a change. I think this was the right career move...it's a fun industry, I'm learning a lot and hopefully making a positive difference in the organization. Plus, I'm a musician and it's great to be back in that world. Anyway, I ran across a few interesting articles about GTRC recently. Enjoy.   

The Best Retail Stock of 2007

Guitar Center Learns to Reed

The Sales Force That Rocks

Pop Quiz: What are the 7 Guitar Center core values?

Shop.org FirstLook 2007

A few days before I left to go to the first Shop.org conference of the year last week, I said to Jeff, Boy, this is going to be great--it's the first time people from Musician's Friend will be at Shop.org and it's the first time in ages I'm not running a roundtable or something. It'll be nice just to be an attendee. So, of course I get a call from my good friend Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good, who was running the entire second day of the conference. Hey, do you want to be the fourth person on the panel I'm moderating?

My fellow panelists were all council members of mine, so I knew them (albeit to varying degrees). All great people though--the council just seems to attract them. We had a blast. The topic was customer-centric business design and I think the panel really worked in part because we had prior experience with one another. So many times panels bring together random people and it ends up being a pretty stilted discussion. Anyway, we got very positive feedback from it which was nice.

From left to right in the pic below: Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good; Katie Geminder, Head of Product Development at Facebook; Matt Gutermuth, President & CEO of GroceryWorks (Safeway.com); Shawn Budde, Chief Customer Officer at Capital One; Me, SYP, in charge of E-Commerce Marketing & CRM at Musician's Friend and Guitar Center.

I had a slight malfunction with my mic that, without going into embarrassing details, resulted in 400 people laughing *with* me. Ah, yes, the joys of live presentations. :) Hey, no one can say our panel wasn't entertaining.

BTW, if you're in the e-commerce or online marketing business and you're not a member of Shop.org, do join. It's the premiere membership organization for the industry and affiliated with the National Retail Federation. View more pix from this year's FirstLook event.

Go West, Young Woman

It seems everyone I meet wants to know why I moved all the way from NYC, skyscraper capital of the world, to Ashland, Oregon...aka Tree City USA (seriously). While it's true that I felt like I needed a change and maybe even needed a break from Manhattan altogether, and that the job at Musician's Friend seemed like a good next career move for me (and hey, if I hated it, I could always get another job, right?), a large part of the reason I finally decided to leave New York was because one of my long-time friends, Donna Krampf, fell into a coma this time last year. She died right after I returned from my in-person interview with Musician's Friend in Oregon and her funeral was on my birthday, December 23, the same day I was offered the job.

Donna hired me at A&E in 1998 and was a real mentor to me.  She was a brilliant direct marketer, a wonderful person, and had a great sense of humor about herself. One of the funniest times we ever had was when we were getting into a cab to go to a meeting downtown. She kicked her leg up a little too high and her pants split up the back. We were already running late and she went through the entire meeting with her leather coat tied around her waist, the two of us on the verge of convulsing in laughter for two hours straight. She would always send me little notes of encouragement and her last one to me before she left to be GM of Delias.com said that I was a star. I still have the email.

Over the years, we always stayed in touch. We'd meet for drinks or dinner or go to the movies from time to time and although we never felt like we saw each other often enough, we always knew we could when we needed to. The last time I saw Donna was in early December 2005 at Campbell Apartment, a swanky bar in Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. I had just had my first phone interview with Musician's Friend and was looking at other opportunities in NYC, and we talked about that and our lives and where we thought we were headed. She was tired of consulting and was thinking of getting a full-time job again--maybe even moving out West. I said I'd connect her with a recruiter friend of mine who might be able to help her out. She never got the chance to call him. About a week and a half later, she was in a coma. Less than two weeks after that, she was gone.

Looking back on a year ago, I remember how strongly I felt like it was all a sign--a giant arrow in the sky pointing West so I could close one chapter of my life and start fresh, even if I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it. A new start was offering itself up to me, and I would be an idiot not to take it. I'm many things, but an idiot, I'm not. So a couple months later, I bought a Jeep, put my boyfriend and two cats in it, and headed out for parts heretofore unknown (at least to me).

Those of you literate types already know that the famous quote, "Go West, young man," (made not by Horace Greeley, but John B. L. Soule) was actually "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." It's been over 150 years since that quote was written and while the West had a bit of a head start on me, I think I've done a lot of growing up since I arrived in the middle of these mountains. What a difference a year makes.   

SYP, Marketing Sherpa

I had trouble coming up with a Halloween costume this year, so when I went to work today, I just wore the new J. Crew hat I'd bought in Portland and figured that would be good enough. A wiseguy coworker of mine said I looked like a sherpa...wait, no...a MARKETING sherpa.  He thought he was being doubly clever because there actually is a well-known online marketing site called MarketingSherpa.com which provides Internet news, tips, job openings, and case studies.

Anyway, you be the judge. Does this look like a marketing sherpa to you or just a run-of-the-mill Halloween reveler? If the former, match the pictures below with the typical issues a marketing sherpa must deal with:

1. Sales are down for the day and you don't know why because your online Web analytics tool is offline (again).

2. You launch a big new promotion and it doesn't work in production even though it worked just fine in staging.

3. A pricing typo gives users a $149.99 guitar for only $14.99.

4. Your site goes down.

5. You beat a competitor to the punch.

6. Your latest targeted emails finally perform better than your batch and blast.