Resumes, cover letters

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Originally Posted by maxpower

You guys really work in office building someplace with ties on, office plants, baseball teams, 401k, and all that? I would be worried about supporting all that on a web-site, even one as good as yours. Sometimes sites are more like TV shows or something, they can run really hot and cold. I would just hate to have to downsize, I did not really think their was enough money in this to grow so big. Gay Corporate Porn? :signhere:

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Business is business. Don't let yourself risk becoming too complacent thinking it isn't real business we're engaged in here!

Sure, there are nice things about the business we're in - it being so people oriented, informal, having flexible work hours, a casual working environment, so on so forth. But any company assumes obligations towards its customers, as well as its employees, to run itself in an effective manner. There are tried and true aspects of running a business that are in place not because of some archaic and oppressive tradition, but because they just work well and are conducive to a company's being productive and profitable. Well-presented resumes as a means to getting a good impression of whether or not a potential employee is qualified to work for you are among them.

And yes, we do offer 401k. As well as a very extensive benefits package including fully covered medical, dental, vision, life insurance, paid vacations and so forth. For fulltime employees and models! :)

How many full-time people not counting models (that only do model work) do you guy have on your “team” I guess that might be a secret or something but we can say a ballpark number for some of the bigger gay companies like your site, Bad Puppy, JUB, people like that. Because you guys have to be about the largest in the world, just makes me wonder how large that really is.

Its really cool to see that a gay company can take such good care of its people, shame more people are not able to do as much.

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Originally Posted by maxpower

How many full-time people not counting models (that only do model work) do you guy have on your “team” I guess that might be a secret or something but we can say a ballpark number for some of the bigger gay companies like your site, Bad Puppy, JUB, people like that. Because you guys have to be about the largest in the world, just makes me wonder how large that really is.

Its really cool to see that a gay company can take such good care of its people, shame more people are not able to do as much.

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hehe well we don't reveal the exact number of fulltime employees. That's confidential.

But I do think it extremely important companies take care of their employees. A lot of companies out there never realize their full potential because, rather than being a business, they're just the owner's bank account, essentially. Rather than reinvesting in to the business, the owner(s) leaves a bare minimum behind for operating expenses - cheap hosting, underpaid employees, underpaid models, so on so forth - and spends everything on themselves.

Don't get me wrong - an owner is entitled to do that if they so choose. And some people have no desire to run a full company and just want to have fun and make good money. Many choose to limit a company's activities to that which they're able to handle themselves, almost entirely, with minimal staff and support. More power to them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of individual webmasters on this board who don't have employees but are extremely successful because that's the model they've chosen to work with and have done very well at it.

Hiring new people can be a nerveracking experience. You're bringing a complete stranger in to the inner workings of your company and trusting them with a great deal. That's why resumes and cover letters are so important, as are the impressions put forth during the interview. It's your one and only chance to gauge someone before placing a great deal of trust and responsibility in them (well, that and the background check. lol).

We expect a great deal out of the people working with us here, and in return it's only right we offer them a great deal in terms of pay, freedom, respect, bonuses, benefits, so forth. There was a point in time at which Corbin took on a great deal of responsibility towards employees and their families (we have employees with spouses and children who depend on the health of this company and the right decisions being made) as well as became dependent upon those employees to keep the ship afloat and running fullsteam ahead. It's a mutual arrangement.

I can see that working I guess in 5 or 6 person teams + some models but much more than that is beyond anything I could see a need for. Even 5 people that are not creating content themselves is more that anyone would have a need for right? Unless you guys are running some Chinese Porn Sweatshop someplace cranking out FHG's or something. But hey I don’t really know everything :fucked:

In the same vein as the above discussions about resumes and cover letters, one of the other requests we've sometimes made in our job postings is something to the effect of

"When you respond, write and tell us why we should consider hiring you. Give us something to help us understand a little about you. It can be somewhat informal, but something that conveys your personality, interests, goals... anything that would help us get to know you. What we DON'T want is a generic cover letter your resume guy produced."

And, even with that, it's amazing how we will get a generic cover letter with a couple words or a sentence changed. I don't know whether it's because people don't read the ad carefully, or are just completely flummoxed over writing something original and unusual, but it always surprises me how few applicants can even read the directions.

Now... we probably wouldn't put that sort of touchy-feely thing for a programmer, but for a marketing person, or for an assistant to AJ and I, or a person that's going to be doing creatives like web design or video editing, it really has made a difference in cutting down the time we spend interviewing. Usually we can review the applications, talk to 2 or 3 people, interview one or two, and be done with the hiring process.

Skills and talents are, of course, crucial... but for a company with a dozen employees or less, personality, ability to interact with others, commitment and integrity, are for us at least as important, and sometimes more so, than the technical abilities.

hehe Chip I know what you mean.

Our postings will specifically ask for resume with cover letter, in MS Word format, for example. And someone will send just a resume, no cover letter, as text within an email. o.O

What kind of impression does that make?

max, i've been offered 8 jobs in the last year and a half. all are in offices, all offer benefits, all were just like jobs in other industries. whenever i go to webmasters lunches, most of the people who come ARE employees who work in offices with other employees and all that stuff. gigacash, worldwidecontent, maxpixels/randyblue, flashcash, epoch and even avn are just a few of the l.a. companies who have normal offices and generally request resumes when hiring.

i have seen over 50 employee wanted ads on the boards in the last year alone, and every one asked for - at the least - a REAL resume and salary requirements.

I'm right along with Brian and Chip. I want the cover letter to include salary requirements and in the body of an email. I want the resume to be in Word.

However, just like chip said, i'm not going to be that stringent for a web developer or programmer. Though, our current IT Director did submit everything proper so that proves you could expect even the tech geeks to pull it together properly.

We're moving to a more corporate working enviroment over the years. Sooner or later you find yourself dealing with termination and unemployment and unless you have specific policies in place you're fucked as an employer. So yeah corporate gay porn is HOT :)

But when corporate comes its a bonus to employees in a lot of ways. Generally, I think employees like structure. In fact they need it in order to operate successfully. Also, We offer great benefits that you'd expect from any other established employer... health care, vision, dental, a 401k, paid holidays, paid sick days, paid vacation days and tuition reimbursement.

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Originally Posted by maxpower

You guys really work in office building someplace with ties on, office plants, baseball teams, 401k, and all that? I would be worried about supporting all that on a web-site, even one as good as yours. (snip)
I did not really think their was enough money in this to grow so big. Gay Corporate Porn? :signhere:

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Smart business owners, regardless of whether they are running a multinational pharmaceutical giant or a gay porn company, are always looking ahead, anticipating risks and changes in the business, and doing their best to mitigate the risks and diversify their revenue streams.

I've always viewed the adult online business as volatile.

As an industry, the online adult companies are better than 60% reliant on one single entity, the Visa cardmember association. Mastercard, Discover, and the smaller players represent a small chunk of the total processing volume, and I believe that AmEx prohibits porn entirely. What this means is if Visa suddenly decided to stop processing for adult -- which they could definitely do if they so desired -- revenues from adult websites would almost vanish overnight.

Likewise, if the two major banks who are underlying processors for Epoch and CCBill suddenly stopped processing adult (as many others have) or, even more likely, were acquired by Chase or First Data, both of whom prohibit porn, most everyone in the industry would be shit out of luck.

On the physical product side, downloadable DVDs will most likely marginalize the sales of physical product within a few years.

So... a smart business owner is aware of those things, and constantly is looking for strategies to minimize their risk, or at least spread it around by diversifying their revenue streams into related areas.

I don't think that it's wise for a high-revenue company in any field to limit their revenue streams to one form of business; diversification is key. So in that way, maybe Max is right that being *just* a corporate porn company is on the risky side. But I do believe there are ways to limit that risk.

i don't think porn is any riskier than any other business.

because arie works in manufacturing and my parents worked in aerospace, i've seen how many companies were taken over or went out of business with economic shifts. even more, the fact that work outsourced to china and india is not only cheaper but is on time - being on time is very rare with products made within the u.s. - a lot more large companies are going with outsourcing. the local places in burbank where there was a lot of manufacturing started going out of business when lockheed left years ago.

large movie and music companies are being very slow to adapt and are losing huge amounts of revenue, not only to file sharing changes in how we deal with our entertainment. also those who want to sell in bulk at places like walmart have to cut their profits to the bone.

how about retail? thousands of retail stores are being put out of business or are seeing their profits grow smaller and smaller because they can't possibly compete with prices at walmart or target. not to mention we can now shop competitively on the internet and also get a much wider variety of products.

we live in a time of fast change and only those businesses that can evolve and adapt quckly will thrive - no matter what type of business they are.

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Originally Posted by basschick

i don't think porn is any riskier than any other business.

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You're absolutely correct; I probably wasn't clear. The main point of my comment was that one can do risk mitigation in any business, and online porn, because it has a couple of crucial places (notably payment processing) that are the most vulnerable to interruption, requires thought about ways to minimize that risk.

The online gambling people relying on US traffic essentially went out of business overnight, and the people that make carbon paper laughed when Xerox said that their business would eventually vanish. Kodak scoffed for years at digital imaging, convinced that it would never impact their business before aggressively moving into digital imaging. Agfa (the German equivalent of Kodak) wasn't so lucky and saw their revenues plummet and their 80 year old business go bankrupt.

The only gas station for about a 4 mile radious in the area where I live (which charges about 30 cents more per gallon than the going rate) just had a 20 pump Safeway station open across the street at below-market prices.

Nearly every business has a lot of risks attached. I guess the only real difference in the adult industry is we don't have many governmental or otherwise influential people standing up to help us in times of need, so we have to take more responsibility to look out for ourselves.

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Originally Posted by basschick

i bet you would pm me or someone like me and ask us to go over it for you - and someone would.

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heh... I find this funny for some odd reason. And how much is this service?

to run my eye over someone's resume for 3 minutes isn't a paid service. it's part of being a community member :)

to rewrite all the text - not changing the shape of the resume - is $40 an hour,same as my editing / proofreading services.

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Originally Posted by IdolKnights

heh... I find this funny for some odd reason. And how much is this service?

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Originally Posted by basschick

max, i've been offered 8 jobs in the last year and a half. all are in offices, all offer benefits, all were just like jobs in other industries. whenever i go to webmasters lunches, most of the people who come ARE employees who work in offices with other employees and all that stuff. gigacash, worldwidecontent, maxpixels/randyblue, flashcash, epoch and even avn are just a few of the l.a. companies who have normal offices and generally request resumes when hiring.

i have seen over 50 employee wanted ads on the boards in the last year alone, and every one asked for - at the least - a REAL resume and salary requirements.

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I normally think about other sites being run by one person or maybe at the most 3 while only paying other EMP’s to create and star in content only. I guess I should get around more, I have just been one of those guys working in their basement or something. This whole structured or traditional office working environment and porn combination is just alien to me I guess, also this might be one of the reasons I like it too.

It is really nice to see so many gay companies are able to take care of their EMP’s, and have created what sounds like a fun atmosphere to work in. Its also really cool that so many sites are about be break-out of the 3-5 team mold I talked about, but I sounds I am more behind than I thought. I really need to crank stuff up I guess :uhoh:

(I don't think porn is any riskier than any other business)

I don’t know about all that, is it riskier than working for a TV show NO, but I would think its much more risky for EMP’s than working for Bank A or something. Porn sites come and go, any affiliate knows how quick a site can stop making sales in the numbers they used to. Its rare for sites to last 10years really just like TV shows, and after 20 years of “new” episodes of Survivor or American Idol they just lose something. I hate to tell people this, but all sites will in the end become stale as far as most viewers are concerned and will die a lonely death. :borg: This would worry me allot before I went out and got 20 EMP's or something because today and yesterday I could afford it

The only way to keep going is creating New sites in the long run, and creating new sites that are as popular or even more popular than the last ones are not all ways so easy to do once you have reached a certain level.